Can critical thinking be taught? Critical thinking is central to the scientific method and believed to be essential to a successful democracy. Recently, the 2012 Texas Republican platform voiced the party's opposition to the teaching of critical thinking skills in public schools. This stance raises many controversial questions on the GOPs motivation, but also a fundamental question: are public schools in the US successfully teaching critical thinking?

In the West, critical thinking descends from the Socratic method and is a central tenant of the tutor system at the earliest institutions of higher learning (Oxford and Cambridge, for example). This historic dedication of the top institutions to teaching critical thinking suggests that the method is effective. On the other hand, contemporary psychologists of education are suggesting that critical thinking cannot be effectively taught (Willingham, 2008).

Can critical thinking be taught? Are there studies (with proper controls) that show that a course on critical thinking teaching the skill beyond standard domain specific problem-solving/fact-knowing courses?
It seems like somebody's done a lot of literature pooling already:

Is Rationality Teachable?

Among influences mentioned are statistics, logic training, and debiasing.

There's also a book that summarized findings:

Teaching Critical Thinking: Some Lessons From Cognitive Science
Tim van Gelder 
College Teaching 
Vol. 53, Iss. 1, 2005


  ABSTRACT: This article draws six key lessons from cognitive science
  for teachers of critical thinking. The lessons are: acquiring
  expertise in critical thinking is hard; practice in critical-thinking
  skills themselves enhances skills; the transfer of skills must be
  practiced; some theoretical knowledge is required; diagramming
  arguments (“argument mapping”) promotes skill; and students are prone
  to belief preservation. The article provides some guidelines for
  teaching practice in light of these lessons.


Anecdotally, I recognize a tendency for science professors to let students use their intuition at first and then crush it in an attempt to make debiasing habitual.