Critical Thinking in Social Work 1 Running head: CRITICAL THINKING
Critical Thinking in Social Work
Ray Woodcock
University of Michigan
School of Social Work
March 30, 2010
Critical Thinking in Social Work 2
Educational Policy (EP) 2.1.3 of the Educational Policy and Accreditation Standards
(EPAS) of the Council for Social Work Education (CSWE) (2008, p. 4) requires social workers
to use critical thinking (CT). There are a number of models and measures of CT (see Brunt,
2005; Simpson, 2002). Unfortunately, the concept of CT itself is not settled or defined, either in
general or in the EPAS. Starting from the EPAS, this paper seeks to contribute to a theoretically
measurable understanding of what CT can and should be within social work education.
CSWE’s View of CT
EP 2.1.3 falls within section 2 of the EPAS. The title of that section is “Explicit
Curriculum.” EP 2.1.3 presents CT as one of the ten core competencies (i.e., “measurable
practice behaviors”) whose mastery contributes to the preparation of the graduates of a (BSW or
MSW) program (CSWE, 2008, p. 3) for the practice of social work. The other core
competencies address such matters as professional behavior, ethical practice, and applied
knowledge of human behavior and the social environment. For each core competency, the EPAS
describe the “characteristic knowledge, values, skills, and resulting practice behaviors that may
be used to operationalize the curriculum and assessment methods” (CSWE, p. 3). These
elements of the program’s explicit curriculum generally emphasize knowledge, values, and skills
that can be cultivated, in students, in conscious and deliberate fashion.
The specified knowledge required of social work students under EP 2.1.3 (CSWE, 2008,
p. 4) is knowledge about “the principles of logic, scientific inquiry, and reasoned discernment.”
The specified values are CT itself, “augmented by creativity and curiosity.” The specified skills
are “synthesis and communication of relevant information.” The several practice behaviors that
manifest CT are, briefly, the skilful use of multiple sources of knowledge, analysis of applicable
theoretical models, and the demonstration of “effective oral and written communication.”
Critical Thinking in Social Work 3
In the exercise of critical dissection, one might find EP 2.1.3 somewhat tangled. First, it
seems odd to treat “logic, scientific inquiry, and reasoned discernment” as matters of knowledge.
(By the way, exactly what is “reasoned discernment”?) Wouldn’t the student want to have some
actual skill in the use of logic, for example? Even as a matter of knowledge, to cite one oft-
abused principle of logic, do social work core courses really develop awareness of ad hominem
arguments? Moving to the area of skills, is synthesis (as distinct from analysis) really a
component of critical reason? Likewise, while one might be expected to be able to use the
outputs of critical thought in one’s communications, surely oral communication skill is not a
necessary ingredient of the capacity for such thought, else non-native speakers of the local
language, and people with speech disabilities (e.g., Stephen Hawking), would tend to be deemed
non-critical across the board. As a final example, the skilful use of multiple sources of
knowledge would seem to be a skill, not merely a possible outcome.
Some such problems follow from the structure of EPAS section 2, which forces a
straitjacket upon all core competencies. That is, the CSWE thus obliged itself to invent
unnecessary distinctions between knowledge and skills relevant to CT. Even without that
additional burden, it is difficult in any event to define CT. In short, EP 2.1.3 plainly compels one
to look elsewhere for guidance in an informed discussion of CT.
CT as a Linear Process
Different intellectual traditions have used the concept of “critical thinking” in profoundly
divergent senses. For example, Brookfield (2009, pp. 296-297) cites its contradictory uses by
professors of business, on one hand, in studies aimed at increasing corporate profitability (but see
Mingers, 2000, p. 222) and, on the other hand, by Neo-Marxist social theorists, who are
interested in critiquing that kind of profit orientation.
Critical Thinking in Social Work 4
For clarification of what might or should be involved in a concept like CT, the
sophisticated reader commonly turns, first, to Wikipedia, if only to see whether there are ways in
which one could improve its entry on point, assuming one had the time to do so. That source (as
of 11:34 AM, March 28, 2010), paraphrased, says that thinking critically is the act of determin-
ing the meaning or significance of a datum or the justification for a conclusion. Thus, CT may
entail the ability to detect that a Wikipedia definition may lack justification. But then it may also
entail the ability to recognize that criticisms of Wikipedia can be overdone.
The scheme envisioned in that Wikipedia (2010) version is, roughly, that there is the
thing we are thinking about, there is the thinking about the thing, and then there is the thinking
about the thinking. In this view, one might construe CT as a “What? So what? Now what?”
