Critical Thinking

Critical Thinking

We are all capable of thinking and reasoning as part of our human being nature, but to what extent the decisions that we make, the actions that we take, and the explanations that we give are based on facts? Can we defend our points of view, or provide a wise opinion in a social conversation with our friends or in a meeting with our co-workers?. All these questions are associated to what critical thinking is. Our intention is to describe what skills an individual has to learn and practice, and the stages or process that the person needs to go through, to become a critical thinker. The skills that the individual obtains during the development process shall be transferred to our lifestyles in order to be effective in our society.

According to Richard Paul and Michael Scriven (2004) "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". Critical thinking (CT) is a cognitive process in which we take nothing for granted, but instead we reflect on the information we receive and establish our own judgment. We are the ones who decide what to and what not to believe or do.

Critical Thinking Skills

Every person is capable of being a critical thinker, but CT is a process that we need to learn, develop and put into practice. As part of this process, experts agree on a number of skills that are the foundation and are part of the definition of CT: (a) listening (gather the information), (b) interpretation, (c) analysis, (d) evaluation, (e) inference, (f) explanation and (g) self-regulation.

A critical thinker needs to learn how to listen in order to get all the possible information. In this listening exercise, the individual is observing the gestures, mood, tone of voice and so forth, of the person sending the information. This exercise still applies when the critical thinker is reading, instead of listening, because he or she still needs to know the mood, tone or circumstances when the originator wrote the information. The next skill is to know how to interpret. The critical thinker needs to internalize and understand the meaning of all the information that he or she received before doing an analysis of it.

In the analysis, the critical thinker must take a close look at the content of the information and should be able to separate the facts from the inferences. The next step or skill in CT is to evaluate the information. The critical thinker needs to evaluate the information by judging the evidence or premises of the information, which had a conclusion or opinion within it.

Another skill that a critical thinker needs to learn is to make inferences or hypotheses. The individual creates possible scenarios that he or she will examine and will help to reach a conclusion. After the critical thinker gathered, interpreted, analyzed and evaluated all the information, and once the individual made possible scenarios, the critical thinker is ready to explain and defend a point of view.

The last skill on the list, self-regulation, is the one that makes us start again. Self-regulation invites the critical thinkers to take their explanations or conclusions as the input information to the aforementioned chronological list of skills. It is a self-improving way of inquiring and reflecting on their previous conclusions.

Now the critical thinker has the necessary skills that facilitate a comprehensive understanding of the CT process. In order to complement these skills, the critical thinker shall endeavor to incorporate the reasoning elements and the intellectual traits and virtues that shaping the critical thinker skills. The reasoning elements and intellectual virtues and traits are dimensions that allow the thinker to empower ideas and viewpoint in such away that the thinker is able to transfer abilities to lifestyles, and participate effectively in society.

Elements of Though

According to Paul and Elder (2003), the act of reasoning is defined into eight criteria. These elements are: (a) purpose, (b) settle a question to solve some problem, (c) assumptions, (d) points of view, (e) data information and evidence, (f) concepts and ideas, (g) conclusions and implications, and (h) consequences.

The first criterion to consider is, state a purpose. Reasoning has a purpose; therefore, it is necessary to state it clearly. It shall be distinguished from related purposes and, a periodically evaluation of the target focus shall be evaluated. This evaluation might include the decision between realistic and significant purpose.

The second criterion to consider is the thinker in the thinking process; the thinker shall attempt to settle a question in order to solve the problem. The question shall be expressed in several ways to clarify its meaning and scope. The third criterion to consider is the reasoning based on assumptions; assumption must be as questioning clearly identified and justifiable; assumption allows shaping points of views. The fourth criterion to consider is that the reasoning is done from some point of view, and then, the thinker must be able to identify the strengths and weakness of one and other points of view. The fifth criteria to reflect on is that reasoning will only be successful if the thinker strives to be fair minded in evaluating all points of view. On sixth place we need to consider the reasoning based on data, information and evidence, which means that only supported data will be taken into consideration; information shall be clear, accurate and relevant. Seven, all reasoning is expressed through, and shaped by concept and idea. The key concept identification is crucial, it shall be clearly explained, and alternative concepts and definitions are allowed. The last criterion to take into account is that reason contains inferences or interpretations to draw conclusions. Whatever the evidence implies is only what can be inferred. All reasoning contains implications and consequences. Negative and positive implications shall be searched, therefore consider all possible consequences.

Intellectual Traits or Virtues

According to the Foundation for the Critical Thinking (FCT) (2004), "The intellectual traits and virtues (ITV) is the second dimension of the critical thinking". ITV were broken into instructional strategies. These strategies are: affective strategies, cognitive strategies - macro-abilities and, cognitive strategies - micro-skills. Here, we are only going to emphasize on the affective strategies, which are considered