[4] 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.
Elder joined the Center and Foundation for Critical Thinking in 1994, focused primarily on the relationship between cognition and affect.
[5][6] She has written, with coauthor Richard Paul, 23 thinker's guides to critical thinking and four books, which provided her the early success.
[8] Elder's work has focused primary on the barriers to critical thinking development, closely to egocentric and sociocentric thought.