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Online Certification Courses


Spring 2026 Online Course for Certification in the Paul-Elder Approach to Critical Thinking

Successful completion of this course fulfills the requirement for certification training as described in our White Paper on Certification. Participants must demonstrate to our instructor that they sufficiently understand foundational critical thinking principles and theory. 

Those who are not currently certified can become certified at Level 1 through this course.

Those already certified at Level 1 can become certified at Level 2E or 2C through this course.

Overview

  • Course Cost: USD $995
  • Dates: February 3rd - April 28th, 2026
    (7 meetings over 12 weeks.)
  • Meeting Schedule: Every Two Weeks on Tuesdays at 4:00 p.m. Eastern Time
    (Please adjust for Daylight Savings Time on March 8th if you do not observe DST in your region.)
  • Meeting Duration: 1.5 hours per meeting
  • Instructor: Dr. Linda Elder, President & Senior Fellow
  • Prerequisites: Read Here

Important Dates

  • January 25, 2026: Last day to drop with a registration refund
  • February 1, 2026: Last day to register

An active subscription in the Center for Critical Thinking Community Online is required for this course, and to maintain certification status afterwards.




Certification in the Paul-Elder Approach

The emergence of critical thinking as a fad has now placed genuine critical thinking at risk of being so watered-down as to be unrecognizable.

In the time since the core principles and concepts of critical thinking (now known as the Paulian Approach, Paul-Elder Framework, etc.) were expounded by the Center for Critical Thinking beginning in the 1980s, the popularity of the term "critical thinking" has given rise to numerous approaches that are variously superficial, mistaken, or outright counterfeit. These competing systems, oftentimes appealing in their simplicity and well-crafted marketing, have in many circles supplanted more rigorous, comprehensive critical-thinking understandings and methodology. On the whole, critical thinking scholarship is at risk.
    
At the same time, we know that many educators, consultants, and trainers are doing their best to facilitate understanding of the Paul-Elder Framework for Critical Thinking. While this is occurring at varying levels of quality, with the foundational concepts often shared incompletely or inaccurately, we applaud these efforts to keep robust critical thinking alive. They are an excellent start; what is needed now is to ensure adequate standards in this facilitation.
    
We want to certify you in your ability to promote understandings of the Paul-Elder Framework for Critical Thinking, the world's most widely-adopted and substantive critical thinking approach. This framework is explicit, robust, applicable to all human reasoning in any context, and described entirely in natural language. In pursuit of this goal, we have overhauled our Certification Program to greatly reduce fees and add more pathways to completion, and we are now offering affiliations through this certification process for consultants.


For the full details of our Certification program, including benefits, requirements, and fees, please read our White Paper on Certification. This paper was heavily revised in May of 2024 to reflect extensive changes to the Certification Program; please ensure you are familiar with the latest version.

Coursework

In this course, we will review and discuss primary critical thinking theory, solidifying basic understandings of these foundations and contextualizing them to reach deeper levels of comprehension. We will tailor much of this coursework to each participant’s needs and strengths, as well as to their educational, professional, and personal purposes for pursuing certification.

The critical thinking foundations at the heart of our certification process include the Elements of Reasoning, Intellectual Standards, Intellectual Virtues, the three categories of questions, ethical reasoning, and egocentricity and sociocentricity as natural barriers to critical thinking development. You will have significant autonomy in selecting readings from our works that illuminate these concepts, and you will be assessed on your ability to state, elaborate upon, and exemplify each one.

Participants should plan on roughly 2-3 hours of homework per week on average.


Prerequisites for This Course

Those wishing to participate in the Certification Course must have undergone one of the following:

1. successful completion of one of our semester-long online courses and engaged attendance at one of our in-person or virtual events (besides webinars) online guided study groups, or on-site or online custom
professional development programs,
-or-
2. Engaged attendance at three (3) or more of our in-person or virtual events (besides webinars), online guided study groups, on-site or online professional development programs, or a combination of these.

“Engaged attendance” means that you attended the sessions and completed the assignments (both in-session activities and homework where applicable).





Please do not pass this message by.

CRITICAL THINKING IS AT RISK.

Here are some of the big reasons why:

  1. Many people believe that critical thinking should be free and that scholars qualified to teach critical thinking should do so for free. Accordingly, they do not think they should have to pay for critical thinking textbooks, courses, or other resources when there is "so much free material online" - despite how erroneous that material may be.
  2. There are many misguided academicians, and some outright charlatans, pushing forth and capitalizing on a pseudo-, partial, or otherwise impoverished concept of critical thinking.
  3. Little to no funding is designated for critical thinking professional development in schools, colleges, or universities, despite the lip service widely given to critical thinking (as is frequently found in mission statements).
  4. Most people, including faculty, think they already know what critical thinking is, despite how few have studied it to any significant degree, and despite how few can articulate a coherent, accurate, and sufficiently deep explanation of it.
  5. People rarely exhibit the necessary level of discipline to study and use critical thinking for reaching higher levels of self-actualization. In part, this is due to wasting intellectual and emotional energy on fruitless electronic entertainment designed to be addictive and profitable rather than educational and uplifting.
  6. On the whole, fairminded critical thinking is neither understood, fostered, nor valued in educational institutions or societies.
  7. People are increasingly able to cluster themselves with others of like mind through alluring internet platforms that enable them to validate one another's thinking - even when their reasoning is nonsensical, lopsided, prejudiced, or even dangerous.
  8. Critical thinking does not yet hold an independent place in academia. Instead, "critical thinking" is continually being "defined" and redefined according to any academic area or instructor that, claiming (frequently unsupported) expertise, steps forward to teach it.

As you see, increasingly powerful trends against the teaching, learning, and practice of critical thinking entail extraordinary challenges to our mission. To continue our work, we must now rely upon your financial support. If critical thinking matters to you, please click here to contribute what you can today.

WE NEED YOUR HELP TO CONTINUE OUR WORK.

Thank you for your support of ethical critical thinking.