Introduction
Perhaps thinking skills are the most important skills in today's information age that educated persons' need to cope with a rapidly changing world.  Many educators believe that what is important to future workers and citizens is the ability to learn and make sense of new information.
                                                                                    Deborah Gough, 1991
The importance of this learning is underscored by another well-known statement by Allan Griffin, quoted by Beyer "It makes a difference in the development of human intelligence whether children learn to say that something is true or whether they learn that something is true."  These two quotes mentioned above indicate the current direction in education about the importance of teaching today's students to think critically and creatively.  Many writers on this subject discuss thinking skills in connection with modern information technology age and fast-developing change.  As a result of this important fact, I decided to write this paper to provide teachers and students especially at the university level with a clear understanding of critical thinking skills and their importance for our students and teachers and the techniques or strategies that can be used to achieve this purpose.
The paper is divided into the following sections:
1.  Reasons for teaching critical thinking skills.
2.  What skills to teach (thinking skills, critical thinking, etc.)
3.  How to teach these skills (strategies)
4.  The role of teachers.
5.  The role of students.
6.  Summary

Let me begin by talking about the reasons why Teaching Thinking Skills has become an immediate goal of education in the world of Information Technology.  Kathleen Cotton (1991) gives a long list of reasons why we should provide our students instruction in thinking skills.  I will concentrate on the most important reasons that are related to an appropriate teaching plan.
1.  Students, in general, don't have well-developed critical and creative thinking skills.
The following observations help to explain that:
Norris (1985) says that "critical thinking ability is not common.  Most students do not do well on tests that measure ability to recognize assumptions, evaluate arguments, and appraise inferences."
Robinson also notes that students' performance on measures of higher-order thinking ability shows a critical need for students to develop these skills. 
Moreover, as Nickerson, R.S. says: "there is little evidence that students acquire good thinking skills simply as a consequence of studying conventional course materials.  Although domain-specific knowledge is essential to good thinking within a domain, there is little evidence that students acquire skill in critical thinking as a by-product of the study of any given subject."
This means that if students are to acquire thinking skills in the classroom, they need clear instruction in these skills because they are not likely to learn them simply as a result of having studied this subject or that.

2. The second reason is that if students are to work successfully in a highly technical environment, they must possess a life long learning and thinking skills necessary to get and deal with information in an ever-changing world.  Students need these skills to compete effectively for educational opportunities, jobs, recognition, and rewards in today's world.

3. The third reason is that instruction in thinking skills promotes intellectual growth and improves academic achievement.  Cotton notes "that nearly all of the thinking skills programs and practices investigated were found to make a positive difference in the achievement levels of participating students.  What we need to teach, and to learn, is not how to think in general, absolute sense, but how to think more critically, more creatively, more deeply than we often do.

4.  The fourth reason is that many people once believed that we are born either with or without creative and critical thinking abilities.  However, educators now believe that it is in fact possible to increase students' creative and critical thinking capacities through instruction and practice.

Another assertion of this point that the direct teaching of creative skills can produce better, more creative thinkers is made by Presseisen who asserts that "students CAN learn to think better if schools concentrate on teaching them HOW to do so."
These are the most important reasons which should encourage teachers to teach their students critical thinking skills and motivate students to learn them. 

Now I want to talk briefly about the current situation at our schools and universities.

One of the problems of the current system of education is that it focuses only on one form of intelligence demonstrated by test-smart students.  The main lesson that these students learn is that it is very useful to get good marks in tests because that will lead to impressive college admissions, different awards and later, impressive jobs.

One could say that most students will not become scientists in the future and they do not need so much intelligence, but that is not true even in a very pragmatic situation.

In schools, as well as in life, one needs a certain amount of practical smartness in order to cope with the environment.  The reason is that different situations call for different kinds of intelligence. We need to know the multiple styles of intelligence.  To be intelligent is to think well in one or more of three different ways: analytical, creative, and practical (Stenberg, 1985a).

This three-part theory of thinking developed by Sternberg, according to which thinking has three basic kinds: analytical, creative, and practical.  Analytical thinking involves analyzing, comparing and contrasting and examining.  Creative thinking involves creating, discovering, imagining, and supposing.  Practical thinking involves using practicing and applying.  Together, these types of thinking are powerful tools for students, both inside and outside the classroom.

"Of course, although people usually have a preferred style of intelligence, they do not use only one style exclusively."  In everyone, there is some combination of analytic, creative, and practical intelligence.  We need to foster all these aspects, not to favor just one.

