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Guest Presentations are clustered into groups of 2-3 based on conceptual connections between their respective topics. In these clusters, each presenter or team will take a turn presenting their topic. After everyone has presented, a Q&A provides the opportunity for questions and further discussion.
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Teaching Critical Thinking Through Disability Studies and Accessible Design
John O'Neill
Associate Professor and Program Head of Graphic Design
University of Minnesota Duluth
This presentation examines how concepts from critical disability studies can be used to teach critical thinking in higher education. Grounded in the Paul-Elder framework, the session shows how students learn to analyze the assumptions, purposes, implications, and points of view embedded within contemporary systems of communication and technology.
Drawing on concepts such as the normate, misfit, embodiment, and non-normative interaction, students investigate how institutions and technologies are often structured around implicit ideas of a “normal” user. These concepts are applied to everyday systems, including voice recognition tools, video conferencing captions, self-service kiosks, and digital learning platforms, where assumptions about how people should speak, perceive, and interact can shape access and participation.
Students engage in guided inquiry to identify underlying assumptions, evaluate whose perspectives are prioritized, and assess the consequences of excluding diverse forms of communication and interaction. Classroom examples from multimodal communication, tactile design, and voice-based technologies demonstrate how students develop the ability to question systems rather than accept them as neutral or inevitable.
The session argues that critical disability studies provides a practical and transferable framework for cultivating critical thinking by helping students examine how ideas about normalcy, ability, and participation influence decision-making across disciplines and professional contexts.
Journal Club as a Means to Develop Critical Thinking Skills
Lindsey Block
Lecturer
Northwestern University
Chicago, IL
Background: Journal clubs are a 100+ year tradition in the life sciences, in which students and faculty gather to discuss recently published literature. Although journal clubs can be an excellent means of developing analytical skills, many are not structured to promote critical thinking (CT). In addition, although many graduate-level courses claim to teach CT, including through journal clubs, few provide explicit instruction. Therefore, I restructured my graduate-level journal club-style class to focus on developing students' CT skills. The purpose of this session is to discuss how this process worked and discuss obstacles that arose.
Methods: At the start of the quarter, master’s students in reproductive science and medicine received a lecture introducing the components of CT based on the Foundation for Critical Thinking’s philosophy. I used a tree analogy to explain how the standards, depicted as tree roots, are essential to evaluating the elements, depicted as leaves, which together allow for the development of intellectual traits, depicted as the tree's fruit. Each week, students discussed a peer‑reviewed paper in class and then wrote one‑page reflections evaluating key components of the paper: the authors’ backgrounds, hypotheses, study design, results, conclusions, and communication effectiveness. Reflections were scored based on the frequency of critical‑thinking terminology usage. Seventeen students were evaluated, each submitting seven reports.
Results: Overall, there was a significant increase in the students’ CT scores over time (p < 0.0001, RM one-way ANOVA). Specifically, 59% of students showed a positive trajectory in the use of CT terms. Students most accurately applied the standards of significance when evaluating hypotheses, relevance when considering authors’ backgrounds, and clarity when assessing the paper’s communication effectiveness. Interestingly, although most discussion time was spent on the results and conclusions, students most often reflected on the study design (total CT counts: 139) compared with other components of the paper (results + conclusions total CT counts: 98).
Conclusions: Within one academic quarter, master's students demonstrated an increased capacity to intentionally evaluate the scientific literature.
Asking Questions Based on Intellectual Standards
Tonya Estes
Professor of Adult Basic Education
Bellevue College
This presentation will share an assignment created for students to practice asking questions based on Intellectual Standards. She uses this assignment soon after introducing Intellectual Standards to help students deepen their understanding of the standards. This assignment can be adjusted to any discipline with a little creativity.
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Becoming a “Considerist”: Cultivating Intellectual Virtues in the Military Profession Through Humanities Education and Critical Thinking
Ramiro Cuetlächtli De Anda
Associate Professor of Rhetoric and Critical Thinking
United States Naval Community College (USNCC)
This presentation introduces the concept of the considerist—a term I coined that describes the "intellectual character" (Ritchhart, 2002) that military professionals develop when they internalize the habits of fair-minded critical thinking through sustained engagement with humanities education. Becoming a considerist is not a destination but an ongoing process of intellectual transformation: a deliberate, disciplined commitment to examining one’s own thinking, thoughtfully contemplating the viewpoints of others, and holding oneself accountable to the standards of reasoning that make genuine understanding possible. Drawing from a foundational introduction to critical thinking course (PHL 101) I designed for active-duty, enlisted Marines, sailors, and Coastguardsmen at the United States Naval Community College, this session explores how the Paul and Elder framework can be operationalized within a professional context to cultivate the intellectual capacities and virtues that transform service members from trained executors of tasks into reflective, self-directed thinkers.