(Borton, 1970, p. ___) type of process – as, in other words, simply the sequential identification
of a datum, the analysis of its meaning, and the derivation of consequences or next steps from the
analysis (see Eyler, 2002, p. 528). Schön (1983, p. 277) calls this sort of process “reflection on
[past] action” (emphasis added); D’Cruz, Gillingham, and Melendez (2007, p. 83) call it “critical
reflection.” In an attempt to add some clarity to such terms, this paper will tend to refer to it as
simply “reflection,” with the understanding that it does have a critical orientation.
Obviously, that game can continue. One can think about the thinking about the thinking
– can engage, in other words, in analysis of what counts as a good justification. For that matter,
one can ask what counts as a good analysis, or simply what counts. Some of this might fall into
the realms of metaphysics or philosophy of science. That is not to say that such activities
necessarily take place at a superior or more definitive level. It is possible to do metaphysics
poorly. Hence, it may be useful to treat philosophy, not as an invariably sophisticated, nth-
generation level of analysis, abstracted to a high level from the original datum, but rather as a
Critical Thinking in Social Work 5
shift in focus from a basic datum of real-world experience to a recherche datum of something in
the realms of language or consciousness.
Seen in those terms, CT – regardless of its quality – may be construed as having a
horizontal rather than vertical emphasis. That is, from a CT perspective, when we go to that nth
level of thinking about thinking, we may not have moved up to a higher level; we may instead
have just moved on to a different question. The very existence of additional vertical levels
(whether characterized as metaphorically “higher” or as “deeper”) becomes dubious when one
observes the dissimilarity of the nomenclature that five authors use to describe them, as cited by
Mann, Gordon, and MacLeod (2009, p. 598): are there two such levels, for example, or are there
instead three, or four, or five? According to Mann et al., those five authors have managed,
among themselves, to generate 17 different (and in many instances seemingly incommensurable)
terms for such levels, with “critical reflection” being the only such term adopted by more than
one of those authors.
Surely the parsing or processing of experience varies markedly from one instance to the
next, in terms of the quantity and quality of time and effort devoted to the task, and also in the
interest or usefulness of the results achieved. Such variations seem likely to depend on
investigatory skill and resources, difficulty of the subject matter, and other factors – but not,
generally speaking, on a reified structure of levels. The interpretation offered here, with respect
to those putative vertical levels, is that their forms of reflection occur within a time dimension
and are thus not literally (in a cognitive sense) vertical – that is, they do not build straight
upwards from present-moment experience, but rather continue on into the subsequent unfolding
of present-moment experience; and as they continue, they tend to augur a morphing of the
Critical Thinking in Social Work 6
original question into an assortment of other (broader, narrower, or simply different) questions
about the same or different events.
CT as an Iterative and Indefinite Process
The objections just offered lead to a different way of understanding CT. Traces of this
perspective go back a century, to John Dewey, who – according to Fisher (2001, p. 2) – is
“widely regarded as the ‘father’ of the modern critical thinking tradition.” Dewey’s (1910, p. 6)
term for CT was “reflective thinking.” As the word “reflection” implies, Fisher says, Dewey
considered such thinking “persistent and careful.” Similarly, in another classic definition cited
by Fisher (p. 3), Glaser (1941, p. 5) echoed that CT is “persistent” and “thoughtful.”
Dewey’s views find a parallel in those of his contemporary, Edmund Husserl, who
reportedly1 insisted that rational thought (see Wachterhauser, 1988, p. 245) requires “going back,
again and again” (Sheets-Johnstone, 1999, p. 141) in an attempt to find the essence of what one
has experienced (Buytendijk, 1967, p. 358). Whether one will ever find that essence – whether it
even exists – is neither certain nor important. The important thing in this perspective is, instead,
that the components of Borton’s (1970) What, So What, and Now What are apt to keep evolving,
both with the passage of time and with the mutating perspectives of iterative reviews. The datum
is not examined and then left behind; it is repeatedly revisited in hermeneutic, iterative, or
looping fashion. This approach, as it has developed, can be termed “reflection in [present]
action” (Schön, 1983, p. 277, emphasis added) or “reflexivity” (D’Cruz et al., 2007, p. 83).
When D’Cruz et al. (2007, p. 84) describe reflection on action as a search for
generalizable knowledge that can be applied again in the future, they seem to equate it with
1 The multiple citations in this sentence are offered as a substitute for the citation of the
text in which Husserl actually used the quoted term. Several scholars seem convinced that he said it. Unfortunately, thus far I have not been able to verify that.
