Abstract

The authors suggest that “critical thinking” is a term that is much used, extravagantly praised, and little understood. Worse, they contend that teaching critical thinking in a business curriculum is made immeasurably more difficult by the fact that, contrary to all evidence, students believe they already understand critical thinking, and thus have no need to learn more. This article contains some remedies for this dilemma. Using Brookfield’s model of critical thinking in the context of business education, the authors offer a case study, “Ultratec,” with teaching notes, which they have found useful in overcoming obstacles to teaching critical thinking. They close by explaining how they have been able to use the Ultratec case to address what they see as the central challenge to teaching critical thinking: It’s difficult to teach anything to people who think they already know it all.