Linda Elder

Early life and career

Elder started her career for a non-profit organization, Youth Services in 1983 to deal with youth for juvenile detention. She completed her master's degree in psychology in 1988 and her PhD in 1992 from the University of Memphis. Elder started her academic career at the college level, where she served as a Professor and got introduced to the critical thinking initially. She subsequently started studying critical thinking, primarily to teach the subject at a deeper level to the students.

In 1992, she was introduced to the work of Richard Paul and the Foundation for Critical Thinking, located in California. Elder joined the Center and Foundation for Critical Thinking in 1994, focused primarily on the relationship between cognition and affect. Later in the same year, she developed an original stage theory of critical thinking development, which was later expanded along with Richard Paul in 1995. She has written, with coauthor Richard Paul, 23 thinker's guides to critical thinking and four books, which provided her the early success. Later in 1997, she was the primary researcher for the California Teacher Preparation for Instruction in Critical Thinking: Research Findings and Policy Recommendations. The Journal of Developmental Education offered her a quarterly column on critical thinking, where she writes regularly.