From Critical Thinking to Criticality

A Higher Education for a Troubled World
1. Auflage 2026
ISBN: 978-1-041-04700-1
Verlag: Taylor & Francis Ltd

Buch, Englisch, 302 Seiten, Format (B × H): 156 mm x 234 mm

Reihe: World Issues in the Philosophy and Theory of Higher Education

From Critical Thinking to Criticality sets out a bold case for renewing critical thinking across the university. It inquires into the need for critical thinking; and it expounds new theories and arguments that are applicable not only across study programmes but also across the university in its wider societal and worldly roles. The book argues that promoting critical thinking means first understanding what it means to be a critical being and that calls for a recognition of the potential of the university’s full critical powers.

Against the horizon of the contemporary world, this book notes how critical thinking is in jeopardy partly due to the enormous powers in society that have little interest in critical thinking and are actually thwarting it. It picks up and radically develops the idea of critical thinking into a new idea of criticality in a troubled world. There is not just one criticality that student can acquire but a myriad of modes of criticality, with each student becoming their own critical person.

Situated in the contexts of ecological crises, the rise of artificial intelligence, the tense relationship of states and their universities, political populism, the emergence of a post-truth age, and the diminution of reasoned debate in society, this book urges that criticality be re-instated anew as a central feature of the university’s mission. Universities have tremendous, but unrealised, potential in being a critical conscience of society and so nothing less than the fate of society and the world are at stake.

Zielgruppe

Academic, Postgraduate, and Professional Reference

Autoren/Hrsg.

Barnett, Ronald

Davies, Martin

Fachgebiete

• Sozialwissenschaften Pädagogik Schulen, Schulleitung Universitäten, Hochschulen
• Interdisziplinäres Wissenschaften Wissenschaften: Allgemeines Enzyklopädien, Nachschlagewerke, Wörterbücher
• Sozialwissenschaften Pädagogik Pädagogik Philosophie der Erziehung, Bildungstheorie

Inhaltsverzeichnis

1 Introduction: A troubling setting

Part one: The evaporation of critical thought

2 Heresies of critical thought

3 An algorithmic world

4 Myths of the framework

5 A critical dialectic

6 Thinking critically about critical thinking

7 Recapitulation and development: The myopia of ‘critical thinking’

Part two: Criticality and its modes

8 The standard view of critical thinking

9 A model of criticality

10 Seven modes of criticality

Part three: Advancing criticality

11 Curriculum matters: For a critical experientiality

12 Pedagogical matters: Emergent learning and two forms of criticality

Part four: The university—for a culture of criticality

13 Disagreeing well: the university as space of criticality

14 The university: the world’s critical conscience  Endnote: Pessimists and Optimists Unite! (At least in some ways)

References

Endorsements

Index

Über Autor(innen)

Ronald Barnett is Emeritus Professor of Higher Education, University College London, UK and Emeritus President of the Philosophy and Theory of Higher Education Society.

Martin Davies is an associate professor in the Faculty of Education at the University of Melbourne, Australia.