Critical Thinking in Social Work 7
quantitative research methods. Without denying the importance or interest of contrasts between
quantitative and qualitative research, it may be more useful, for present purposes, to reframe the
contrast in terms of the kinds of on-the-fly CT skills that MSW students are more likely to need.
In such terms, there is a useful difference between an analytic ability to parse a specific past
event at length as an observer, on one hand, and a continual engagement in present-moment
questioning of oneself along with (indeed, as part of) the ever-changing phenomena of interest
(Daley, 2010, p. 79; Weick, 2002, p. 894).
Even in that phrasing, however, one is still left, to some extent, with the criticism that
trying to pin down a phenomenon precisely enough for reflection (as distinct from reflexivity)
produces “a strange type of [social] science” (Yalom, 1980, p. 24) in which the certainty of the
findings tends to correlate with their real-world irrelevance. A countervailing criticism is that, in
the constant effort to be aware of one’s own everyday impact upon and coloring of that familiar
world – “to encounter the familiar as new” (Antonacopoulou, 2010, p. S7) – one may be publicly
obsessing upon matters that many readers find relatively peripheral (Weick, 2002, p. 894).
Recap of CT as Individualist and Cognitive Activity
To the extent that the EPAS provide any insight into the sort of CT that MSW students
should master, they seem to emphasize the sorts of basic intellectual tools that van Woerkom
(2008, p. 4) links to analytic philosophy: “recognizing logical fallacies, distinguishing between
opinion and evidence, judgment and valid inference, and being skilled at using different forms of
reasoning.” Despite van Woerkom’s characterization, such tools seem likely to enjoy frequent
usage, not only in analytic philosophy, but in virtually any intellectual tradition that relies upon
inference and argument to develop its knowledge base and/or to persuade others of its merit.
Critical Thinking in Social Work 8
These tools are used in different ways in reflection and in reflexivity, as those two terms
are defined above. Reflection emphasizes the freezing of relatively few events for detailed
analysis, while reflexivity emphasizes a tendency toward real-time scrutiny of the ongoing
interplay between oneself and the ceaseless flood of current data. Neither of these ambitions can
ever be fully realized, because there is never enough time, knowledge, and awareness to absorb
all of what happened or is happening; they differ in their propensity to reduce the unknowns by
restricting the data studied.
In this sense, CT could be understood as the use of standard tools of reason (e.g., logic,
inference) both within the chosen perspectival frame (i.e., upon the selected past event, or upon
the present events of interest) and upon it (i.e., in critique of the remediable as well as the
irremediable limits of either a reflective or reflexive approach). It seems, in other words, that
both approaches have their merits and may complement one another. That statement implies that
there can be no prior commitment to a belief that one’s involvement necessarily must, or need
not, impair the application of CT, and that a form of useful reasoning preferred by people of a
given sex, race, age, etc. should be encouraged for its strengths but should not be privileged
unreasonably at the expense of other justifiable mindsets.
The foregoing remarks constitute an exceedingly brief and incomplete analysis of what
has been said about CT in the individual-oriented sense in which the term is usually employed.
As a single additional indicator of just how limited this analysis has been, one might consider the
observation, by Deal and Pittman (2009, p. 89), that a panel of 46 experts convened by the
American Philosophical Association, from institutions as disparate as the Memorial University of
Newfoundland and the University of Illinois, developed a consensus statement on CT (Facione,
Critical Thinking in Social Work 9
1990, p. 2) that is multifaceted if not predictably verbose.2 Parsing that single statement, with its
supplied background information and supportive reasoning, could generate a book. And yet
even that statement neglects emotional and social dimensions that, in some views, must be
included in order to develop a coherent understanding of CT.
CT and the Implicit Curriculum
EP 2.1.3 appears within section 2 of the EPAS. That section’s title is, “Explicit
Curriculum.” Section 3 addresses the “Implicit Curriculum.” According to EP 3.0 (p. 10),
The implicit curriculum refers to the educational environment in which the
explicit curriculum is presented. It is composed of the following elements: the
program’s commitment to diversity; admissions policies and procedures;
advisement, retention, and termination policies; student participation in
governance; faculty; administrative structure; and resources.
