UIII Examine the Role of Critical Thinking Elder and Paul (2011) postulate, “There are predictable stages through which every person develops as a critical thinker” (p. 1). I agree with this statement. If we assume that the premise that learning is a process is true, then that process offers great insights into Elder and Paul's argument. The next premise for learning as a process shows that a thinker must move from familiar to unfamiliar regions. Critical thinking requires that the person understand the basic concept of a theory if they want to think critically about that theory. The opposite idea, that critical thinking precedes basic understanding, is fallacious. This makes the critical thinking process predictable. Paul and Elder (2002) highlight the next stage of critical thinking as the need to expand basic understanding. This can be acquired through a domain of knowledge that is “explained, illustrated, analyzed, applied, evaluated, organized, learned, or transformed” (Paul & Elder, 2002, p. 160). The thinker then summarizes these simplistic applications in acq...