Critical thinking as an interdisciplinary scientific problem

Critical thinking is one of the rapidly developing fields in practical pedagogy, state educational policy, personality psychology, and professional activities. However, research on critical thinking has not yet formed a system of scientific approaches, while existing solutions are limited to identifying the disciplines in which critical thinking is studied. Disciplinary division contributes to the accumulation of concepts but does not lead to scientific discussion, competition of theories, or historical change of ideas (i.e., to the emergence of scientific approaches). As an alternative, the paper proposes creation of an interdisciplinary foundation for critical thinking research. The study aims to identify contradictions in existing descriptions of critical thinking research as an interdisciplinary problem and to find a way to resolve these contradictions. Methodologically, the analysis is based on V.V. Matskevich’s concept of approach (strategies and programs in science, politics, or in the organization of life and activity of people through which paradigm structures and mechanisms in cognition and/or practice are expressed) and the system of historical types of scientific rationality proposed by V.S. Stepin (classical, non-classical, and post-non-classical). According to the classical approach, critical thinking is based on objective scientific standards independent of sociocultural context. Non-classical epistemology challenges the universality of these standards, emphasizing the influence of cultural and individual factors. The post-non-classical approach focuses on interdisciplinarity, pluralism, and the adaptability of critical thinking depending on sociocultural and professional contexts. Within these three types of scientific rationality, it becomes possible to identify truly competing approaches implicitly present in critical thinking research (universalism, contextualism, naturalism, constructivism, and others). As a result of the analysis, a three-level system of interdisciplinary critical thinking research is proposed, which allows for combining philosophical, psychological, pedagogical, and other studies to unite efforts in critical thinking research.