TEACHING CRITICAL THINKING THROUGH ANALOGY

Abstract

Detecting paradoxes with causal circularity can be important, both in the sense of restructuring thinking and promoting dialectical, critical, creative, or complex thinking. This study examines the role of analogy in teaching how to detect circular paradoxes. Specifically, the influence of the extrapolation of the circular structure (as opposed to the role of merely superficial or mere-appearance similarity) in detecting causal circularity is analyzed. In that sense, the results show that structural extrapolation does contribute to the detection of circularity. However, extrapolating a mere appearance similarity does not contribute to detecting circularity. It is concluded that analogy facilitates the detection of circularity shared between two domains, which points to analogy's usefulness as an instructional strategy to teach the detection of circular paradoxes and as a facilitator of critical, creative, and complex thinking (including feedback between causes and effects).