Purpose: Attendees will gain a concrete understanding of how the Paul and Elder framework can be operationalized in a professional educational setting to cultivate the intellectual capacities and virtues of service members at the foundational level. I plan to share the course design, the crosswalk methodology, and preliminary observations from the Spring (maybe Fall) 2026 pilot, offering a replicable model for educators working in professional, institutional, or applied settings. The session invites dialogue on how the process of becoming a considerist might extend the foundation’s work into new domains of professional practice, demonstrating that critical thinking is not an abstraction to be learned once but a way of being that must be continually cultivated, and that humanities education remains the most powerful vehicle for that transformation.
Critical Thinking During Military Operations
Kevin Smith
Captain (Retired)
U.S. Navy
Critical Thinking (Criticology) is not yet a formal course of instruction for military personnel, but it should be. In this discussion, I will present on an actual high-stakes operation in which the elements of reasoning and intellectual standards were used to safely land an aircraft during a hurricane. The occurrence, "The Angry Sea Event: Landing in a Hurricane," tested the performance of critical thinking concepts and tools under extreme conditions and severe time constraints with no margin for error.
This event and its successful outcome demonstrate how the development of intellectual traits through ongoing critical-thinking practice can lead to life-saving effectiveness in critical, high-pressure military operations.
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Encouraging Critical Thinking in Classrooms by Analyzing News Reports
Scott Shaffer
Graduate Student
Perkins College of Education
Stephen F. Austin State University
Nacogdoches, Texas
Texas included in its current knowledge and skills standards (“TEKS”) the standard that students are expected to “apply critical thinking skills to organize and use information acquired through established research methodologies from a variety of valid sources, including technology.”
TEKS do not define “critical thinking” but use concepts from Bloom’s taxonomy, including analyze, evaluate, create, apply, and understand, suggesting to this writer that the Texas Education Agency considers Bloom a guide to critical thinking. Paul has made clear that recall, a primary feature of Bloom, is not knowledge, and that there are no standards in the taxonomy.
In this presentation, I use recent news to engage middle school students in my 7th-grade Texas History classes to think critically about what they read online. This particular content is “about them” and is particularly relevant.
The need for a Paulian framework of critical thinking to guide 7-12 grade Texas social studies curriculum development and delivery could not be more important and timely. This presentation uses the Paulian elements of thought framework to think critically through an online media report of a high school student having been attacked recently during a student protest of ICE in their community. We analyze the reporter’s thinking and explicitly state our own as we apply the Paulian framework to better understand our own and others’ thinking. We will also assess the reporting and our thinking by applying the intellectual standard of accuracy as we work to develop the intellectual trait of fairmindedness.
Scaffolding Early, Often, and Across
Rajesh Babu Kurunanithi
President
Qurious, Inc.
We have systems that drain attention, exploit people, destroy resources, and lead to irreversible consequences across different scales. The systems that we humans create and take part in, most often, don’t start with effective questioning and don’t consider all relevant perspectives.
Most young children grow up posing questions to people in their lives. Not every child gets to cultivate this habit as they grow up. The ecosystem in which they grew up might not have experienced or prioritized nurturing this habit.
While we have focused efforts at schools, academic institutions, workplaces, and personal coaching to address these in different ways, the concerns persist. How might we bridge the two concerns described?
What if we start early? What if we focus on family contexts and community contexts, providing experiences that young children take to academic contexts and adults take to work? How might such an effort complement and cohere with later efforts at school, life, and work contexts?
In this session, we will share a focus on foundational concepts (for example: framing, abstracting, describing, questioning, ecosystem, …) and experience contexts that scaffold the practice and integration of meta-skills in academics, work, and life.
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Fostering Critical Thinking in the Age of GenAI: Practical Strategies for Educators and Learners
Amanda Hiner
Professor of English
Coordinator, Critical Thinking, Reading, and Writing Program
Winthrop University
In recent years, the rise of generative artificial intelligence (GenAI) has heavily altered the way people interact with information and construct their points of view. Despite the rapid increase in students’ use of GenAI, many students fear that its use will undermine learning, and many educators express concerns about the consequences of GenAI use on teaching, learning, and the cultivation of critical thinking skills. Addressing the challenges and risks of GenAI use within educational contexts will require educators to modify their approaches to teaching digital literacy, sharpen students’ awareness of the cognitive implications of GenAI use, and encourage students to make context- and purpose-driven decisions about when and how to use AI technologies.
