Critical Thinking
A critical thinker is able to deduce consequences from what they know, and how to make use of information to solve problems, and to seek relevant sources of information to inform themselves. When people actively apply critical thinking concepts and use constructive behaviours, they develop more ideas, make fewer mistakes and reach better decisions. When people act on beliefs they have not carefully thought through, they will shoot down ideas even before they are understood, or take action based on faulty assumptions. The result is often a business disaster.
Critical thinking is the act of thinking actively, not just thinking passively and accepting everything you see and hear. By actively asking questions, evaluating, categorising and finding relationships you are engaging in critical thinking. It is the ability to look at a situation and clearly understand it from multiple perspectives so that the best decision can be made. Critical thinkers think carefully about information and separate facts from opinions and assumptions and are able to weigh up different possible outcomes and consequences of each.
Michael Scriven and Richard Paul, National Council for Excellence in Critical Thinking, an organization promoting critical thinking in the US, stated:
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. In its exemplary form, it is based on universal intellectual values that transcend subject matter divisions: clarity, accuracy, precision, consistency, relevance, sound evidence, good reasons, depth, breadth, and fairness. It entails the examination of those structures or elements of thought implicit in all reasoning: purpose, problem, or question-at-issue, assumptions, concepts, empirical grounding; reasoning leading to conclusions, implications and consequences, objections from alternative viewpoints, and frame of reference.
The authors of the Watson Glazer define critical thinking as :
... a composite of attitudes, knowledge and skills. This composite includes: (1) attitudes of inquiry that involve an ability to recognize the existence of problems and an acceptance of the general need for evidence in support of what is asserted to be true; (2) knowledge of the nature of valid inferences, abstractions, and generalizations in which the weight or accuracy of different kinds of evidence are logically determined; and (3) skills in employing and applying the above attitudes and knowledge.
When Critical Thinking examines assumptions:
This consists of taking three steps:
1. Becoming aware that assumptions exist
2. Making assumptions explicit
3. Assessing their accuracy
Questions can include:
- Do these assumptions make sense?
- Do these assumptions fit reality as we understand and live it?
- Under what conditions do these assumptions seem to hold true?
- Under what conditions do they seem false?
Misconceptions About Critical Thinking:
It is wholly a negative process-it tears down ideas and puts nothing in their place (rather it is a positive process to put things in a more realistic perspective).
It will lead to relativistic freeze--the inability to make commitments to people, ideas, structures (rather. commitments are informed ones).
It seems to involve traumatic change-one is expected to abandon old assumptions continually. (rather: Some beliefs stay the same--they are simply more informed).
It is dispassionate and cold (it is rather highly emotive and liberating to be free of past assumptions and the anxiety of self-scrutiny).
Why Is Critical Thinking Important?
When actions, decisions and judgments spring from assumptions and they are unchecked or inappropriate, we will make poor decisions and wrong judgments.
In personal relationships we learn to keep our lines of communications open-we avoid uncritically reproducing patterns of the modeled interactions we learned from our parental interaction.
In the workplace we avoid stagnation and atrophy and are willing to challenge the current paradigms which are uncritically accepted and may have come down in the workplace from a time and thinking which is no longer relevant to our current reality.
In the Absence of Thinking Critically:
- We blindly reproduce the damaging reactions we have learned.
- We blindly accept at face value all justifications given by organizations and political leaders.
- We blindly believe mass media communications such as: TV commercials.
- We blindly accept and say that if the textbook says it it must be so.
- We blindly accept and say that if the organization does it it must be right.
