ABSTRACT
This chapter reviews a range of ideas about critical thinking, enquiry and dialogue in knowledge creation, tracing their origins in Ancient Greek philosophy and examining in which they have found their way into contemporary pedagogy. The author of Critical Thinking in Young Minds Victor Quinn caused controversy among fellow educators with a teaching approach called 'provocation-in-role', developed to enable children to become confident in raising critical questions, even in the face of knowledge presented with great authority. As one of the best-known advocates of teaching thinking in schools, and the founder of the philosophy for children programme, Matthew Lipman proposes that critical thinking and creative thinking are interdependent, occupied with the twin concerns of truth and meaning, and most likely to flourish through dialogue in communities of enquiry. Bailin and Siegel argue that critical thinking, which they equate with rationality, is an overriding ideal of education and paramount throughout the whole curriculum.
