Critical Thinking Skills for Students: Curriculum and Practice in Higher Education

Thinking Skills for Students: Curriculum and Practice in Higher Education, Heather Goode provides a practice-oriented study of how critical thinking is conceptualised and enacted in South African higher education.Grounded in her doctoral research, Goode uses a qualitative case study to examine the interplay between curriculum design, assessment and professional teaching practices in higher education institutions.Her focus is placed on first-year students entering higher education in a context where unequal preuniversity education increasingly demands for greater academic support for students and transformation of the curriculum.Goode does not analyse critical thinking as a decontextualised skill or universal cognitive outcome; however, her analysis is situated within the lived experiences of South African university lecturers.Through in-depth interviews, Goode highlights how lecturers from diverse disciplinary backgrounds interpret and implement critical thinking outcomes in their classrooms.Their reflections, often shaped by collaborative communities of practice, reveal both the opportunities and constraints presented by institutional imperatives, such as standardised learning management systems and policy-aligned assessment frameworks.