A Look Across Four Years at the Disposition Toward Critical Thinking Among Undergraduate Students

Teaching for thinking has always been central to the very concept of a liberal education. The liberally educated person is one who learns how to draw together knowledge from many different disciplines and makes good judgments about what to believe or what to do. That person who is so well educated that she or he is able to think for him or herself is the person whose mind is liberated. They are free to think, not just in the sense of having been given permission, but also in the fuller sense of having been given the skills and the deep desire to do so (Schneider & Shoenberg, 1998).