Teaching Critical Thinking: Practical Wisdom

Critical pedagogy describes a methodology of teaching that focuses on exposing and dismantling biases. bell hooks uses the term to refer to practices that actively seek to decolonize the mind and educational institutions. Critical pedagogy asks students to examine how dominator culture contributes to ways of thinking and societal systems. Asking students to discuss diet culture and its origins is one critical pedagogy. hooks suggests that dominator culture is threatened by critical pedagogy and that there will always be groups who actively seek to destroy critical awareness in the classroom.

In Teaching 1, hooks outlines a definition for critical thinking as a form of radical openness. She suggests that critical thinking is an action during which students engage with wonder and challenge their own beliefs and ideas. hooks suggests that all children innately participate in critical thinking, but dominator culture quickly teaches them to submit and conform. Within hooks’s definition, critical thinking helps students to see the world from the perspectives of others and enables them to live a life of learning and self-reflection. Critical thinking leads students toward self-actualization.