critical thinking examples for students

critical thinking examples for students

Enhancing Critical Thinking Skills in Students

1. Introduction

The thinking process involves certain steps. In learning a particular course, say for example economics, students must think about the relation of economics with their real-world surroundings. Secondly, they have to comprehend the economic policies and theories. Next, apply those theories to various situations and conclude with a result or questionnaire. The thinking applied here involves a lot of analysis, argument assessment, and reaching a correct conclusion which may benefit them. Failure of such thinking and decision making can lead to faulty or unfavorable actions. Hence, one can conclude that successful thinking can make information useful to an individual. So critical thinking is a very important tool in any modern-day education. It is the one way that we vet the quality and reliability of information. Unfortunately, it is often assumed that students will simply pick up the power of critical thinking on their own, without specific instruction or training. This results in lessons and information becoming a largely meaningless group of fragmented information and does little to empower students in the intellectual faculties.

Critical thinking is an important hurdle which is very important to cross in developing the cultural and ideological base of students. It is an essential learning skill for the achievement of quality education, which equips students with knowledge and learning on a permanent basis. Critical thinking is not a new issue, already being discussed for several years as it involves the crucial ability of an individual to think on the problems or issues that he is facing, by using certain processes or methods, for instance: logic, reason, and systematical examination. Critical thinking needs desire and authority in taking decisions, precise action assessment, clear argument assessment, and relevant conclusion. Great educators and philosophers of education have long felt the need for students to develop thinking in order to process information more effectively. They have recognized that, in the information age, information is readily available, but there is a great need for the ability to discern what to do with it, what to believe, and what to act upon. This ability is what links thinking to effective action and is something that can always make education one step ahead (Elder and Paul, 2000).

2. Importance of Critical Thinking

In dealing with the importance of critical thinking and its relevance to enhancing one’s ability to function in society, a good number of eminent professors and scholars have made a distinction between two types of thinking that bear little relevance to critical thinking. These two types can be broadly identified as thinking that is merely based on perception. It is argued that a human being can only assert that someone has spilled a bottle of milk (judgment) if and only if they have seen the act of that person spilling the milk out of a bottle (inference). Hence, the second person’s assertion about the spillage is based on his perception of the action; hence, it is not critical thinking. The assertion made by the first person can only be labeled as critical thinking if he can prove the spillage by leading the second person to infer through another judgment that supports the original judgment of the first person. An example would be the first person claiming that there is milk on the floor and a wet patch on a piece of cloth near the floor, which he believed has been used to clean the floor. Due to the fact that critical thinking exists to help assimilate these judgments and prevent any illogical or poor reasoning to infer a baseless judgment, it is most important for us to reason that spending to initiate detrimental social change should involve more reasoning than the advancements made by humans in the past. With the overtly growing trends in war and political systems to initiate global change, it is necessary for us to critique these judgments and persuade that the ways of spending should be changed in order to revert the global change to a more positive one. Critical thinking with a free mind and lack of bias is the answer to any intellectual problem. In essence, therefore, critical thinking is universal and evident at all points of life. Without critical thinking, the resolution of any problem or facing of any troubling issue will be handicapped. People will tend to make judgments based on partial or ambiguous information, which leads to assumptions and often ends in detrimental results. With the conscious effort to think critically and reason through various issues in today’s world, we can, in turn, build a society free from illogical and one-sided decisions.

3. Examples of Critical Thinking in Everyday Life

The student is forced to think about what it means to only pay for classes in U.S. currency and finds that the requirement limits the cost of tuition in terms of the exchange rate between U.S. currency and the student’s native currency. This is probably done to maintain a consistent revenue stream considering that exchange rates are constantly fluctuating. The student further realizes that he may incur additional costs over exchange rate fees when converting his native currency. He could probably write a paper on the economics of tuition for international students and submit it to someone at the university, but that’s asking too much entertainment from the assignment.

1. Clarification: Please clarify what you mean when you say we must pay for classes in U.S. currency? 2. What could we assume if we did not pay for the classes in U.S. currency? 3. Why is it important for us to pay for the classes in U.S. currency? 4. What would happen if we could not pay for the classes in U.S. currency? 5. Are the classes more or less expensive if we pay for them in U.S. currency? 6. How do you think exchange rates using different world currencies affect the cost of the classes?”

“Socratic questioning is at the heart of critical thinking, and a number of homework problems draw from R.W. Paul’s six types of Socratic questions. We remove advertising banners, and the links to the answers are provided at the bottom of the page. Graduate and Professional Studies welcomes international students to its online courses. Our classes must be paid for in U.S. currency.

4. Strategies for Developing Critical Thinking Skills

C. Teaching for transfer (to the real world). The ultimate goal of teaching critical thinking is to enable students to take charge of their own learning as well as all aspects of their life and thus, to become more autonomous in continuing their education as well as entering into any form of reasoning or problem-solving. This is the self-improving standard of critical thinking. Students will not likely show much improvement in critical thinking before they have demonstrated a robust understanding of good and bad reasoning both in the abstract and in subject matter considering that critical thinking is only as good as the relevant knowledge to apply it.

B. Using technology. It is increasingly possible to use computer technologies to create virtual learning environments for students to practice CT strategies with interactive guided instruction and practice assignments. This would be preparation for the students to then weave the same skills into their subject matter learning. An example would be to use a philosophy computer program to practice logic analysis and Socratic questioning with complex ethical issues.

A. Teaching for transfer. To develop CT skills in beginning students, we can teach CT explicitly through an emphasis on theory. Once students can apply CT skills to understanding and reconstructing the logic of a given subject matter, then it is time to integrate CT skills into critical thinking and writing across the curriculum. At each point thereafter, the same CT skills should be used but in applied ways with a wide range of subject matters.

Developing strategies of conjunction makes strong sense in teaching critical thinking. With this in mind, the Foundation for Critical Thinking developed a “Critical Thinking Model” that includes in-depth strategies for fostering critical thinking skills. This model focuses on thought processes that are implicit in critical thinking: interpretation, analysis, evaluation, inference, explanation, and self-regulation.

5. Conclusion

This book has attempted to provide a logical framework for teaching critical thinking skills using insights from the leading proponents of critical thinking: Richard Paul and Linda Elder. We have translated their writing principles and criteria for critical thinking into 62 writing tasks, organized into 10 chapters and 35 lessons. We have aimed to integrate the writing and critical thinking advice so students are not left with writing “assignments” and thinking “assignments” but see the two modes of learning as two sides of the same coin. Along the way, we have tried to expose many common errors in reasoning and have attempted to demystify the often vague and abstract instructions given by writing teachers. Finally, we have put some zest into the project by using real and entertaining examples of bad reasoning from TV, newspapers, and our own popular culture. The fundamental idea behind this book is that writing tasks are the best way of getting students to practice and internalize critical thinking skills. Unlike many textbooks or curriculum manuals that offer a smorgasbord of resources for teaching critical thinking, this book focuses on critical thinking development using writing tasks.