It is widely recognised among educational theorists, educators and policy makers alike, that critical thinking should claim a superordinate place in our system of educational objectives. In the philosophical literature on this topic, critical thinking is often conceptualised as the educational cognate of rationality, which in turn is analysed as being comprised of the relevant skills and abilities to assess reasons and evidence, together with the intellectual dispositions to actively use these proficiencies in practice. The resulting picture is in many respects normative and idealised, following the style of philosophical theorising commonplace in the tradition of analytic philosophy of education. In contrast, certain recent empirical findings related to the rational performance of actual human beings seem to cast doubts on the extent to which we can expect people to fulfil these idealised normative standards of rationality. After introducing the relevant philosophical theories and psychological results, I ruminate on the implications these ideas have on our pedagogical views pertaining to critical thinking education.

在教育理论家，教育家和政策制定者中都广为接受，批判性思维应该在我们的教育目标体系中占据上风。在有关该主题的哲学文献中，批判性思维通常被概念化为理性的教育统筹，而后者又被分析为包括相关的评估理由和证据的技能和能力，以及积极运用这些能力的智力倾向。在实践中。由此产生的图景在许多方面都经过规范和理想化，遵循了教育分析哲学传统中哲学理论家常识的风格。相比之下，某些与实际人类的理性表现有关的最新经验发现似乎使人们对我们可以期望人们达到这些理想化的理性规范标准的程度产生怀疑。在介绍了相关的哲学理论和心理学结果之后，我回顾了这些思想对我们与批判性思维教育有关的教学观点的影响。