Developing Student Critical Thinking Skills through Teaching Psychology: An Interview with Claudio S. Hutz

Sherri McCarthy-Tucker is an associate professor of Educational Psychology, Counseling, and Human Relations at Northern Arizona University. Her published research includes studies of critical thinking, adolescent development, and effective teaching strategies for psychology courses. She has also written two books: Coping With Special Needs Classmates addresses special education strategies and A Death in the Family summarizes techniques of grief and bereavement counseling. Her teaching interests are in general psychology, educational psychology, and adolescent development. McCarthy-Tucker's dissertation work in logical processes of adolescents allowed her to collaborate with Hutz.

Claudio S. Hutz is dean of Instituto de Psicologia at Universidade Federal do Rio Grande do Sul in Porto Alegre, Brazil, where he has been teaching psychology courses since 1977. A scholar in critical thinking, he has collaborated with American scholars, including Robert Grinder, on this topic. His research has been published internationally. Currently, he is working on a long-term, government-funded project to identify and understand processes that reduce vulnerability and increase resilience in Brazilian slum communities. He is also involved in research to develop similar projects in China, India, Nepal, Thailand, and elsewhere. Hutz is a graduate of the University of Iowa, an international affiliate of the American Psychological Association, a member of the Interamerican Society of Psychology, International Society for the Scientific Study of Behavior (ISSBD), and president of the Brazilian National Association of Research and Post-Graduate Studies in Psychology. His teaching interests include research methods, personality, and psychological assessment.