Decades of educational research consistently demonstrate that critical thinking must be taught. Students become stronger thinkers when teachers intentionally build background knowledge, model expert thinking, ask purposeful questions, encourage discussion, provide feedback, develop metacognition, and gradually scaffold students toward independent thinking. (Abrami et al., 2015)

Explore each evidence-based instructional practice below. As you move through the carousel, consider which strategies you already use and which could strengthen student thinking in your own context.

Can you recognize these instructional practices in action? Test your understanding in the interactive challenge below.

Understanding how critical thinking develops is important as we consider AI's role in education. If students develop critical thinking through questioning, discussion, feedback, reflection, and opportunities to explain and reconsider their thinking, then we need to look carefully at what AI tools are actually asking students to do. Providing an answer quickly or making a task easier does not necessarily help students think more deeply.

As AI tools continue to evolve, we think this raises an important question for educators:  How do we distinguish between tools that simply make learning tasks easier and those that actually help students develop critical thinking?