Towards Understanding the Development of 21st Century Capabilities: A Scoping Review of Critical Thinking

Abstract

The learning and teaching of so-called general capabilities -including critical and creative thinking, problem solving, and ethical reasoning -is widely considered as problematic because of their detachment from a particular context of application. At the same time, an increasing employer demand across industries for such 21st century capabilities, specifically critical thinking, seemingly belies the lack of clarity around what is critical thinking and its relevance to a wide range of contexts, while articulating how it might develop and be assessed in distinct contexts. This begs the question: how might educators recognise, in generative ways, the learning and development of 21st century capabilities in their practice? This paper reports on a scoping review exploring the nature, application and influences of critical thinking in diverse professional and disciplinary practices. Key characteristics of critical thinking in action were distilled and are discussed here in relation to how they shape the design of resources and research probes that both support teachers and students in developing critical thinking in a range of contexts, and enable them to investigate how that development might be recognised, understood and tracked over time. Here, we explore the implications for developing critical thinking capabilities as applied in complex problem-solving situations. To do that, we contextualise our discussion within an innovative school-university research partnership designing transdisciplinary challenge projects to pilot how these 21st century capabilities can be developed and actioned for future practical contexts.