Core Themes in Critical Thinking: Perspectives from Students and University Teachers in Norway and Germany

Abstract The development of students’ critical thinking skills is essential at university level and asked for in a multitude of policy documents as well as in work life. There is, however, a lack of consensus on what critical thinking is and whether university students and teachers understand critical thinking in a similar way. The present qualitative study investigates university students’ and teachers’ understanding of critical thinking, how they perceive critical thinking as a part of the teaching, and what barriers they perceive as limiting critical thinking, at two large universities in two countries (Norway and Germany). A total of 137 participants (46 teachers and 91 students) answered a questionnaire with mainly open-ended questions, followed by content analysis. Biologists were asked in both countries, and participants from medicine, history, and religion were included in the Norwegian sample. Altogether 41 codes were identified and sorted in 9 categories, which were further sorted in four main dimensions: skills (e.g., evaluation and analytical processing ), dispositions (e.g., open-mindedness and superficial processing ), knowledge, and external factors (e.g., information overload and time ). Teachers claimed a higher amount of critical thinking in teaching than students and seemed to have a somewhat broader overall understanding of critical thinking than the students (especially giving more emphasis to research-related factors as part of critical thinking). The largest differences between the investigated subgroups were found when asked to identify limiting factors to critical thinking (particularly psychological factors , for example, fear , and external factors , for example, information overload ). The study concludes with implications for teaching.