Critical Thinking and Development Education: How Do We Develop Meta-Cognitive Capacities?

Abstract

Half a century ago, W B Gallic (1955–1956) proposed that there were ideas for which it is fundamentally impossible to agree a definition because, while the terns might be widely used, it is used by different people and groups in ways that are completely embedded in different sets of assumptions or beliefs (today we would probably say ‘discourses’) In such a context there are multiple possible outcomes. One is what O’Sullivan (1999) has referred to as a ‘phony consensus’ in which different people and groups continue to use the same term as if they meant the same thing, even though they do not. O’Sullivan has referred to this as part of a process of pastiche-making, in which different ideas are merged or mixed together in a way which ignores or hides the possible for dynamic contestation between different positions (2005: 319). A second possibility is that the different perspectives on the contested term are made explicit and juxtaposed, enabling each perspective to provide what Gallic called ‘a permanent potential critical value’ (1955–1956: 193) to every other perspective. The goal of this chapter is to make explicit a number of different meanings of the term ‘critical’ as it is used in development education. The goal is not to identify ‘the correct’ or ‘the best’ meaning of the term, but rather to avoid pastiche-making and to allow the different perspectives to illuminate the strengths and weaknesses of each other, in other words, the goal is a kind of critical analysis of critical thinking.