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Critical Thinking Continued...

Critical thinking involves more than the mere possession of related knowledge and skills. It requires using them in everyday situations and acting on the results of thinking carefully. It involves accurately presenting alternative perspectives and paying attention to the process of reasoning, not just the product. Strong-sense critical thinking involves a genuine fair-mindedness in which opposing views are accurately presented and there is a genuine effort to fairly critique both preferred and unpreferred views. Critical thinking involves questioning what others take for granted, asking "What's the evidence for this?" even when professors, supervisors, or administrators would rather not consider such questions. It requires paying attention to gaps between our background knowledge (current beliefs and related evidence) and related research findings. Critical thinking and scientific reasoning are closely related. Clarity and the critical appraisal of claims is important in both. Both share a commitment to fair mindedness and reliance on standards that are more likely than others to yield accurate answers to certain kinds of questions.

Critical thinking can help social workers to be evidence-based and so honor their ethical obligations to clients (e.g., to draw on policy and practice related research findings, to inform clients, and to offer competent services). Evidence-based practice involves the conscientious, explicit, and judicious use of current best evidence in making decisions about the care of clients. It calls on professionals to consider practice related research findings when making important decisions about what services to use, what levels to offer (e.g., 5 or 10 parent training sessions), who will provide service, how progress will be tracked to see if hoped-for outcomes are attained and to what degree, and to involve clients as informed participants. Key answerable questions include: Is there any evidence that this service method will be effective in achieving hoped-for outcomes with this client with a minimum of harm? Have other methods been found to be more effective? What do results of systematic reviews reveal? Inflated claims about what works are the norm rather than the exception in the helping professions. This means that social workers, like master detectives, must sort the wheat (service methods that have been found to be effective in rigorous tests and are acceptable to clients) from the chaff (recommendations based on authority or consensus, that have not been critically tested). Administrators have a responsibility to cultivate a culture of thoughtfulness that encourages critical appraisal of services used. Knowledge can grow only in an open environment in which staff are free to raise questions and express criticism about current practices and policies and their outcomes.

The costs of critical thinking include forgoing the comfortable feeling of certainty. It requires time and effort to critically appraise popular ideas such as current representations of problems-in-living as mental illnesses and to locate and critically review research related to practices and policies. To those who uncritically embrace a "doing good ideology," asking that compassion and caring be accompanied by evidence of helping may seem disloyal or absurd. To the autocratic and powerful, raising questions threatens their power to simply "pronounce" what is and what is not, without taking responsibility for presenting well-reasoned arguments and related research findings and involving others in decisions. A focus on helping clients will provide the courage and rationale to question assumptions. We owe it to our clients not to depend on authority as the criterion on which to judge the accuracy of claims. We owe it to our clients to go beyond who says so, or how many say so, to critically review the evidentiary base of claims and share what is found with clients. In this way, we honor our obligations to inform clients and provide competent services.

Based on Eileen Gambrill (2000), "The Role of Critical Thinking in Evidence-Based Social Work" in Paula Allen-Meares and Charles Garvin (eds.), The Handbook of Social Work Direct Practice, Sage Publications. Eileen Gambrill on Critical Thinking, "Critical thinking involves questioning what others take for granted, asking ''What's the evidence for this?' even when professors, supervisors, or administrators would rather not consider such questions. It requires paying attention to gaps between our background knowledge (current beliefs and related evidence) and related research findings." Professor Gambrill teaches research and direct practice in the School of Social Welfare.