There are no references to CT in section 3. One may infer that, as a core competency, CT
is seen to be logically separate from “the educational environment in which the explicit curricu-
2 The statement reads as follows: We understand critical thinking to be purposeful, self-regulatory judgment which results in interpretation, analysis, evaluation, and inference, as well as explanation of the evidential, conceptual, methodological, criteriological, or contextual considerations upon which that judgment is based. CT is essential as a tool of inquiry. As such, CT is a liberating force in education and a powerful resource in one's personal and civic life. While not synonymous with good thinking, CT is a pervasive and self-rectifying human phenomenon. The ideal critical thinker is habitually inquisitive, well-informed, trustful of reason, open-minded, flexible, fairminded in evaluation, honest in facing personal biases, prudent in making judgments, willing to reconsider, clear about issues, orderly in complex matters, diligent in seeking relevant information, reasonable in the selection of criteria, focused in inquiry, and persistent in seeking results which are as precise as the subject and the circumstances of inquiry permit. Thus, educating good critical thinkers means working toward this ideal. It combines developing CT skills with nurturing those dispositions which consistently yield useful insights and which are the basis of a rational and democratic society.
Critical Thinking in Social Work 10
lum [including CT] is presented.” Yet no such firewall restricts diversity, which is treated as
both a core competency (EP 2.1.4) and an identified part of the implicit curriculum (EP 3.1).
Likewise, one could suggest that social work ethics and other parts of the explicit curriculum
certainly should be acknowledged as playing important roles in the implicit curriculum.
The problem seems to be that, as above, the structure of the EPAS document locks
CSWE (2008) into a rigidity in which it must either replicate numerous parts of the text
awkwardly, across multiple sections, or else leave important things unsaid to preserve some
brevity. Whatever the solution to that problem may be, it is not likely that CSWE does, or
should, intend that schools of social work should support CT only in the classroom.
For a sense of the role CT may play, both in and outside of the classroom, one might
return to EP 2.1.3 – but not to its reference to communication. As hinted above, communication
is best understood as a separate skill. There have been great communicators (e.g., Ronald
Reagan) who have not been especially celebrated for their CT. That said, CT surely does require
an ability to detect nuances in language. The distinction is this: one may be able to select words
that describe precisely what one is feeling or thinking, and yet those words may not form an
effective communication because, for instance, the hearer does not understand them, or finds
them offensive. CT is a form of thinking that requires a good grasp of language; communication
is a form of interpersonal action that, done well, requires perceptive choices among words. To
refer to the terms used in the title of EP 2.1.3, CT can be applied for purposes of communication,
but communication is not, itself, an intrinsic part of CT.
The non-cognitive (or perhaps supra-cognitive) role that CT inevitably plays, both in the
classroom and as part of the implicit curriculm, is instead suggested in a different part of EP
2.1.3 – in, specifically, its reference to “practice wisdom.” Critical thinking is thinking about
Critical Thinking in Social Work 11
things, informed by one’s understanding of things; and one cannot understand things – words
that describe emotions, for example – without having experienced them. Experience with and
understanding of people provide indispensable grist for the mill of critical thought – which is to
say, what one thinks, critically or otherwise, depends on what there is to think about.
According to EP 3.10, “The implicit curriculum is as important as the explicit curriculum
in shaping the professional character and competence of the program’s graduates.” What there is
to think about, for the social work student, is not at all limited to coursework, lectures, and other
formal learning experiences. To the contrary, such things assume greater or lesser importance, in
the student’s thinking, according to the professional socialization provided by interactions with
the perceived priorities and agendas of the educational institution. Whether the student will do
the assigned reading, for example, and what s/he will make of it if s/he does it, are powerfully
influenced by signals from faculty and peers. One could say, indeed, that the implicit curriculum
is not merely on a par with, but is actually prior to and controlling of, the material served up for
critical analysis in the explicit curriculum. The explicit curriculum is the steak; but the implicit
curriculum is the temperature of the grill, the skill of the chef, and the ambiance of the restaurant.
CT as an Emotional Process
EP 2.1.3 does not directly mention emotion. This is not surprising; according to van
Woerkom (2008, p. 6),
Most theories of critical reflection do not pay attention to the impact of emotions
on learning or emphasize the importance of controlling emotions. However,
emotions do not only obstruct learning. Learning does not take place when there
is no emotional arousal [citation omitted]. Emotion drives attention, which drives
learning, memory, and problem-solving behavior.
Critical Thinking in Social Work 12
Van Woerkom goes on to cite Taylor (2001) for the view that emotion is part of learning, not a
hindrance to it. Citing research into brain pathology, Taylor (pp. 223-224) describes the
essential role of emotion in setting the agenda for reasoning, by determining what information is
important and what can be ignored. Yet to say that emotion is important in CT is not the same as
saying that emotion is part of CT. What is the relationship between the two?
