what are critical thinking skills

what are critical thinking skills

The Importance of Critical Thinking Skills

1. Introduction

This paper will provide an extensive review of the research as well as report on issues that inform best practice in teaching and learning. The paper will conclude with some recommendations for practitioners, including a new paradigm for teaching in the information age. Note that the article’s framework follows the specific dimensions of critical thinking outlined in the Delphi report. These dimensions are helpful in developing an understanding of what has been observed and documented in the real world. The research findings are based on a variety of methodological approaches, mostly non-experimental, to exploring the various aspects of critical thinking. This has been a disadvantage as findings are disparate and at times disconnected from a more general view of critical thinking. Nonetheless, the paper will pull together these findings that at times do not present a practical and generalizable picture of critical thinking in higher education. The research findings will inform discussion as to how critical thinking is being demonstrated through various forms of evidence in a variety of higher education disciplines. As a starting point, for their own purpose, educators may utilize this information, drawing also on other resources that provide a picture of critical thinking at faculty, department, or disciplinary level. This might be gathered through surveys or series of focused discussions to assess where faculty see strengths and weaknesses in student critical thinking. This is an important reflective activity for educators that should be shared ultimately leading to the development of best practice in how we can teach in our fields, fostering critical thinking commensurate with our disciplinary epistemology.

2. Benefits of Critical Thinking

The top, and most important level shows that critical thinking is the judge of when to apply or not apply a skill. Employers desire employees who can think critically and by so doing it helps in better problem solving. For instance, a simple problem like needing a new plant to water in the office may develop into a protracted argument on the best solution since there are arguments over the necessity of a real plant in comparison to a plastic plant as it saves water, or a plant may not be required at all and it is more cost effective to do nothing. This results in a waste of time and resources compared to a quick decision to buy an artificial plant. Coming to solutions about the solutions; critical thinking can improve the decision-making process and encourage discussion on implementation of the best solution. The quality of the decision is likely to be better as those involved are more open minded. A critical thinker is able to understand what the decision is and what the problem that it first need to solve. An efficient decision is the right one attempting to solve the problem while using the smallest price in terms of resources. The decision at the plant example would be quite possibly the purchase of a plastic plant and the most efficient decision would be not to buy any plant at all. This sort of decision making also reduces the chance to argue that the wrong resources were used or that the wrong problem was addressed.

The quality of your thinking, and that of your employees, is the single greatest factor to propel your business towards success. Or for that matter, even to survive in a troubled competitive environment. This is no longer mere opinion. It is a fact that society needs and businesses demand in their employees in the 21st century. This section will outline some of the key benefits that a clearer head and better thinking can bring to your workplace.

3. Developing Critical Thinking Skills

The first step in developing critical thinking skills is to understand the textbook and the course materials. Think about what the author is saying, trying not only to understand it, but to challenge it. Does it make sense? Does it seem plausible? Are there any underlying assumptions? Does it have any implications? It may be helpful to write out the answers to these questions on the margins of the text or in a notebook. There are those who say that it is sufficient to understand the material. This may well be true, but to fully understand the material it should be critically assessed. In critical assessment one must evaluate if the information is clear, precise, accurate, relevant, plausible, consistent, and if it has depth. This is the sort of thinking should be learned and employed in the research to find and evaluate information when writing a paper.

4. Applying Critical Thinking in Everyday Life

In everyday life, you can really put your critical thinking skills to work even more if you take time to identify the problem or issue. Determine whether you have a biased opinion about the issue and consider how you could evaluate the issue in a more positive way. Once you have a clear picture of the problem and its importance, you can start to analyze it and identify who and what it involves, and what the most logical outcome would be. You may need to ask the advice of others or gather more information from known resources. It can also be very important to plan a time to consider the issue or problem more in depth, and to organize your critical thinking over a period of time. At the conclusion of your deliberation, it may be useful to write down the problem and the best solution, as it will be useful to be able to refer back to this to ascertain whether the decision made was the best possible. By working through these steps, you can make far more logical decisions using your critical thinking skills, whether at home or work. These skills may also be useful at a later date, after making a decision, to see whether it was the best possible solution to the issue at hand. In various roles of employment and communication, there are many situations involving conflict or varied opinion that can break down relationships if not handled properly. At these times, it is useful to consider other people’s opinions and come to some form of understanding or compromise. Using the same sort of problem-solving process, applied to an issue you may have with someone else, can be vital in understanding both sides of the story and making clear the importance of the issue and its possible solutions. By evaluating what the other person is saying in terms of your own understanding of the problem, you can check whether they have relevant information to add and it may improve your understanding of their position.

5. Conclusion

It is important to think of it in terms of a probability-likelihood of critical thinking taking place. We can all learn how to generate the proper intellectual environment for our minds to be fertile ground for the development of good ideas and a clear understanding of good reasoning. But has stated that “we cannot guarantee results, but if we guarantee the conditions, the results will take care of themselves”. In this case, we have a possibility of good critical thinking taking place. If we can identify and remove any of the negative external elements, such as those mentioned earlier, the likelihood of effective use of our thinking skills increases. Similarly, though we cannot be satisfied with one excellent decision in a lifetime of decisions (virtually no situation is so simple that only one good decision is called for), we can learn to make our best decisions more often. The more thinking through a problem there is, the more likely there will be a positive solution. And we can work toward making sense of issues on a global level, since most of the world’s problems and opportunities do not stop at the borders of a person’s or a group’s locality.

A society with poor critical thinking skills too often becomes vulnerable to proponents of the quick fix. The group of societal and economic pressures that demand or at least encourage truncated and simplistic modes of thought may hope to find relief in the common belief that using critical thinking is useful only in the realm of science or academics. But our personal and political lives are greatly improved when we seek, identify, and assess the assumptions that underlie our beliefs and actions. We do best when we understand the logic at work in the decisions we are making, so that we can take control of the parts of our lives that are most at risk. When the best information is available, we make choices that have the best chances of success and satisfaction, given the complexities of the problems that arise and our limited knowledge. Hence, the quality of our lives, as individuals and as citizens, depends on the quality of our thought. From this and all the rest of the essay, we can see that the basic nature of critical thinking is an analysis of the nature of critical thinking, the obstacles to its effective use, and the social and personal conditions that are most likely to foster it.