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The seven key steps of critical thinking.

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As leaders, it is our job to get the very best out of our workforce. We focus on how best to motivate, inspire and create an environment in which employees are satisfied, engaged and productive. This leads us to deliver an excellent customer/client experience.

But all in all, the effort we put into growing our workforce, we often forget the one person who is in constant need of development: ourselves. In particular, we neglect the soft skills that are vital to becoming the best professional possible — one of them being critical thinking.

When you're able to critically think, it opens the door for employee engagement, as you become the go-to person for assistance with issues, challenges and problems. In turn, you teach your workforce how to critically think and problem solve.

Let’s take a look at the key steps in developing critical thinking skills.

What Is Critical Thinking?

One of my favorite definitions of critical thinking comes from Edward Glaser. He said , “The ability to think critically, as conceived in this volume, involves three things:

1. An attitude of being disposed to consider in a thoughtful way the problems and subjects that come within the range of one’s experiences

2. Knowledge of the methods of logical inquiry and reasoning

3. Some skill in applying those methods."

In short, the ability to think critically is the art of analyzing and evaluating data for a practical approach to understanding the data, then determining what to believe and how to act.

The three characteristics of critical thinking include:

•  Being quick and decisive:  One of the most admirable leadership qualities the ability to be quick and decisive with decisions. There are times where an answer just needs to be given and given right now. But that doesn't mean you should make a decision just to make one. Sometimes, quick decisions can fall flat. I know some of mine have.

• Being resourceful and creative:  Over the years, members of my workforce have come to me with challenges and have needed some creativity and resourcefulness. As they spell out the situation, you listen to the issue, analyze their dilemma and guide them the best way possible. Thinking outside the box and sharing how to get there is a hallmark of a great leader.

• Being systematic and organized:  Martin Gabel is quoted as saying , “Don’t just do something, stand there.” Sometimes, taking a minute to be systematic and follow an organized approach makes all the difference. This is where critical thinking meets problem solving. Define the problem, come up with a list of solutions, then select the best answer, implement it, create an evaluation tool and fine-tune as needed.

Components Of Critical Thinking

Now that you know the what and why of becoming a critical thinker, let’s focus on the how best to develop this skill.

1. Identify the problem or situation, then define what influenced this to occur in the first place.

2. Investigate the opinions and arguments of the individuals involved in this process. Any time you have differences of opinions, it is vital that you research independently, so as not to be influenced by a specific bias.

3. Evaluate information factually. Recognizing predispositions of those involved is a challenging task at times. It is your responsibility to weigh the information from all sources and come to your own conclusions.

4. Establish significance. Figure out what information is most important for you to consider in the current situation. Sometimes, you just have to remove data points that have no relevance.

5. Be open-minded and consider all points of view. This is a good time to pull the team into finding the best solution. This point will allow you to develop the critical-thinking skills of those you lead.

6. Take time to reflect once you have gathered all the information. In order to be decisive and make decisions quickly, you need to take time to unwrap all the information and set a plan of attack. If you are taking time to think about the best solution, keep your workforce and leaders apprised of your process and timeline.

7. Communicate your findings and results. This is a crucial yet often overlooked component. Failing to do so can cause much confusion in the organization.

Developing your critical-thinking skills is fundamental to your leadership success. As you set off to develop these abilities, it will require a clear, sometimes difficult evaluation of your current level of critical thinking. From there you can determine the best way to polish and strengthen your current skill set and establish a plan for your future growth.

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How to build your critical thinking skills in 7 steps (with examples)

Critical thinking is, well, critical. By building these skills, you improve your ability to analyze information and come to the best decision possible. In this article, we cover the basics of critical thinking, as well as the seven steps you can use to implement the full critical thinking process. 

Critical thinking comes from asking the right questions to come to the best conclusion possible. Strong critical thinkers analyze information from a variety of viewpoints in order to identify the best course of action.

Don’t worry if you don’t think you have strong critical thinking abilities. In this article, we’ll help you build a foundation for critical thinking so you can absorb, analyze, and make informed decisions. 

What is critical thinking? 

Critical thinking is the ability to collect and analyze information to come to a conclusion. Being able to think critically is important in virtually every industry and applicable across a wide range of positions. That’s because critical thinking isn’t subject-specific—rather, it’s your ability to parse through information, data, statistics, and other details in order to identify a satisfactory solution. 

