Social Work Commons^™

Barriers To Critical Thinking Across Domains, Reed Geertsen

Sociology, Social Work and Anthropology Faculty Publications

The transfer of critical thinking across domains presents both a significant

challenge and meaningful opportunity for college education as well as

programs of continuing education and · efforts to encourage lifelong learning.

After examining different approaches to teaching critical thinking, this paper examines some of

the barriers to transfer across domains using an interactionist perspective. This perspective

underscores the fact that developing and using critical thinking is a lifelong endeavor due to the

tunnel-vision tendencies that naturally follow from situated learning in a particular domain. Two

case studies are presented to illustrate the potential blinding effects of situated learning

resulting …