Causation, Counterfactuals, and Critical Reading in the Active Classroom

Identifying causal claims may be second nature to a seasoned scholar, but the logic of causality is not always so obvious to the undergraduates in our classrooms. In this article I describe the essential features of a reading assignment designed to hone critical thinking skills, especially as they pertain to cause and effect and the associated logic of counterfactual reasoning. The ‘‘Critical Reading Exercise’’ (or CRE) is a brief, highly structured assignment that calls upon the student to read a scholarly article or book chapter and identify the major thesis and key causal relationships presented by the author as well as develop a plausible counterfactual implied by the argument. Among the advantages of the CRE are the incentive it provides to do careful, critical reading of genuine scholarly work and lay the foundation for fruitful discussion in an active learning classroom. Common pitfalls associated with this assignment are also identified. Ultimately the assignment reflects an appropriate way to engage students with both the substance and the methodological foundation of our discipline.