Emotion is, of course, an extremely broad subject. It has been brought somewhat more
down to manageable size, for purposes of CT, in the form of the emotional intelligence (EI)
construct. Mayer, Roberts, and Barsade (2008) identify three kinds of theoretical approaches to
EI: specific-ability approaches identify a particular ability that is considered essential to EI;
integrative-model approaches combine several specific abilities; and mixed-model (or “trait-
based,” Van Rooy & Viswesvaran, 2007, p. 260) approaches typically combine at least one
relatively standard EI attribute (e.g., accurate emotional perception) with at least one attribute
that is not normally included in the measurement of EI (e.g., happiness, adaptability). Mayer et
al. (p. 520) detect increasing doubt among researchers regarding the EI-specific usefulness of the
last of those three, however.
Mayer et al. (p. 525) present seven trends in studies of EI outcomes. These trends may be
summarized as having to do with social relations, psychological well-being, and academic
achievement. Without denying the value of all of these within social work practice generally,
only the academic achievement construct seems particularly related to CT. There, they say, “EI
is correlated with higher academic achievement as reported by teachers, but generally not with
higher grades once IQ is taken into account.” This appears to be the case regardless of whether
EI in this sense is measured from a specific-ability or an integrative-model approach.
Critical Thinking in Social Work 13
While research continues, this progress report by Mayer et al. (2008) tentatively implies
two alternate approaches for the relationship between EI and CT in social work education. One
approach, consistent with a traditional understanding of higher education, might exclude EI from
the measurement of CT for the reason just stated: it does not seem to have much of an effect on
grades independent of IQ. The other approach, oriented toward a concept of what education
should be as distinct from what it is, would insist upon including EI in CT because of the crucial
effect of emotion upon reasoning, and would restructure social work education accordingly.
A sense of how that latter option might work arises from what is in some ways the
primary integrative-model approach identified by Mayer et al. (p. 523), namely, the Four-Branch
Model of EI – which happens to be the very first model of “emotional intelligence,”according to
Goleman (1995, pp. 43-44) – developed by Salovey and Mayer (1990) and tested by the Mayer-
Salovey-Caruso Emotional Intelligence Test (MSCEIT) (Mayer, Salovey, & Caruso, 2002). The
four branches in this “leading ability-based explanation of emotional intelligence” (Fan, Jackson,
Yang, Tang, & Zhang, 2010, p. 781) have been described, relatively recently, by Salovey and
Grewal (2005). Based upon their description, there appears to be a reciprocal intuitive
relationship between the second branch, “using emotions,” and the third branch, “understanding
emotions.” The former has to do with the effect of emotions on thinking, and the latter captures
the reciprocal relationship in which cognition detects and articulates differences among
emotions.
The MSCEIT is not yet mature. For example, in a meta-analytic structural equation
modeling analysis, Fan et al. (2010, p. 784) detected very high correlation between that second
branch and the first branch, “perceiving emotions,” and proposed that a three-branch model
would have the best overall fit. Others (e.g., Murphy, 2008) have identified additional concerns
Critical Thinking in Social Work 14
with the MSCEIT. Nonetheless, in principle, one could revise the social work curriculum (and
the EPAS) to accommodate EI within a broader yet still potentially defensible concept of CT –
treating EI as, perhaps, “[T]he ability to engage in sophisticated information processing about
one’s own and others’ emotions and the ability to use this information as a guide to thinking and
behavior” (Mayer, Salovey, & Caruso, 2008, p. 503) in several significant areas of practice
(Morrison, 2007).
CT as Multiple Intelligences
If CT can include emotional intelligence, perhaps it can also include other kinds of
intelligence. Gardner (1983) posited the existence of seven distinct forms of intelligence:
linguistic, musical, logical-mathematical, spatial, bodily-kinesthetic, intrapersonal, and
interpersonal (p. xi). By “intrapersonal,” Gardner intended an orientation toward emotions; and
by “interpersonal,” he intended the ability to understand other people (Goleman, 1995, pp. 39,
41). The latter has led, in recent years, to broad interest in what Goleman (2006) calls “social
intelligence.” These multiple intelligences are not very directly addressed in EP 2.1.3; the
question here is whether they should be.