Although intelligence is a much more complicated human quality than most people think, it can be defined as whatever makes people more effective thinkers. This thinking includes several areas such as: academic skills, good practical everyday problem solving and good judgment in dealing with a person's own affairs, and so on.

In recent years, the teaching of thinking skills has become a major area of interest for educators.  An important element in teaching thinking is a teaching strategy.  One reason teaching strategy is important is that, by choosing a certain strategy, the teacher models a certain role for students.

Spear and Sternberg (1987) developed three alternative teaching strategies.  Each of these strategies can be used in classroom interactions, as well as in making questions, projects, etc.
1.  The first strategy is lecture-based or didactic.
       In this strategy, the teacher simply presents the material to the students; there is little teacher-student interaction.  There is also little or no interaction among students.  This strategy suits critical-analytical thinkers.

2.  The second strategy is a fact-based questioning approach.
       Here, the teacher asks students many questions, which are designed mainly to obtain facts from students. The feedback from the teacher is in the form of "right", or "yes" and "no".  Here, there is more teacher-student interaction.

3. The third strategy is the one that they argue is usually considered the most suitable for the teaching of thinking skills. This strategy can be described as a thinking-based questioning approach or as a dialogical approach because it supports dialogue between teacher and student and between students themselves.  In this strategy, the teacher asks questions to stimulate thinking and discussion.  Besides, there is no right answer to these questions.  Instead, the teacher tends to comment on or add to what students have said.  As a result, the teacher's role in this strategy becomes more of a guide or a facilitator, rather than a teacher in the traditional sense.
There is also much more interaction among students with dialogical strategy than with the other teaching strategies.  Spear and Sternberg argue that the dialogical strategy is generally more suitable to the teaching of higher order thinking skills for two reasons.

1. It is the only strategy that demands real thought from students rather than simply repeating memorized answers from a book or a lecture.

2.  The teacher is serving as the best role model of what it is; that he or she wants the students to do – that is, to think critically.
One of the best ways to teach in a dialogical way is to encourage students to ask questions.  The ability to ask good questions and to know how to answer them is an essential part of intelligence.
Reuben Feuerstein (1980) talked about a mediated learning experience.  In this experience, the parent as a teacher helps the child to understand the environment by providing guidance to him. When children seek mediation to make sense of the environment by asking questions, parents and teachers usually have characteristic ways of responding. These ways can be divided into seven levels with the higher levels representing superior mediation and therefore better chances for the child to develop his or her higher order thinking skills.

1.  Level 1: Rejection of questions.
       When mediators respond by negative or inappropriate response such as "shut up".  Children learn not to ask questions again.

2.  Level 2: Restatement of questions as responses.
       Mediators answer by repeating the original question.

3. Level 3: Admission of ignorance or presentation of information.
       This consists of either saying that one doesn't know or giving a direct answer on the basis of what one does know.  Sometimes, the mediator precedes the response with a reinforcing statement such as "That's a good question "or" "I'm glad that you asked that."  Such a response rewards question asking and is likely to increase its frequency.

4.  Level 4: Encouragement to seek response through authority.
       Responses at this level depend on whether the mediator takes responsibility for consulting an authority on the subject or offers that opportunity to the learner.

5.  Level 5: Consideration of alternative explanations.
       The mediator shows his uncertainty of the response, but suggests other alternatives and asks the child/learner to consider which might be correct.

6. Level 6: Consideration of explanations plus means of evaluating them.
       At this level, students are encouraged not only to generate alternatives, but to reflect on methods for comparing these alternatives.

7. Level 7: Consideration of explanations plus means of evaluating and follow-through on evaluations.
       The child learns not only how to think, but how to act upon his or her thoughts.
       The levels go from rejecting children's questions to encouraging hypothesis formation at the other.
       By questioning at level 7, one promotes the development of critical-analytical thinkers, creative-synthetic thinkers, and practical-contextual thinkers.

To learn how to think critically is to learn how to ask and answer questions of analysis, synthesis, and evaluation.  The Bloomfield's taxonomy of analysis, synthesis, and evaluation and the ability to generate a full variety of question types are important qualities that an intelligent teacher really needs to teach critical thinking skills.

