A Review of Critical Thinking Training in Librarianship, Knowledge, and Information Science

Critical thinking, an important construct in the educational dimension, is an active process which uses a specific set of skills and enables one to make appropriate decisions and discriminate between information received. Therefore, critical thinking is considered as an important aspect of information performance in library education. In the field of library and information science, so far, no coherent study has investigated the possible aspects of teaching critical thinking. Hence, this narrative study aimed to review the available literature to determine if critical thinking is considered in the librarianship education and research. To this end, four electronic databases, including Medline (PubMed), ERIC, ProQuest, and Scopus were searched using the following keywords: Critical Thinking; Thinking; Education; Curriculum, Teaching; Librarianship; Library and Information Science; Medical Library and Information Science; and Knowledge and Information Science. A total of 439 articles were identified. After the initial review of the titles and abstracts and the removal of irrelevant and repetitive articles, 67 articles entered the evaluation stage. After reviewing the full text of the remaining articles, 32 articles were eligible to enter the study. Based on our review, the literature on the critical thinking in library science could be categorized into four classes. Moreover, critical thinking should be improved through using different educational strategies and be integrated into education curricula.