Student resistance to critical thinking emblematic of a liberal arts curriculum is often painfully obvious in freshman writing classes that impose a process-based approach to writing and thinking. Criminal justice students, like their peers in other majors with strong vocational orientations, often resist taking any more than the required liberal…

Using the Decoding the Disciplines model, faculty who are deeply ingrained in their disciplinary research answer a series of questions to understand how students think and learn in their field. The cross-disciplinary nature of the process clarifies the thinking for each discipline. (Contains 1 figure.)

There are now established methods and models to assess critical thinking in any discipline. The approach selected will depend on how critical thinking is defined, whether national norms are needed, and how the results will be used. (Author)

Knowing how students reason and how to foster discipline-specific skills in critical thinking helps chairpersons respond positively to faculty concerns about students' reasoning deficiencies. The challenge of teaching thinking, critical-thinking abilities, beliefs about knowledge, overcoming students' limitations, and developing faculty interest…

Inquiry education cuts across conventional distinctions between liberal arts and professional programs and is supported by specially designed curricula and pedagogies. The establishment of Hampshire College is described. The idea that undergraduate education should promote students' intellectual independence was a strong thread through the…