A well-planned curriculum to foster critical thinking skills, abilities can not succeed without the development of critical thinking skills on the part of the teacher.  Thus, teachers should use specific cognitive terminology and show students how to perform particular skills to demonstrate their abilities.  For example, instead of saying:
"Let us look at these pictures", he should say:"
"Let us compare these pictures" send then demonstrate how to find similarities and differences between them
As students hear these words daily and develop the cognitive processes that these words signify to them, they will store the words internally and use them as part of their own vocabularies.

Probing for specificity
To encourage careful thinking, teachers should get their students to define the terms they use, be specific about actions they do, make precise comparisons, and use accurate description.  They have to support their assumptions with valid data to prove their assumptions and avoid using generalizations.

Analyzing the logic of language
Effective thinking can be fostered by having students analyze the logic implied by linguistic expression.  Certain words indicate logical relationships between ideas. By examining these linguistic connectors (and, but, so, because), students can learn to recognize related ideas in a sentence such as addition or comparison.
By asking questions, selecting specific terms, withholding judgment until evidence is presented; teachers can stimulate and enhance the thinking of their students.

Discussion Group Format
One of the best documented empirical generalizations in classroom research is that teachers dominate classroom interactions (Flanders, 1965).  He observed that teachers talk about two thirds of the time in the classroom.  Teachers also tend to direct and control the goals of instruction and the instruments for achieving them (Anderson and Bewer, 1946).

Teachers teach their students by what they do as well as by what they say.  This saying takes the form of discussion in the classroom.  It is often used as a tool in classrooms by teachers to encourage students to express their ideas and answer questions. When designed and implemented carefully, discussion tasks can be an effective learning tool that promote creativity, as well as generate meaningful interaction and understanding for the learner.
Teachers use discussion tasks to achieve different goals: critical inquiry, debate and reflection.

Guided Discussion Tasks
The goal of guided or directed discussion tasks is to give learners a chance to develop critical thinking, clear oral expression as well as experience in asking and responding to questions.

There are three stages involved in developing guided discussion tasks.
Stage 1: The teacher introduces a discussion question to the whole class. The teacher gives guidelines on discussion procedure and criteria for evaluation of answers.  Each student contributes an original answer in response to the discussion question.

Stage 2: Students offer further responses or question to each other's contributions as a way of expanding the discussion's scope. This technique will allow students to practice their critical thinking ability by judging and evaluating their own responses and improve their oral expression abilities by providing answers and comments.

Stage 3: Students present their own views or the views of their groups, either orally or sometimes in writing at the end of the guided discussion task (Ngeow, Karen-Kong, Yoon-San, 2003)

Critical Inquiry
One of the discussion tasks goals is to teach students critical inquiry. Teachers, especially in the US, have a variety of teaching strategies to help students think and learn how to think.  These different strategies have a common process called inquiry.

Inquiry teaching helps develop three types of skills: thinking skills, study skills and interpersonal skills.  Those that involve the mental manipulation of information are called the category of thinking skills. Such skills include comprehension, application, analysis, synthesis, and evaluation as outlined by Benjamin Bloom. (Barry K. Beyer, p. 79)

Teaching Critical Thinking Skills
Most educators now agree that the teaching of thinking skills should be integrated into the regular curriculum rather than as a separate subject.  This approach makes sense for two reasons:
First: It permits thinking to be incorporated into instruction without adding another course.
Second: It shows teachers and students that critical thinking is present in everything we do, not just in specific classes designed for thinking.

There are certain strategies that guide learners in accomplishing basic thinking goals such as decision making, problem solving.  Students work mostly in small groups of two to four to apply the strategy to what they are studying.  This gives them the chance to express their ideas and discuss issues with peers.  In addition, decision making processes could also be used to infuse the elements of creative and critical thinking into language learners.  The teacher needs to identify real situations or problems to be discussed by the students.  Then, the students will use the following three steps of decision-making strategies developed by (Mirman and Tishman, 1988):

1.  Find creative options to the situations or problems.
2.  List reasons for and against the most promising options.
3.  Make a careful choice out of a list of reasons.

When they complete their list of pros and cons, students weigh both arguments for and against the most acceptable option and make the best choice.
In thinking critically, we have to be prepared to think about points of view which are different from our own and give them appropriate evaluation in any critical inquiry.

Teachers can provide specific instruction in cognitive processes so that students will attach precise, shared meaning to the language terms they use.  Green and Smith (1982) conclude from their review of studies of linguistic interactions in classrooms that: “Language is used by teachers to shape the presentation of content, the tasks students have to perform and the ways of acceptable and unacceptable conduct.”

The Role of Teachers
How to achieve this goal?