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Top 8 critical thinking skills

Like most soft skills, critical thinking isn’t something you can take a class to learn. Rather, this skill consists of a variety of interpersonal and analytical skills. Developing critical thinking is more about learning to embrace open-mindedness and bringing analytical thinking to your problem framing process. 

In no particular order, the eight most important critical thinking skills are:

Analytical thinking: Part of critical thinking is evaluating data from multiple sources in order to come to the best conclusions. Analytical thinking allows people to reject bias and strive to gather and consume information to come to the best conclusion. 

Open-mindedness: This critical thinking skill helps you analyze and process information to come to an unbiased conclusion. Part of the critical thinking process is letting your personal biases go and coming to a conclusion based on all of the information. 

Problem solving : Because critical thinking emphasizes coming to the best conclusion based on all of the available information, it’s a key part of problem solving. When used correctly, critical thinking helps you solve any problem—from a workplace challenge to difficulties in everyday life. 

Self-regulation: Self-regulation refers to the ability to regulate your thoughts and set aside any personal biases to come to the best conclusion. In order to be an effective critical thinker, you need to question the information you have and the decisions you favor—only then can you come to the best conclusion. 

Observation: Observation skills help critical thinkers look for things beyond face value. To be a critical thinker you need to embrace multiple points of view, and you can use observation skills to identify potential problems.

Interpretation: Not all data is made equal—and critical thinkers know this. In addition to gathering information, it’s important to evaluate which information is important and relevant to your situation. That way, you can draw the best conclusions from the data you’ve collected. 

Evaluation: When you attempt to answer a hard question, there is rarely an obvious answer. Even though critical thinking emphasizes putting your biases aside, you need to be able to confidently make a decision based on the data you have available. 

Communication: Once a decision has been made, you also need to share this decision with other stakeholders. Effective workplace communication includes presenting evidence and supporting your conclusion—especially if there are a variety of different possible solutions. 

7 steps to critical thinking

Critical thinking is a skill that you can build by following these seven steps. The seven steps to critical thinking help you ensure you’re approaching a problem from the right angle, considering every alternative, and coming to an unbiased conclusion.

 First things first: When to use the 7 step critical thinking process

There’s a lot that goes into the full critical thinking process, and not every decision needs to be this thought out. Sometimes, it’s enough to put aside bias and approach a process logically. In other, more complex cases, the best way to identify the ideal outcome is to go through the entire critical thinking process. 

The seven-step critical thinking process is useful for complex decisions in areas you are less familiar with. Alternatively, the seven critical thinking steps can help you look at a problem you’re familiar with from a different angle, without any bias. 

If you need to make a less complex decision, consider another problem solving strategy instead. Decision matrices are a great way to identify the best option between different choices. Check out our article on 7 steps to creating a decision matrix .

1. Identify the problem

Before you put those critical thinking skills to work, you first need to identify the problem you’re solving. This step includes taking a look at the problem from a few different perspectives and asking questions like: 

What’s happening? 

Why is this happening? 

What assumptions am I making? 

At first glance, how do I think we can solve this problem? 

A big part of developing your critical thinking skills is learning how to come to unbiased conclusions. In order to do that, you first need to acknowledge the biases that you currently have. Does someone on your team think they know the answer? Are you making assumptions that aren’t necessarily true? Identifying these details helps you later on in the process. 

2. Research

At this point, you likely have a general idea of the problem—but in order to come up with the best solution, you need to dig deeper. 

During the research process, collect information relating to the problem, including data, statistics, historical project information, team input, and more. Make sure you gather information from a variety of sources, especially if those sources go against your personal ideas about what the problem is or how to solve it.

Gathering varied information is essential for your ability to apply the critical thinking process. If you don’t get enough information, your ability to make a final decision will be skewed. Remember that critical thinking is about helping you identify the objective best conclusion. You aren’t going with your gut—you’re doing research to find the best option

3. Determine data relevance

Just as it’s important to gather a variety of information, it is also important to determine how relevant the different information sources are. After all, just because there is data doesn’t mean it’s relevant. 

Once you’ve gathered all of the information, sift through the noise and identify what information is relevant and what information isn’t. Synthesizing all of this information and establishing significance helps you weigh different data sources and come to the best conclusion later on in the critical thinking process. 

To determine data relevance, ask yourself:

How reliable is this information? 

How significant is this information? 

Is this information outdated? Is it specialized in a specific field? 