The short answer, for some, is more or less obviously No. While any form of intelligence
can be useful in life and in the various things we do in life, and may even be crucial within social
work niches, musical, spatial, and bodily-kinesthetic intelligences have relatively little to do with
social work education and practice generally. By contrast, as just seen, there may be a case for
including EI within a concept of CT, which does traditionally tend to include linguistic and
logical-mathematical intelligences. The remaining question, it seems, is whether social
intelligence (SI) should also be included in CT.
Critical Thinking in Social Work 15
Or perhaps that is not the sole remaining question. Almeida et al. (2010) cite research
indicating, contra Gardner, that there is, in fact, a general or common dimension of intelligence –
that, in other words, “cognitive skill measures are positively correlated with each other
depending on the cognitive processes involved and on the tasks’ content.” This view, should it
continue to gather research support, may suggest that multiple intelligences are, to some extent,
manifestations of a single core intellectual capability. Even so, there are obviously different
degrees of musical giftedness, for example, among people of otherwise comparable intelligence,
so it seems likely that there may be different degrees of emotional and social giftedness as well.
For purposes of CT, there may be an important distinction between EI and SI. It was
indicated, above, that emotion plays an essential role in cognition, in the sense of serving as an
agenda-setter within the brain. Tentatively, it does not appear that SI has a comparably central
role in thinking, though of course social contact can serve as one among many influences upon
thinking in a given situation. For example, Goleman’s (2006) summary of SI, involving social
awareness and social facility, seems more oriented toward social performance than toward any
essential aspect of thinking. That said, it may be advisable to explore this particular question
further, along the lines of van Woerkom’s (2008, p. 7) suggestion that feedback is, in fact, an
essential aspect of learning.
CT for Social Work
The preceding pages began by characterizing CT as a set of steps in which one identifies
a datum, thinks about it, and then reflects upon his/her thinking. It was suggested that, at least to
some extent, such a process might be revisited in persistent, iterative, and self-aware fashion, in a
bid to get a better handle upon the phenomenon and also upon one’s potentially inextricable
involvements with and effects upon it, and of it reciprocally upon oneself. These individually
Critical Thinking in Social Work 16
oriented approaches to CT seemed to prioritize the use of basic skills of logic and reason upon
the datum, and also, perhaps, upon one’s use of a reflective or reflexive frame of perspective.
So far, the discussion amounted to an interpretation of EP 2.1.3, as part of the explicit
curriculum within the EPAS. Upon recognizing this, it appeared that the EPAS might better be
restructured to allow CT (as well as ethics and other core competencies) to play a role within the
implicit curriculum as well. Among other things, doing so would clarify that practice wisdom, as
a source or guide for CT, would itself be deliberately informed by the student’s professional
socialization within the school of social work.
The concept of CT, in the classic sense of logic and reason, seemed to call for some
updating in light of recent learning about the apparently essential role that emotion plays within
thought. One possible approach, along these lines, would focus upon the reciprocal relationship
between emotions and cognition as guides for one another. While it seemed possible that other
forms of intelligence – notably SI – would also have some such reciprocal relationship with CT,
it did not presently seem that those relationships would serve indisipensable functions within CT.
The explorations leading to this summary yield several recommendations for the teaching
and evaluation of CT in social work:
• The discussion of iterative approaches to thinking, if developed, could have profound
implications for the teaching of social work subjects across the board, especially if such
iterations helped to generate patience and self-awareness – to generate, that is, a clearer
distinction between what one wants to say or believe and what a situation actually
supports.
• While there certainly could be a distinction between subjects of overt study (e.g., human
rights) and the way in which those subjects are studied (e.g., critically, with respect,
Critical Thinking in Social Work 17
empirically based), the existing distinction in the EPAS between explicit and implicit
criteria seems contrived and dysfunctional.
• A serious effort to inject even the classic form of CT into the social work curriculum
would likely be tumultuous. In some ways, the addition of an emotion-aware component
to that classic form would probably mitigate the tumult, at least within a profession like
social work; in other ways, doing so would probably aggravate it. Be that as it may, it
seems undeniable that any graduate education should place some priority upon
developing critical thinking in students.
It has not appeared, in this analysis, that there presently exists one, or even a
combination, of measures that will capture the salient features of CT for purposes of social work
education. Several have been identified; further inquiry could provide a tentative list of at least
one or two that probably should be put into service promptly. What ultimately emerges from this
analysis, however, is that the effort to sharpen the meaning and measurement of just one core
competency presents reasons to revisit a substantial portion of the EPAS and of their concept of
social work education. And that is interesting.
Critical Thinking in Social Work 18
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