CRITICALITY

Critical thinking is a set of skills applied to specific situations or material. Criticality is broader.

Criticality begins in a sensitivity to something not feeling quite right. It means standing on the edge of one's own thinking, ready to rearrange it.

A system can determine which question appears to need asking. Two examples:

What correct answer does the teacher want?
What do I notice, think, or choose?

In language teaching:

What level is this material?
What does this make possible for the learner?

In each pair, the first question is not a mistake. Inside the frame, it is an obvious question to ask.

Critical thinking can be applied to the questions a system readily asks, and answered in the system's own terms. A system can go on getting better at answering its own questions in this way. Criticality takes the question outside those terms.

No system can keep criticality contained, and its presence keeps a system alive and human. At the level of a whole system, developing criticality is the core strategy for strengthening individuals, and the ability to think critically is one of the strengths it supports.