Application of Critical ThinkingTeaching higher order thinking skills is not a recent need. It is clear that students at all levels of education are falling behind in their problem-solving and thinking skills. Fragmentation of thinking skills, however, may be the result of courses and texts on critical thinking. Every course, especially in content subjects, should teach students to think logically, analyze and compare, question and evaluate. Implications for TeachingReflection must be practiced in every content area at every educational level. For the teacher, this means hard work. Teaching students to memorize facts and then evaluate them using multiple choice tests is a much easier choice to make. In a course that emphasizes thinking, objectives should include application and analysis, thinking differently, and opportunities to organize ideas and support judgments. (Carr, 1990)Critical thinking across disciplines shares common characteristics.1. Critical thinking is a skill that is learned with teachers and peers serving as resources.2. Problems, questions and issues are the source of motivation for the learner.3. Classes focus on homework rather than texts or lectures.4. Objectives, methods, and assessment emphasize the use of content rather than its mere acquisition.5. Students must formulate and justify their ideas in writing.6. Students collaborate to learn and improve their thinking. (Jones, 1996) These ideas easily apply to the online context. Teachers must refocus their thinking on individual mastery of resources. Instead, the emphasis should be on teaching the process of information discovery in the learner's own sense. A self-paced "lab" course has been developed for ... middle of paper ... science, that much is obvious. (Carr, 1990) Conclusion There is an urgent need to teach thinking skills at all levels of education. You should not rely on special courses and texts to get the job done. Rather, the teacher should create an atmosphere in which students are encouraged to read intensively, to question, to engage in conflicting thoughts, to seek interactions between ideas, and to tackle real-life problems .ReferencesCarr, K. (1990). How can we teach critical thinking? ERIC collection. Retrieved June 22, 2007 from http://www.ericdigests.org/pre-9218/critical.htmEss, C. (nd). Approaches to critical thinking. Drury University. Retrieved June 22, 2007, from http://www.drury.edu/ess/critthink.htmlJones, D. (1996). Critical thinking in an online world. Cabrillo College. Retrieved June 22, 2007 from http://www.library.ucsb.edu/untangle/jones.html