The theme for this year's TA issue is "critical skills development": what is it, how do we envision it, and how do we incorporate it into our teaching and into our classrooms? For many TAs, developing critical skills among students is a key objective for the teaching that we do. For others, improving a range of competencies is implicit in the learning of course content. But what are critical skills? Are they tools and abilities that we hope to develop in students? Do they describe particular modes and methods of inquiry that we wish to foster? Or do they indicate instead a more general way of thinking about encountering and engaging with the world around us? Nailing down precise definitions of critical skills is not easy; as the contributors to this issue illustrate, the notion of what this term might entail varies greatly by discipline, by institution and by individual.

When I think of my own understanding of what critical skills might be and of my own history in developing them, the picture that emerges is fragmented at best. I do not have any clear sense of tools and abilities gained over time that layer together and form a newer and more competent version of myself. Instead I recall flashes of images - a grade ten typing class; a first-year English TA who told me that the overuse of exclamation marks and long dashes were better saved for love letters than essays; a Medieval History professor who gently but firmly urged me not to believe everything I read. Despite this incomplete and imprecise understanding, as a TA and course director in Environmental Studies I am nevertheless expected to impart my wisdom regarding some (apparently) core proficiencies to my students. Similarly, for TAs teaching in the Foundations Program in the Humanities and Social Sciences at York, critical skills development is one of the primary curricular goals. In other disciplines, the same holds true, the idea that engendering some level of critical competencies in our students is a central objective.

But the task is in many ways a formidable one. Developing expertise and dexterity in students often ill-equipped with even basic abilities by their secondary education is not a simple matter. Nor is it easy to encourage students to embrace critical thinking, reading, writing and analytical skills when the worlds of media, culture, and politics that they are immersed in so clearly valorize conformity and consent. Learning to challenge voices of authority, to critique dominant paradigms and structures, to ask questions about the world where we live is difficult in a post-secondary environment in which students are increasingly treated (and told to act) as consumers, rather than as learners.

Such challenges do not make the necessity to teach and develop key abilities and approaches less important - if anything, they make our role as TAs and our time in the classroom increasingly vital. As the contributors to this issue demonstrate in a diverse set of articles, the approach to critical skills development is necessarily adaptive and flexible in nature, taking into account a variety of educational environments, disciplinary expectations, and teaching and learning styles. Some focus on strategies for improving specific abilities, as in Ravi Mohabeer's piece on learning how to do better presentations. Others, such as Siobhán Smith, suggest more discipline-specific methods, as illustrated by her article on providing a framework for critique to students in the Fine Arts. For some contributors, the most important issue is that of context itself: what do we (as teachers and learners) bring to the process of developing critical skills? Two articles approach this question from different perspectives - Janet Fishlock raises the issue from the vantage of the TA, while Lucinda McDonald considers the distinctions that exist between the students themselves. Finally, we return to more general pedagogical and epistemological questions in an article co-written as a dialogue between Rachel Hurst and Diana Gibaldi on teaching and learning feminist critical skills. Together, these articles provide a nuanced and complex understanding of what critical skills might be, as well as some specific strategies to help develop them.