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Critical Thinking and Its Relation to Strategic Processing

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Daniel L. Dinsmore at University of North Florida
Daniel L. Dinsmore
Luke K Fryer at The University of Hong Kong
Luke K Fryer
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Critical thinking and strategic processing have become ubiquitous both in the educational research literature as well as practice. However, neither of these constructs has had commonly agreed upon definitions or common agreement on how they relate to each other. This review first lays the conceptual stage for how these constructs have been defined and possible theoretical ways in which they could relate. Following this conceptual exploration, we present a systematic review that investigates how in the contemporary literature these constructs have been operationalized in the extant research literature. The primary finding of this review is that studies that investigate strategic processing and critical thinking have relied primarily on self-report surveys, the Motivated Strategies for Learning Questionnaire in particular. Recommendations for future research include explicitly conceptualizing critical thinking and strategies, diversifying the operationalization of these two constructs, and taking more of a developmental view of the co-relation between them.
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Educational Psychology Review (2023) 35:36
Vol.:(0123456789)
https://doi.org/10.1007/s10648-023-09755-z
1 3
REVIEW ARTICLE
Critical Thinking andIts Relation toStrategic Processing
DanielL.Dinsmore1 · LukeK.Fryer2
Accepted: 23 February 2023
© The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer Science+Business Media, LLC, part of Springer Nature
2023
Abstract
Critical thinking and strategic processing have become ubiquitous both in the educa-
tional research literature as well as practice. However, neither of these constructs has
had commonly agreed upon definitions or common agreement on how they relate to
each other. This review first lays the conceptual stage for how these constructs have
been defined and possible theoretical ways in which they could relate. Following
this conceptual exploration, we present a systematic review that investigates how in
the contemporary literature these constructs have been operationalized in the extant
research literature. The primary finding of this review is that studies that investi-
gate strategic processing and critical thinking have relied primarily on self-report
surveys, the Motivated Strategies for Learning Questionnaire in particular. Recom-
mendations for future research include explicitly conceptualizing critical thinking
and strategies, diversifying the operationalization of these two constructs, and tak-
ing more of a developmental view of the co-relation between them.
Keywords Critical thinking· Strategic processing· Strategies· Prior knowledge·
Deep-level processing· Surface-level processing
The purpose of this special issue is to present a collaboration of international
scholars invested in documenting the growth and development of human think-
ing and reasoning through their different perspectives and disciplinary frame-
works. As researchers invested in understanding how strategic (i.e., cognitive
and metacognitive) processing influences learning outcomes, we set out to
examine the interface between strategies and critical thinking. We began this
examination with an awareness that this interface is apt to be varied and complex
(Alexander & Dochy, 1995; Dinsmore etal., 2008). For example, one of these
constructs can be viewed as a form of the other; that is, strategic processing
* Daniel L. Dinsmore
daniel.dinsmore@unf.edu
1 University ofNorth Florida, Bldg. 57, Suite 3600, 1 UNF Drive, Jacksonville, FL32224, USA
2 University ofHong Kong, Room CPD-1.73, Centennial Campus, PokFuLam, HongKong
Published online: 14 March 2023
/
Content courtesy of Springer Nature, terms of use apply. Rights reserved.
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