Teachers and instructors have a major role in this great activity.  They decide the activities and processes of teaching and learning that they want their students to learn.  If teachers believe they only provide answers and information to students to memorize, that is "spoon-feeding," then learners won't be able to look for answers and solutions outside what their teachers taught them.  However, if they believe that their job is to think, guide, initiate and lead the discussion, this means a change in their attitude towards their job.  Instead of providing so much information to the students, teachers can ask questions that require students to analyze a task, identify what is needed to complete the task, and then perform the task.

The ultimate purpose of teaching is to bring about learning- to stimulate it, guide it, and make it easier. How we teach reflects and shapes the kind of learning we want students to employ.  We use many teaching techniques to facilitate learning, such as asking questions, conducting class discussions, lecturing, etc.  This is a long list.  Each teaching technique has its own positive and negative aspects.  Some techniques seem better suited than others for facilitating different types of learning (Beyer, Barry K, p. 71-72).
The current situation is that teachers widely practice the pedagogy of answers, whereby teachers provide the answers and solutions to learners.  By giving answers, teachers deny the learners the opportunities and the right to question, to doubt and to reject.

Teachers' beliefs and attitudes about themselves, and their functions in language classrooms have important implications for learners' ability to think creatively and critically. If the teachers think that their primary roles are to teach and provide answers and information, the learners' ability to look for answers and solutions and to inquire, to question and to accept ideas will greatly diminish.

Teachers need to believe that their major roles are to think, guide, initiate and encourage the learners. (Kabilan 2006). It is important to realize that teachers can't continue the same pedagogy of teaching especially when they have large number of students such as the situation at the Yarmouk University.

The Role of Students
Having talked in detail about the teachers' roles, now I will talk briefly about the role of students in this process.

There are teachers who look at learners as empty vessels, which need to be filled with knowledge and experiences. Some teachers tend to believe that the learners do not have any or little previous knowledge and experiences regarding the subject matter that is going to be taught in classrooms.  Teachers who do not recognize each learner's individuality will often lead a boring and unimaginative language classroom because of the little participation and involvement of learners in the learning process.  The learners will feel left out and think that their opinions and beliefs are not important enough to be heard in the classroom.  Eventually, this will produce passive language learners, and will be a cause to the obstacle of having creative and critical thinking.  Therefore, teachers could gain much by listening to the learners' opinions and beliefs. For this to happen easily, teachers should develop a mutual relationship with their learners.  This means that teachers need to think of learners as individuals who are equals to them in a situation of real two-way communication. Above all, the learners learn from the teacher, and the teacher learns from the learners (Kabilan 2006).

Producing critical and creative language learners is by no means an easy task, but it can be achieved by the strategy of asking questions.  The basic issue, which most teachers usually ignore, is the capabilities of their students.  If teachers continue to disregard students' views and opinions and don't give them enough attention, then the students would not be able to practice and use their thinking skills. Teachers should encourage creative and critical thinking skills by looking at their students in a different way from what they are used to. They also need to adopt a more flexible attitude towards their teaching and not be too dependent on textbooks and institutions aspirations, which are usually exam-oriented. What is even more important is the aspirations of the students and how teachers could use the potentials of their students (Kabilan 2006).
Students need more than the ability to be better observers; they must know how to apply everything they already know and feel, to evaluate their own thinking; and, especially, to change their behavior as a result of thinking critically.  To think critically, one must have knowledge.  This means that critical thinking cannot occur in a vacuum; it requires individuals to apply what they know about the subject matter as well as their common sense and experience.                              (Norris, p. 40)
So, students have a fundamental role in the teaching of critical and creative thinking process.

In addition to program content, classroom activities and practices, and teacher training, the success of thinking skills instruction is also dependent upon other factors, such as administrative support and appropriate match between the students and the instructional approach selected by the teachers.(Cotton, 1991).

S u m m a r y

In this papers, I have tried to explain how the teaching of critical and creative thinking skills is an important element in the instruction at higher education institutions in Jordan.  It is a necessary step to develop the quality of teaching that we offer at these institutions.

We want young people to think about goals, to ask questions, to form their own opinions, and to arrive at their own values.  We want them think critically and creatively, to look for evidence of the truth, to judge arguments on their own values and not on the basis of who has said them.

We need our students to make use of other new means of education such as the Internet to help them learn on their own.  We don't want to keep using the “spoon-feeding” of students especially in light of the increasing number of students at higher education institutions.

References

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