Henri Pettersson

Biography

My research focuses on the various aspects of critical thinking as an educational ideal. Critical thinking is widely mentioned as an important educational goal for our times in both national and international sources, but the theoretical accounts of critical thinking contain various unclear elements: 1) Teaching critical thinking is taken to support the skills needed in democratic citizenship, but what is the precise relationship between critical thinking and democracy, human rights and tolerance - can we in the name of promoting critical thinking come to question or criticize these foundational values? 2) What is the relationship between the idealized models of critical thinking formulated within the philosophy of education to the empirical findings and theories in certain neighbouring fields (social psychology, neuroscience etc.), which tell us about the ways how human beings actually reason and process information?