Can critical thinking be taught?

Question

Critical thinking is central to the scientific method and believed to be essential to a successful democracy. Recently, the 2012 Texas Republican platform voiced the party's opposition to the teaching of critical thinking skills in public schools. This stance raises many controversial questions on the GOPs motivation, but also a fundamental question: are public schools in the US successfully teaching critical thinking?

In the West, critical thinking descends from the Socratic method and is a central tenant of the tutor system at the earliest institutions of higher learning (Oxford and Cambridge, for example). This historic dedication of the top institutions to teaching critical thinking suggests that the method is effective. On the other hand, contemporary psychologists of education are suggesting that critical thinking cannot be effectively taught (Willingham, 2008).

Can critical thinking be taught? Are there studies (with proper controls) that show that a course on critical thinking teaching the skill beyond standard domain specific problem-solving/fact-knowing courses?

Answer 1

It seems like somebody's done a lot of literature pooling already:

Is Rationality Teachable?

Among influences mentioned are statistics, logic training, and debiasing.

There's also a book that summarized findings:

Teaching Critical Thinking: Some Lessons From Cognitive Science Tim van Gelder College Teaching Vol. 53, Iss. 1, 2005

ABSTRACT: This article draws six key lessons from cognitive science for teachers of critical thinking. The lessons are: acquiring expertise in critical thinking is hard; practice in critical-thinking skills themselves enhances skills; the transfer of skills must be practiced; some theoretical knowledge is required; diagramming arguments (“argument mapping”) promotes skill; and students are prone to belief preservation. The article provides some guidelines for teaching practice in light of these lessons.

Anecdotally, I recognize a tendency for science professors to let students use their intuition at first and then crush it in an attempt to make debiasing habitual.

Answer 2

There is a classic paper by Halpern (1998) on the topic. From the abstract:

Numerous studies have shown that critical thinking, defined as the deliberate use of skills and strategies that increase the probability of a desirable outcome, can be learned in ways that promote transfer to novel contexts. A 4-part empirically based model is proposed to guide teaching and learning for critical thinking: (a) a dispositional component to prepare learners for effortful cognitive work, (b) instruction in the skills of critical thinking, (c) training in the structural aspects of problems and arguments to promote transcontextual transfer of critical-thinking skills, and (d) a metacognitive component that includes checking for accuracy and monitoring progress toward the goal.

Halpern DF. (1998) Teaching critical thinking for transfer across domains. Dispositions, skills, structure training, and metacognitive monitoring. Americal Psychol. 53(4):449-55.

While I agree with @Xuritio point about importance of statistics, logic training, and debiasing, I have a subjective sense that including modules on Philosophy also contributes heavily to the development of critical thinking. One of the most mind grinding modules I did in my undergrads was close reading of Immanuel's Kant Critique of Pure Reason. Doing modules on Philosophy of Mind and Epistemology simultaneously with Cognitive Neuroscience was also a game changer for me. Getting this meta-level perspective clashing with hardcore research somehow enables healthy, critical, creative distance towards empirical studies.