ABSTRACT
While formal research has typically remained the domain of elite institutions and academics, student research represents a vital opportunity for curiosity and empowerment that can help develop ongoing public interest in social and political issues. A necessary corequisite to research, critical thinking embraces a process for inquiry and discovery that all citizens—students included—can take part in, regardless of their formal research qualifications. This essay reinforces the need to incorporate research as a necessary transformative pedagogy—both for purposes of exposure to new ideas and also as a means of investing students in a critical thinking process that transforms into their own applications of metacognition and research.
