Semester-Length Critical Thinking Online Courses Begin January 21! Register Here

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Critical Thinking Certification

Those looking to be certified in the Paul-Elder Approach to Critical Thinking can complete their facilitator training in the Spring 2025 Online Certification Course.

Course meetings begin February 5th, 2025!

The 45th Annual International Conference on Critical Thinking

The world's longest-running critical thinking conference comes to Kentucky's University of Louisville from July 23-27, 2025.

Learn from international experts on the most integrated, comprehensive, and robust framework for criti
cal thinking in the world.

Help Us Continue Our Work This Holiday Season

The Foundation for Critical Thinking is primarily self-funded, with no grant financing and almost no major benefactors. We hope you will help us continue our work to incorporate critical thinking instruction in education and promote the development of ethical critical societies.

Open Critical Thinking Q&A

Join Dr. Linda Elder on December 12th at 1:00 p.m. EST (11:00 a.m. Pacific) for this webinar in which you can ask any question related to critical thinking theory, education, history, or application.

This webinar will be open to the general public.

Critical Thinking Podcast: Episode 30 Available

Only in the Center for Critical Thinking Community Online.

Join Drs. Linda Elder and Gerald Nosich  for the third and final part of their series on ethical reasoning: "Ethical Concepts, Principles, Standards and Virtues."


Full-Semester Courses in Critical Thinking

Spring 2025 Registration Open Now. Study under the guidance of a first-generation Paulian Scholar from the comfort of your home or office!

Complete coursework on your own time with continual feedback.




I found that I was fitted for nothing so well as for the study of Truth . . . with desire to seek, patience to doubt, fondness to meditate, slowness to assert, readiness to consider, carefulness to dispose and set in order . . . being a man that neither affects what is new nor admires what is old, and that hates every kind of imposture.

~ Francis Bacon (1605)

OUR MISSION

For more than 40 years, our goal has been to promote
essential change in education and society by cultivating
fairminded critical thinking — thinking which
embodies intellectual empathy, intellectual humility,
intellectual perseverance, intellectual integrity, and
intellectual responsibility.