Jessica Mattson said she hears a lot about “critical thinking” from her English teachers at Walter Johnson High School in Bethesda. To the 18-year-old senior, the term refers to the skill of “reading deeper into what is written.”

It means more to Walter Johnson history teacher Nathan Schwartz. When Schwartz teaches about the rise of the samurai in Japan, he works with students not simply to memorize facts related to it but also to understand why it happened by employing the thinking skills of analysis, synthesis, application and reflection.

But at the University of Virginia, Daniel T. Willingham, a psychology professor, has a different view of critical thinking skills:

“There is no such thing.”

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