4. Ask questions

One of the most useful parts of the critical thinking process is coming to a decision without bias. In order to do so, you need to take a step back from the process and challenge the assumptions you’re making. 

We all have bias—and that isn’t necessarily a bad thing. Unconscious biases (also known as cognitive biases) often serve as mental shortcuts to simplify problem solving and aid decision making. But even when biases aren’t inherently bad, you must be aware of your biases in order to put them aside when necessary. 

Before coming to a solution, ask yourself:

Am I making any assumptions about this information? 

Are there additional variables I haven’t considered? 

Have I evaluated the information from every perspective? 

Are there any viewpoints I missed? 

5. Identify the best solution

Finally, you’re ready to come to a conclusion. To identify the best solution, draw connections between causes and effects. Use the facts you’ve gathered to evaluate the most objective conclusion. 

Keep in mind that there may be more than one solution. Often, the problems you’re facing are complex and intricate. The critical thinking process doesn’t necessarily lead to a cut-and-dry solution—instead, the process helps you understand the different variables at play so you can make an informed decision. 

6. Present your solution

Communication is a key skill for critical thinkers. It isn’t enough to think for yourself—you also need to share your conclusion with other project stakeholders. If there are multiple solutions, present them all. There may be a case where you implement one solution, then test to see if it works before implementing another solution. 

7. Analyze your decision

The seven-step critical thinking process yields a result—and you then need to put that solution into place. After you’ve implemented your decision, evaluate whether or not it was effective. Did it solve the initial problem? What lessons—whether positive or negative—can you learn from this experience to improve your critical thinking for next time? 

Depending on how your team shares information, consider documenting lessons learned in a central source of truth. That way, team members that are making similar or related decisions in the future can understand why you made the decision you made and what the outcome was. 

Example of critical thinking in the workplace

Imagine you work in user experience design (UX). Your team is focused on pricing and packaging and ensuring customers have a clear understanding of the different services your company offers. Here’s how to apply the critical thinking process in the workplace in seven steps: 

Start by identifying the problem

Your current pricing page isn’t performing as well as you want. You’ve heard from customers that your services aren’t clear, and that the page doesn’t answer the questions they have. This page is really important for your company, since it’s where your customers sign up for your service. You and your team have a few theories about why your current page isn’t performing well, but you decide to apply the critical thinking process to ensure you come to the best decision for the page. 

Gather information about how the problem started

Part of identifying the problem includes understanding how the problem started. The pricing and packaging page is important—so when your team initially designed the page, they certainly put a lot of thought into it. Before you begin researching how to improve the page, ask yourself: 

Why did you design the pricing page the way you did? 

Which stakeholders need to be involved in the decision making process? 

Where are users getting stuck on the page?

Are any features currently working?

Then, you research

In addition to understanding the history of the pricing and packaging page, it’s important to understand what works well. Part of this research means taking a look at what your competitor’s pricing pages look like. 

Ask yourself: 

How have our competitors set up their pricing pages?

Are there any pricing page best practices? 

How does color, positioning, and animation impact navigation? 

Are there any standard page layouts customers expect to see? 

Organize and analyze information

You’ve gathered all of the information you need—now you need to organize and analyze it. What trends, if any, are you noticing? Is there any particularly relevant or important information that you have to consider? 

Ask open-ended questions to reduce bias

In the case of critical thinking, it’s important to address and set bias aside as much as possible. Ask yourself: 

Is there anything I’m missing? 

Have I connected with the right stakeholders? 

Are there any other viewpoints I should consider? 

Determine the best solution for your team

You now have all of the information you need to design the best pricing page. Depending on the complexity of the design, you may want to design a few options to present to a small group of customers or A/B test on the live website.

Present your solution to stakeholders

Critical thinking can help you in every element of your life, but in the workplace, you must also involve key project stakeholders . Stakeholders help you determine next steps, like whether you’ll A/B test the page first. Depending on the complexity of the issue, consider hosting a meeting or sharing a status report to get everyone on the same page. 

Analyze the results

No process is complete without evaluating the results. Once the new page has been live for some time, evaluate whether it did better than the previous page. What worked? What didn’t? This also helps you make better critical decisions later on.

Critically successful 

Critical thinking takes time to build, but with effort and patience you can apply an unbiased, analytical mind to any situation. Critical thinking makes up one of many soft skills that makes you an effective team member, manager, and worker. If you’re looking to hone your skills further, read our article on the 25 project management skills you need to succeed . 

