Abstract
One of the proudest claims of the humanities and social sciences is that our disciplines develop the capacity of students for critical thinking. This is not a claim that is supported by research, and there are good reasons to be skeptical of it. Davies (2011) has suggested that universities are actually teaching very little critical thinking. In particular, there are serious doubts about the value of the most important student learning activity in most of our subjects, and especially those in second year and above: the student essay. Complaints about the shallowness of student essays are widespread.
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© 2015 Martin Davies and Ronald Barnett
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Hammer, S., Griffiths, P. (2015). Proposition Testing: A Strategy to Develop Critical Thinking for Essay Writing. In: Davies, M., Barnett, R. (eds) The Palgrave Handbook of Critical Thinking in Higher Education. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137378057_16
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137378057_16
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