The Big and the Little of What Critical Thinking Means in Economics Education

The practice of critically questioning accepted ideas and explanations and separating those that are logical and reasonable from those that lack sufficient support or a sufficiently sound basis to be accepted is a tradition that Socrates started. 

An IB economics tutor in India says that, “The Plato preserved the legacy of critical thought and documented Socrates' ideas”. 

Many, if not all, fields, including the great majority of economics courses, usually say that one of their goals is to teach students how to employ critical thinking abilities.

This could be a response to companies' requests that educational institutions provide graduates who can resolve problems and draw connections between disparate ideas, notwithstanding their inability to specify the precise competencies that characterize such critical thinkers.

Economists generally concur those encouraging students to be critical thinkers is a commendable goal for economics education. There's still a major problem though. For economists, what does "critical thinking" actually mean?

How is this widely liked catchphrase going to be put into practice? How is critical thinking genuinely taught by an instructor? Furthermore, how can we tell if pupils have acquired critical thinking skills?

Big and Little Think Critical

To effectively teach economics critical thinking, it is useful to differentiate between big- and little-think critical thinking, or thinking out of the box versus thinking within it.

Acquiring knowledge of a range of instruments, frameworks, and techniques that have proven helpful to economists in comprehending various aspects of the field is vital for little-think critical thinking.

It's considered "critical thinking" in the context that it offers a gateway to an approach to thought that economists find practical.

Teaching critical thought inevitably entails teaching the models and techniques that experts employ, as the underlying premise is that educated specialists—like economists—think more critically than non-experts.

Because it entails studying the current models and procedures (within the box) rather than necessarily critically analyzing them to determine when they are appropriate (outside the box), we refer to this type of thinking as "little-think" critical thought.

Using our nomenclature, studying current science is studying little-think critical thought: these are the empirical laws and regularities that scientists have discovered, together with the techniques they employed to do so.

Critical thinking which is big thinking is distinct. It is not based on a scientific approach, but rather on that of philosophy and the humanities. It depends on introspection and gut instincts rather than a scientific empirical examination to determine what will be deemed true.

It acknowledges the potential vulnerability of all experts, including scientists, and is frequently critical of the models and techniques of expert critical thought that are now in use.

Big-think critical idea is primarily interested in identifying the gaps in the neo-classical model, the ways in which an approach deviates from reality, and the situations in which inside-the-box thinking is probably useful and those in which it is not.

Big-think critical thinking tackles problems for which there isn't a logical quantitative solution in conventional mathematics.

While many significant problems are viewed as unanswerable by science, it regards science as being applicable to a selection of topics accessible to quantitative investigation.

Other approaches an IB tutor in Delhi must be used to resolve them. In its view, science is not a process that consistently yields an indisputable truth, instead being a dynamic combination of well-informed, common-sense approaches that have developed throughout time and are going to continue to do so as computing and analytical technologies advance to produce a finite understanding of reality.

How the IBDP's TOK promotes pupils' critical thinking? 

One of the three main components of the IB Diploma Programme (IBDP) is the Theory of Knowledge, or TOK as it is generally known. A crucial part of the DP, TOK encourages students to consider the knowledge they currently have. 

It challenges pupils to consider critically their own opinions and to be conscious of the perspectives that they hold.

The IB courses in India that the students master as part of DP are supported by their critical thinking regarding a variety of knowledge domains, including their contrasts and similarities. 

 Under this requirement, the emphasis is more on considering the nature, extent, and constraints of the knowing process than it is on learning new information. 

“According to recent research from the Institution of Oxford, IB students have better critical-thinking abilities than other students”, says one of the IB teachers in Delhi.

 

As one of the most important 21st-century skills, it can influence both individual and group achievement, which makes parents, students, colleges, and universities highly value it.