Critical Thinking and Agency Against the Erosion of Professional Judgment and Public Disengagement.
Aug 27, 2026 7:50 AM
Dr Peter Ellerton
Critical Thinking and Agency Against the Erosion of Professional Judgment and Public Disengagement.
Talk
AI increasingly impacts professional and public practice, eroding trust, agency and meaning making. This talk explores the necessity of cultivating both critical thinking and agency against the erosion of professional judgment and public disengagement.
Agency is the capacity to act reflectively, responsibly and effectively, guided by knowledgeable and principled reasoning. The challenge of AI is not only that machines can perform tasks once reserved for experts, but that professionals and institutions themselves risk outsourcing epistemic responsibility for their judgements; hence losing the agency and accountability at the core of public trust. By focusing on the intellectual and ethical dimensions of professional judgment, we can better understand what it means to think well in context: to explain, analyse, evaluate and justify with regard for the truth. Against the scalability and replicability of AI, professionalism and agency become a form of principled rebellion, a refusal to surrender human reasoning to the siren call of technological convenience.
Bio
Peter Ellerton is Curriculum Director of the University of Queensland Critical Thinking Project, Senior Lecturer in Philosophy in the School of Historical and Philosophical Inquiry. Peter’s areas of focus include Public Reasoning, Science Communication, Argumentation and Critical Thinking in education. His passion is working with educators to enable a critical thinking teaching focus across all levels and subject areas. He has consulted and produced papers for a variety of organisations including the European Commission Joint Research Centre, the International Baccalaureate Organisation, The Australian Curriculum, Assessment and Reporting Authority, and the New South Wales and Queensland Departments of Education. He has designed and delivered professional learning in Teaching for Thinking throughout Australia and internationally. He also works in developing critical thinking leadership, including with the Queensland Police Force, the Australian Defence Force, the Australian Institute of Police Management and a range of government and business groups.
https://critical-thinking.project.uq.edu.au