Critical thinking has become an AI-era buzzword. But what does it actually mean, and how do we teach it?
Publish Date: 2026-07-17 07:13:00
Source Domain: theconversation.com
Spend enough time in discussions about education and artificial intelligence (AI), and critical thinking will inevitably pop up sooner rather than later. AI is changing how students learn and how educators assess learning, and in the face of this shift, critical thinking is often presented as the right pedagogical response.
But as technology reshapes the way we learn and teach, it’s easy to overlook one crucial question: what does critical thinking actually mean in today’s world?
There is a real danger of it becoming a hollow buzzword, an oversimplified, supposedly universal antidote to this new reality in which information, explanations, and increasingly sophisticated outputs are just a click away.
Expanding definitions
Critical thinking is broadly understood as a complex and valuable set of skills and habits. It includes the ability to evaluate evidence, assess arguments, identify assumptions, distinguish stronger claims from weaker ones, and draw reasoned conclusions.
These skills are still vital, but they do not fully capture what students need to confront the cognitive challenges of an AI-powered world.
Recent research has begun exploring this distinction through concepts such as digital critical thinking, which incorporates the idea that online environments, shaped by opaque algorithms, personalisation and platformed information, require people to interpret not only the content they encounter, but also how they ended up seeing it in the first place.
As the environments in which we learn and live evolve, so too should our understanding of critical thinking. As a researcher of civics education, I believe the answers lie not in abandoning traditional definitions of critical thinking, but in expanding them.
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