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Critical thinking – A skill and a process

Now, that oversimplified approach to learning certainly is the first step to studying as well. However, in order to be successful in our studies, we need to do more than just contain and repeat information. We need to be able to assess the value of the information, its correctness, and its contribution to any given debate. Ideally, we are able to put it into context with other aspects of our knowledge, too. This is what makes us students, this is what makes us critical thinkers.

Critical thinking is not just one skill, rather it is the result of a number of skills applied effectively. In order to be able to think critically, you’ll need to be able reason. You’ll need to be able to assess the source of the information you’re given and you’ll be able to reflect on its accuracy or validity, depending on your task.

By thinking critically, you are applying each of those skills in order to evaluate the information in front of you. This can be a theory, a new research result, or even a news item. Critical thinking allows you to apply an objective approach to your learning, rather than subjectively following either the proposed information you’re given, or your own opinion rather than clear and convincing arguments and facts.

Critical thinking is a process of continuing evaluation and reflection. It is most powerful, when leading to a change of view in ourselves or in others.

This is where critical thinking becomes relevant outside the world of studying. By being critical of what we read, hear and see, we are engaging with the society we live in actively. We are not perceiving anything as given, but are rather reflecting on the value and correctness of the way society works.

This helps us to be better employees, by reflecting on where processes and ways of working can be improved. It helps us to more engaged citizens, as we are reflecting on political campaigns and their truthfulness and value for us when we are asked to participate in an election. Critical thinking pushes ourselves and our environment to continuously adapt and improve.

When you think critically, you open up a whole new way of engaging with the world around you.

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Critical Thinking

Critical thinking is a widely accepted educational goal. Its definition is contested, but the competing definitions can be understood as differing conceptions of the same basic concept: careful thinking directed to a goal. Conceptions differ with respect to the scope of such thinking, the type of goal, the criteria and norms for thinking carefully, and the thinking components on which they focus. Its adoption as an educational goal has been recommended on the basis of respect for students’ autonomy and preparing students for success in life and for democratic citizenship. “Critical thinkers” have the dispositions and abilities that lead them to think critically when appropriate. The abilities can be identified directly; the dispositions indirectly, by considering what factors contribute to or impede exercise of the abilities. Standardized tests have been developed to assess the degree to which a person possesses such dispositions and abilities. Educational intervention has been shown experimentally to improve them, particularly when it includes dialogue, anchored instruction, and mentoring. Controversies have arisen over the generalizability of critical thinking across domains, over alleged bias in critical thinking theories and instruction, and over the relationship of critical thinking to other types of thinking.

2.1 Dewey’s Three Main Examples

2.2 dewey’s other examples, 2.3 further examples, 2.4 non-examples, 3. the definition of critical thinking, 4. its value, 5. the process of thinking critically, 6. components of the process, 7. contributory dispositions and abilities, 8.1 initiating dispositions, 8.2 internal dispositions, 9. critical thinking abilities, 10. required knowledge, 11. educational methods, 12.1 the generalizability of critical thinking, 12.2 bias in critical thinking theory and pedagogy, 12.3 relationship of critical thinking to other types of thinking, other internet resources, related entries.

Use of the term ‘critical thinking’ to describe an educational goal goes back to the American philosopher John Dewey (1910), who more commonly called it ‘reflective thinking’. He defined it as

active, persistent and careful consideration of any belief or supposed form of knowledge in the light of the grounds that support it, and the further conclusions to which it tends. (Dewey 1910: 6; 1933: 9)

and identified a habit of such consideration with a scientific attitude of mind. His lengthy quotations of Francis Bacon, John Locke, and John Stuart Mill indicate that he was not the first person to propose development of a scientific attitude of mind as an educational goal.

In the 1930s, many of the schools that participated in the Eight-Year Study of the Progressive Education Association (Aikin 1942) adopted critical thinking as an educational goal, for whose achievement the study’s Evaluation Staff developed tests (Smith, Tyler, & Evaluation Staff 1942). Glaser (1941) showed experimentally that it was possible to improve the critical thinking of high school students. Bloom’s influential taxonomy of cognitive educational objectives (Bloom et al. 1956) incorporated critical thinking abilities. Ennis (1962) proposed 12 aspects of critical thinking as a basis for research on the teaching and evaluation of critical thinking ability.