Recent research has revealed that over-reliance on GenAI is associated with both cognitive offloading and diminished critical thinking skills and traits, including intellectual autonomy and independent problem-solving skills. This presentation will explore recent, compelling research that reveals how GenAI undermines critical thinking skill development and cognitive engagement by eradicating opportunities to wrestle with complex problems, synthesize information, draw logical conclusions, and evaluate claims for accuracy and fairness. Using a method of critical thinking developed by Dr. Richard Paul and Dr. Linda Elder and amplified by Dr. Gerald Nosich, this presentation will explore the risks GenAI poses to critical thinking skill development and propose strategies to respond effectively to GenAI technologies within the context of teaching and learning.
From Teaching Strategies to Thinking Structures: An Integrative Review of the Pedagogical Elements That Promote Critical Thinking
Nadine Ezzeddine
Dalhousie University School of Nursing
Senior Instructor
Background: Critical thinking is an essential competency in nursing education required to address the increasing complexity of healthcare, patient acuity, technological advancement, and emerging artificial intelligence (AI)–supported care models. Despite decades of emphasis, evidence on how critical thinking is effectively developed in undergraduate nursing students remains inconsistent. Recent pedagogical innovations, including technology‑enabled and AI‑supported approaches, further complicate this landscape
Purpose: To examine the elements of pedagogical approaches used to promote critical thinking in undergraduate nursing students, with particular attention to emerging AI‑supported pedagogical strategies.
Methods: An integrative review was conducted. Twenty‑eight studies met the inclusion criteria. Data were analyzed using Paul and Elder’s elements of reasoning (purpose, concepts, information, implications)
Results: Findings revealed substantial variability in pedagogical design, theoretical grounding, pedagogical approaches, and conceptualization of critical thinking. Most interventions relied on self‑reported measures of critical thinking dispositions rather than externally assessed skills. Only two studies explicitly examined generative AI–supported approaches, highlighting AI use as a scaffold for questioning, analysis, and feedback rather than a replacement for thinking. Across studies, explicit instruction in critical thinking skills was uncommon.
Conclusions: The review demonstrates that enhancing critical thinking in undergraduate nursing education depends less on the type of pedagogical strategy used and more on the logicalness of the pedagogical elements. Evidence on AI‑supported approaches remains limited but suggests potential when AI is used to support, rather than substitute, students’ thinking. Greater conceptual clarity, explicit instruction in critical thinking, and rigorous assessment strategies are needed to advance both research and practice.
Training Minds to Audit AI: Micro-Protocols for Detecting Hallucination, Bias, and Overconfidence in Student Analysis
Charles M. Russo
Professor (Critical Thinking / Intelligence Analysis)
Former Federal Bureau of Investigation Intelligence Analyst
Generative AI can produce fluent, confident, and sometimes deeply wrong analysis. If we don’t explicitly teach students how to interrogate AI outputs, we inadvertently train passive acceptance rather than disciplined judgment. This guest session offers a practical approach for integrating AI into critical-thinking instruction without outsourcing thinking to the machine. I introduce a short set of “AI Audit Micro-Protocols” that students perform every time AI is used in a research, analytic, or writing task: (1) claim extraction (what is the AI actually asserting?), (2) evidence tagging (what would verify or falsify each claim?), (3) assumption and bias surfacing (what is missing, framed, or implied?), (4) alternative hypothesis generation, and (5) calibrated confidence with explicit uncertainty. Participants will see a quick demonstration using a sample AI-generated analysis, then walk through a repeatable classroom routine and rubric that grades reasoning quality and intellectual virtues (humility, integrity, empathy) rather than “polished output.” The purpose is to help educators make AI a catalyst for deeper reasoning, not a shortcut around it.
