Effectiveness of approaches to stimulate critical thinking in social work curricula

ABSTRACT

The development of critical thinking is an essential aim in social work curricula, similar to all higher education programmes. Learning environments that effectively stimulate the development of critical thinking are hence of key importance. This paper starts with a small-scale review of the empirical research on learning environments in social work that aims at developing critical thinking in view of gaining insight in the effectiveness of the used approaches. The results indicate that almost all studies had learning environments combining approaches. The review also points at the limited number of empirically sound studies on critical thinking in social work curricula. Therefore, a research agenda is proposed, in order to improve the understanding of critical thinking education within social work and beyond.

KEYWORDS:

• Critical thinking
• social work
• higher education
• review

Acknowledgments

The European Commission support for the production of this publication does not constitute endorsement of the contents which reflects the views only of the authors, and the Commission cannot be held responsible for any use which may be made of the information contained therein.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the European Commission/EACEA under Grant 2016-1-PT01-KA203-022808.