Critical Thinking and the Role of Special Librarians

The value placed on the skill of critical thinking is immeasurable. Unfortunately, it can seem elusive to teach.

As librarians, we know critical thinking is necessary to be able to use information well, but helping individuals develop that skill can sometimes feel beyond what we can offer.

In this post, I want to highlight a few things about critical thinking that I believe may change your perspective on it—and on what our role should be as librarians in fostering its growth.

The Connection between Knowledge and Critical Thinking

Daniel Willingham is a Professor of Psychology at the University of Virginia. He has influenced my thoughts on critical thinking in profound ways. When I was going through school, I always felt that critical thinking was something one could learn. And while there certainly are ways of thinking that are skill-based and can be taught, critical thinking is something that requires more than just a certain set of skills.

What do I mean by that?

To highlight Dr. Willingham’s work, he states that we can remind students to think about both sides of an argument or evaluate works in a specific way. However, the ability to transfer those skills to new areas is often a struggle. This is because the ability to think critically about something requires knowledge of the subject. In other words, an individual must have content knowledge in order to think critically about the subject.

Dr. Willingham has written in much more detail about this, and I encourage you to read the recommended articles below.

What Does this Mean for Librarians?

For librarians, I believe the importance of content knowledge for critical thinking highlights the vital need for information literacy. In today’s information age, the amount of information we are bombarded with is amazing and can often make us think we are well informed on a topic. We know just enough to form an opinion.

However, many of us need to dig deeper into the nuances and complexities of a topic to have the ability to truly think critically about it. The ability to dig deeper into the nuances and complexities of a topic is much more than the ability to conduct a quick Google search. Instead, it means knowing how to follow an argument over time in different sources. It means knowing how to locate primary sources on a specific topic (and this varies greatly by field), it means knowing how to evaluate the authority of the author (this also varies by field), and means knowing how to identify when you have actually uncovered the different facets of a topic.

None of these skills is easy and they all take time to learn. This is where subject specific librarians are of such value. Special librarians are expert in the information landscapes of the sectors in which they work. Immersion in discipline-specific information landscapes can lead to critical thinking.

Recommended Reading:

• How to Teach Critical Thinking by Daniel T. Willingham
• Critical Thinking: Why Is it So Hard to Teach by Daniel T. Willingham