Since 1980, an annual international conference in California on critical thinking and educational reform has attracted tens of thousands of educators from all levels of education and from many parts of the world. Also since 1980, the state university system in California has required all undergraduate students to take a critical thinking course. Since 1983, the Association for Informal Logic and Critical Thinking has sponsored sessions in conjunction with the divisional meetings of the American Philosophical Association (APA). In 1987, the APA’s Committee on Pre-College Philosophy commissioned a consensus statement on critical thinking for purposes of educational assessment and instruction (Facione 1990a). Researchers have developed standardized tests of critical thinking abilities and dispositions; for details, see the Supplement on Assessment . Educational jurisdictions around the world now include critical thinking in guidelines for curriculum and assessment.

For details on this history, see the Supplement on History .

2. Examples and Non-Examples

Before considering the definition of critical thinking, it will be helpful to have in mind some examples of critical thinking, as well as some examples of kinds of thinking that would apparently not count as critical thinking.

Dewey (1910: 68–71; 1933: 91–94) takes as paradigms of reflective thinking three class papers of students in which they describe their thinking. The examples range from the everyday to the scientific.

Transit : “The other day, when I was down town on 16th Street, a clock caught my eye. I saw that the hands pointed to 12:20. This suggested that I had an engagement at 124th Street, at one o’clock. I reasoned that as it had taken me an hour to come down on a surface car, I should probably be twenty minutes late if I returned the same way. I might save twenty minutes by a subway express. But was there a station near? If not, I might lose more than twenty minutes in looking for one. Then I thought of the elevated, and I saw there was such a line within two blocks. But where was the station? If it were several blocks above or below the street I was on, I should lose time instead of gaining it. My mind went back to the subway express as quicker than the elevated; furthermore, I remembered that it went nearer than the elevated to the part of 124th Street I wished to reach, so that time would be saved at the end of the journey. I concluded in favor of the subway, and reached my destination by one o’clock.” (Dewey 1910: 68–69; 1933: 91–92)

Ferryboat : “Projecting nearly horizontally from the upper deck of the ferryboat on which I daily cross the river is a long white pole, having a gilded ball at its tip. It suggested a flagpole when I first saw it; its color, shape, and gilded ball agreed with this idea, and these reasons seemed to justify me in this belief. But soon difficulties presented themselves. The pole was nearly horizontal, an unusual position for a flagpole; in the next place, there was no pulley, ring, or cord by which to attach a flag; finally, there were elsewhere on the boat two vertical staffs from which flags were occasionally flown. It seemed probable that the pole was not there for flag-flying.

“I then tried to imagine all possible purposes of the pole, and to consider for which of these it was best suited: (a) Possibly it was an ornament. But as all the ferryboats and even the tugboats carried poles, this hypothesis was rejected. (b) Possibly it was the terminal of a wireless telegraph. But the same considerations made this improbable. Besides, the more natural place for such a terminal would be the highest part of the boat, on top of the pilot house. (c) Its purpose might be to point out the direction in which the boat is moving.

“In support of this conclusion, I discovered that the pole was lower than the pilot house, so that the steersman could easily see it. Moreover, the tip was enough higher than the base, so that, from the pilot’s position, it must appear to project far out in front of the boat. Moreover, the pilot being near the front of the boat, he would need some such guide as to its direction. Tugboats would also need poles for such a purpose. This hypothesis was so much more probable than the others that I accepted it. I formed the conclusion that the pole was set up for the purpose of showing the pilot the direction in which the boat pointed, to enable him to steer correctly.” (Dewey 1910: 69–70; 1933: 92–93)

Bubbles : “In washing tumblers in hot soapsuds and placing them mouth downward on a plate, bubbles appeared on the outside of the mouth of the tumblers and then went inside. Why? The presence of bubbles suggests air, which I note must come from inside the tumbler. I see that the soapy water on the plate prevents escape of the air save as it may be caught in bubbles. But why should air leave the tumbler? There was no substance entering to force it out. It must have expanded. It expands by increase of heat, or by decrease of pressure, or both. Could the air have become heated after the tumbler was taken from the hot suds? Clearly not the air that was already entangled in the water. If heated air was the cause, cold air must have entered in transferring the tumblers from the suds to the plate. I test to see if this supposition is true by taking several more tumblers out. Some I shake so as to make sure of entrapping cold air in them. Some I take out holding mouth downward in order to prevent cold air from entering. Bubbles appear on the outside of every one of the former and on none of the latter. I must be right in my inference. Air from the outside must have been expanded by the heat of the tumbler, which explains the appearance of the bubbles on the outside. But why do they then go inside? Cold contracts. The tumbler cooled and also the air inside it. Tension was removed, and hence bubbles appeared inside. To be sure of this, I test by placing a cup of ice on the tumbler while the bubbles are still forming outside. They soon reverse” (Dewey 1910: 70–71; 1933: 93–94).