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Doctor of Physical Therapy Student Self-Reported Metacognitive Awareness and Classroom Activities
Molly B. O'Rourke
Associate Professor
Director of Curriculum
Department of Physical Therapy Education
Western University of Health Sciences - College of Health Sciences
Graduate healthcare education is tasked with the challenge of conveying knowledge and assessing competence to produce future health care providers capable of autonomous decision making in the face of ambiguous clinical presentations. Intellectual integrity, Intellectual confidence of reason, perseverance, and autonomy must exist with intellectual humility, courage, and empathy to support patient–first clinical reasoning and decision making. Critical thinking is widely regarded as one component of clinical reasoning. Measuring metacognitive awareness through quantitative tools and assessing metacognitive development through quantitative discussions are commonly used methods of monitoring metacognition and metacognitive growth in graduate healthcare education students. Doctor of Physical Therapy cohorts, enrolled in a required course titled Teaching and Learning Principles, participated in course activities including discussion boards, small group activities, presentations, large group discussions, reflections, and peer feedback that were intentionally designed to promote metacognitive awareness. Topics included assumptions and inferences, learning objectives, higher order thinking, teaching and learning innovation, critical thinking, learning theories, audience or patient needs-assessments, metacognitive, self-reflection, informed self-assessment, and the translation of education from classroom to clinical settings. Assessments were based on participation and self-grading using a rubric that students created specific to a given task. Each student completed the Metacognitive Awareness Inventory at the beginning and the end of the 15-week course. Quantitative and qualitative data are being collected and analyzed.
Critical Rumination: A Phenomenological Study Exploring the Impact of Critical Thinking Theory in Two Community Colleges
Herschel Greenberg
English Instructor
Mt. San Antonio College (Mt. SAC)
This presentation will present the findings from research while writing my dissertation for my Educational Doctorate Degree from California State University, Fullerton. An abstract of the study appears below.
This study examined the evolution of critical thinking as a core educational objective in higher education, beginning with state mandates and the subsequent integration of critical thinking into curricula and institutional learning outcomes (ILOs) at two community colleges in Southern California. Despite the widespread adoption of critical thinking assessments and theories, a disconnect remains between the language of ILOs and instructional practices, raising concerns about whether instructors are effectively teaching critical thinking skills. Through a qualitative phenomenological study, this research explored theories and andragogical strategies employed by community college instructors to teach critical thinking, assessing their alignment with institutional goals. Based on three critical thinking theories (Ennis, Paul, and Halpern), findings indicated Richard Paul’s critical thinking theory was used by most instructors interviewed in the study despite being unaware of Paul’s theoretical framework. The study’s recommendations aim to inform educational policy and practice, including enhanced instructional practices to better equip students with critical thinking skills essential for civic engagement and problem-solving in contemporary society.
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Cultivating Minds for the 21st Century: Catalysts and Challenges to Critical Thinking
Marinar F. Castro
Teacher & Researcher
Ateneo de Davao University
This exploratory, descriptive qualitative study examines the strategies employed by Ateneo de Davao University Junior High School (ADDU JHS) to cultivate critical thinking in the classroom. The research investigates the stakeholder’s understanding of critical thinking as a core competency, its significance in preparing students for 21st-century societal demands; and the catalysts that foster critical thinking and the impediments that hinder its successful implementation.
Qualitative data were collected through Focus Group Discussions (FGD) with primary stakeholders, specifically students, teachers, and administrators. Thematic analysis was employed to identify the prevailing patterns defining the school's instructional landscape.
Results indicate that while definitions of critical thinking vary among stakeholders, there is a consensus that it is a higher-order cognitive competency, which is essential for empowering students to successfully navigate the complexities of 21st-century life. Participants recognized that integration of appropriate questioning techniques, active learning strategies, technology, institutional support, and a positive disposition toward inquiry act as primary catalysts for critical thinking development. Conversely, the participants identified significant impediments that hinder these efforts: the absence of a standardized, school-wide critical thinking framework, rigid curricular time constraints, resistance toward pedagogical reform, and a continued reliance on instructional activities that prioritize rote learning or low-level cognitive tasks.
To foster a more robust culture of critical thinking, the researcher proposes several institutional interventions, to be discussed further during the presentation: standardization, professional development, assessment, supervisory mentorship, and further research.
Critical Thinking Performance Across Languages: Insights from Multilingual Writing
Yanning Dong
Associate Professor
Tsinghua University
Beijing, China
This session presents a study that investigates how multilingual writers’ conceptualizations of critical thinking (CT) and their use of rhetorical strategies interact to shape CT performance across languages. Grounded in sociocultural theory, CT is conceptualized not as a fixed cognitive ability but as a mediated process through which socially constructed norms of reasoning are internalized by writers and subsequently externalized in writing, with language use and rhetorical strategies functioning as key mediating resources.
The study draws on data from Chinese learners of Spanish as a foreign language (n = 43), including questionnaire responses and argumentative essays written in their first (L1), second (L2), and third (L3) languages. To examine the roles of conceptual understanding and rhetorical practice, the study focuses on two key dimensions: writers’ conceptualizations of CT and their use of argumentative structures, particularly counterargument–rebuttal patterns, which is considered to play a central role in organizing and expressing reasoning in argumentative writing.
