Critical Thinking in STEM Through Liberal Arts Paradigms: Transference of Skills

This paper addresses the well-known need for critical thinking in the sciences and engineering.In some areas, standard engineering pedagogy serves students well, in others, this is not the case.Our thesis is that a solid foundation or training in the liberal arts helps students to better deal with the complexities of modern life and build critical thinking skills that could be transferred to solving engineering problems.The basic tenet is, when addressing an issue in engineering, say in judging which design is more human friendly or human safety, there is a potential for a conflict, which might be better understood in the framework of a liberal arts paradigm.This paper demonstrates how various methodologies used to teach critical thinking in the liberal arts could be adapted for engineering and science education.We suggest using "global thinking" routines and other reflective practices, common in the liberal arts, will help students to improve learning and critical thinking skills.Such a "bridging of two cultures" a la C.P. Snow demonstrates the effectiveness of liberal arts in STEM disciplines.1a