The nature and role of critical thinking in academic writing from a social-cognitive perspective

Abstract

This thesis examines the nature and role of critical thinking (CT) in academic writing. It responds to calls in the literature to make explicit this problematic notion described as a “conceptual swamp” by CT scholars and referred to via various terms and assigned meanings. To address the problem, a theoretical construct for CT in academic writing was developed by first identifying its core components using CT literature and then fleshing the components out using social and cognitive theories of writing. The construct was then applied to a small sample of authentic texts, the introduction sub-genre of theses (nominated exemplary (EX) and nonexemplary (NE) in their display of CT) to examine its nature in written texts and the role it plays in differentiating the rhetorical quality of successful from less successful texts. The findings suggest that CT comprises at least three interrelated facets of problem solving, knowledge transformation and normative evaluation and a different set of thinking processes for the operation of each. The findings also suggest that the knowledge required for the operation of CT is tacit and embedded in the disciplinary context and the facets can be instantiated explicitly or inexplicitly. It was found that the role of CT in academic writing was to guide problem solving and normative evaluation so that social-culturally appropriate and rhetorically effective genre outcomes (choices) are produced in text construction. The study contributes a theoretical framework for use with genre analysis to infer CT in academic writing. It also contributes a holistic conceptualisation of CT that provides a framework to reinterpret existing interpretations of CT more explicitly and a model for writing professionals and supervisors to help students fulfil the CT requirement for successful academic writing. The pedagogical implications suggested by the findings include the need to create learning environments where the acquisition of CT is embedded in a disciplinary context, the need to make thinking visible, the need to provide constructive guidance through feedback (Bailin, Case, Coombs, & Daniels, 1999a; Hyland 2004b, Kurfiss,1988). Though this study of CT rests on the analysis of a small sample of high-stakes research writing texts, the model developed can be adapted for apprenticing novice writers into the CT knowledge and thinking required for constructing all genres of academic writing.