Findings reveal a clear hierarchy in participants’ CT performance across languages (L1 > L2 > L3). The results also indicate that participants’ conceptualizations of CT significantly influenced their L1 CT performance, whereas the use of counterargument–rebuttal patterns was significantly associated with their L2 CT performance. These findings suggest that multilingual writers’ CT performance varies across languages and reflects a mediated outcome shaped not only by language proficiency but also by conceptual understanding and rhetorical practice. The study further offers insights for developing more inclusive and effective approaches to supporting multilingual writers in diverse academic contexts.
Exploring Critical Thinking Dispositions among Moroccan University Students in an English-Medium Instruction Context
Wissal Zerhouani
Doctoral Student
Department of English Language & Literature
Mohammed V University
Rabat, Morocco
Karima Belghiti
Professor
Department of English Language & Literature
Member of the Culture, Language, Education, Migration and Society Research Laboratory
Mohammed V University
Rabat, Morocco
Driven by educational reforms emphasizing the development of critical thinking and English language teaching and learning, a substantial body of research has emerged in Morocco in recent years, with a primary focus on the teaching and assessment of critical thinking skills, particularly in English-Medium Instruction (EMI) contexts at the university level. By contrast, research on critical thinking dispositions in the Moroccan context remain largely unexplored, despite their importance in developing critical thinking and fostering students’ willingness and readiness to engage in critical thinking practices. Accordingly, this study investigates Moroccan university students’ perceptions of the importance of critical thinking dispositions, their understanding of these dispositions, the extent to which they demonstrate them, and the factors influencing their development. Adopting a mixed-methods approach, the study draws on both quantitative and qualitative data collected from a sample of students enrolled in the Department of English Studies. The findings indicate that, while students generally recognize the importance of critical thinking dispositions, their level of understanding and demonstration of these dispositions varies considerably. This variation appears to result from a combination of individual, sociocultural, and educational factors.
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Ethical Reasoning in a General Education Course
Kimberly M. Baker
Associate Professor of Criminology
University of Northern Iowa
This presentation shares how I teach the Paul-Elder method of ethical reasoning in a college-level online general education course. For context, the course topic is get-rich-quick schemes (e.g., Ponzi schemes, multilevel marketing, romance scams, investment scams). Also, I am a sociologist, so the course content situates the schemes within US culture, economy, and politics. This topic is useful for distinguishing simple and complex ethical questions, as some of these schemes are obviously unethical while others operate in murky ethical territory. In particular, the course focuses on Paul-Elder’s articulation of the core ethical question of whether specific acts enhance others' well-being or cause harm. Throughout the course, students work through a series of assignments in which they identify their core values, apply the logic of ethical questions, and evaluate and reflect on values and ethics in relation to schemes. The process I developed for this course is specific to schemes, but it can be adapted effectively to a wide range of topics across other disciplines.
To me, critical thinking is demonstrated by the ability to break down a text (including audio, video, speech, etc.) into its components and evaluate the quality of thinking within each component. By working through this process, the individual can assess both the overall quality of the text and its component parts.
Critical Thinking and Online Learning?
Joanne Chia
Lecturer
Nanyang Technological University
Singapore
This paper responds to the thought that critical thinking is not formally taught in universities. The idea for this paper arises from challenges discovered in implementing the Universal Intellectual Standards that are an important companion to Paul and Elder’s Elements of Thought in collaborative situations where subjectivities may arise. The language of the elements of thought represents an important phase that helps induct students into the critical thinking conversation. It gives students the opportunity to train their close reading skills through annotation, whether on paper or on an online platform. The challenge in application is to bridge students’ initial understanding of the elements of thought and their actual application of the universal intellectual standards in collaborative situations. For instance, it is fairly intuitive to use the elements of thought to close read a text. However, by being able to identify and even explain the “implications” of a topic they are writing on may not necessarily translate to being able to critique the “depth” of thinking in an essay they are giving a response to. In this way, online learning could serve as an effective bridge in enhancing the explicit teaching of critical thinking for a general writing class taught to students from all disciplines in a university. The insights and limitations of implementing critical thinking on an online platform for social annotation will be shared in relation to designing a learning journey involving both individual reflection and collaborative discussion.
Asking Questions Based on Intellectual Standards
Tonya Estes
Professor of Adult Basic Education
Bellevue College
This presentation will share an assignment created to introduce students to the concept of traits/virtues and Intellectual Traits/Virtues. It will also share some examples of student-produced work on this assignment. Although the assignment is designed for a course called “Critical Thinking for Work and Life,” it can be modified for other purposes.
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