Inquirybased learning can contribute to developing students’ higher order thinking,including critical thinking (CT).CT is an important objective in education worldwide and ones’ CT performance mainly depends on their critical thinking skills and critical thinking dispositions (CTD).However,there are various limitations in the existing practice of CTD instruction.By reviewing the publications relating to CTD instruction,this paper of literature review is an attempt to address the issue of how these limitations may be overcome.This paper finds that CTD in CT instruction are often neglected or ignored by researchers and educators and thus there is a need to look for a way to develop students’ CTD effectively and systematically.With this in mind,this paper suggests a new CTD instruction approach addressing the limitations of the current practice.Built on this new approach,this paper proposes six principles of CTD instruction in module design.Stressing the importance of applying reason in thinking in developing CTD,these six principles together are called REASON: Recognition & Rectification,Elucidation,Application,Sensitivity,Orientation and eNculturation.Based on the proposed new CTD instruction approach and REASON,a sample module for developing students CTD is devised to explicitly demonstrate how students’ CTD can be developed effectively and systematically.To facilitate such learning process,in this sample module,asynchronous online discussion (AOD) is adopted because this paper finds that AOD’s characteristics give it potential to contribute to students’ development in various CTD dimensions.All the suggestions in this paper form the foundation of a pilot study to be conducted in the near future.