CRITICAL THINKING is a set of skills that helps you analyze and evaluate ideas and issues objectively. Relying only on your own experience and opinions is not enough when you enter into a scholarly debate or conversation. In an academic environment, you will also have to evaluate and include the ideas and work of other scholars.
Pay attention to how you judge information: think about how you differentiate between an opinion stated as a fact and an actual fact.
The next time you read the news, question the bias behind the message: how might the author be slanting the details in support of a particular viewpoint?
Apply critical thinking skills to your own habits: do you always use the same approach simply because that's how you've always done it?
How often do you accept what you are told without question?
Where do your opinions come from?
What are your own biases or prejudices?
Think about someone you consider a critical thinker: what qualities does that person have?
What "habits of mind" would you like to actively develop over the next year (clarity, logic, creativity)?
When writing papers or solving problems, your feelings, beliefs, and opinions are not adequate resources because they could be influenced by conscious or unconscious biases.
“Critical thinking is the intellectually disciplined process of actively and skillfully conceptualizing, applying, analyzing, synthesizing, and/or evaluating information gathered from, or generated by, observation, experience, reflection, reasoning, or communication, as a guide to belief and action” (Scriven & Paul, 1987).
When gathering information, either in a conversation or for a project, ask yourself these questions:
In conversation, try these strategies:
When reading, studying, or listening to a lecture, use these approaches:
Tip: Try to connect the information or ideas to your own experiences to make them more relevant to you and easier to understand.
Ask yourself the following questions:
Answering "no" to any of these questions means you have to trim the content or improve it with better data or other sources.
Ask yourself the following questions to uncover hidden or unconscious biases:
Tip: Take a moment to reflect on the opposing viewpoint and try to understand the merit of one or two of its points.
Presentation content has been adapted from the Foundation for Critical Thinking page on Becoming a Critic Of Your Thinking
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