Dewey (1910, 1933) sprinkles his book with other examples of critical thinking. We will refer to the following.

Weather : A man on a walk notices that it has suddenly become cool, thinks that it is probably going to rain, looks up and sees a dark cloud obscuring the sun, and quickens his steps (1910: 6–10; 1933: 9–13).

Disorder : A man finds his rooms on his return to them in disorder with his belongings thrown about, thinks at first of burglary as an explanation, then thinks of mischievous children as being an alternative explanation, then looks to see whether valuables are missing, and discovers that they are (1910: 82–83; 1933: 166–168).

Typhoid : A physician diagnosing a patient whose conspicuous symptoms suggest typhoid avoids drawing a conclusion until more data are gathered by questioning the patient and by making tests (1910: 85–86; 1933: 170).

Blur : A moving blur catches our eye in the distance, we ask ourselves whether it is a cloud of whirling dust or a tree moving its branches or a man signaling to us, we think of other traits that should be found on each of those possibilities, and we look and see if those traits are found (1910: 102, 108; 1933: 121, 133).

Suction pump : In thinking about the suction pump, the scientist first notes that it will draw water only to a maximum height of 33 feet at sea level and to a lesser maximum height at higher elevations, selects for attention the differing atmospheric pressure at these elevations, sets up experiments in which the air is removed from a vessel containing water (when suction no longer works) and in which the weight of air at various levels is calculated, compares the results of reasoning about the height to which a given weight of air will allow a suction pump to raise water with the observed maximum height at different elevations, and finally assimilates the suction pump to such apparently different phenomena as the siphon and the rising of a balloon (1910: 150–153; 1933: 195–198).

Diamond : A passenger in a car driving in a diamond lane reserved for vehicles with at least one passenger notices that the diamond marks on the pavement are far apart in some places and close together in others. Why? The driver suggests that the reason may be that the diamond marks are not needed where there is a solid double line separating the diamond lane from the adjoining lane, but are needed when there is a dotted single line permitting crossing into the diamond lane. Further observation confirms that the diamonds are close together when a dotted line separates the diamond lane from its neighbour, but otherwise far apart.

Rash : A woman suddenly develops a very itchy red rash on her throat and upper chest. She recently noticed a mark on the back of her right hand, but was not sure whether the mark was a rash or a scrape. She lies down in bed and thinks about what might be causing the rash and what to do about it. About two weeks before, she began taking blood pressure medication that contained a sulfa drug, and the pharmacist had warned her, in view of a previous allergic reaction to a medication containing a sulfa drug, to be on the alert for an allergic reaction; however, she had been taking the medication for two weeks with no such effect. The day before, she began using a new cream on her neck and upper chest; against the new cream as the cause was mark on the back of her hand, which had not been exposed to the cream. She began taking probiotics about a month before. She also recently started new eye drops, but she supposed that manufacturers of eye drops would be careful not to include allergy-causing components in the medication. The rash might be a heat rash, since she recently was sweating profusely from her upper body. Since she is about to go away on a short vacation, where she would not have access to her usual physician, she decides to keep taking the probiotics and using the new eye drops but to discontinue the blood pressure medication and to switch back to the old cream for her neck and upper chest. She forms a plan to consult her regular physician on her return about the blood pressure medication.

Candidate : Although Dewey included no examples of thinking directed at appraising the arguments of others, such thinking has come to be considered a kind of critical thinking. We find an example of such thinking in the performance task on the Collegiate Learning Assessment (CLA+), which its sponsoring organization describes as

a performance-based assessment that provides a measure of an institution’s contribution to the development of critical-thinking and written communication skills of its students. (Council for Aid to Education 2017)

A sample task posted on its website requires the test-taker to write a report for public distribution evaluating a fictional candidate’s policy proposals and their supporting arguments, using supplied background documents, with a recommendation on whether to endorse the candidate.

Immediate acceptance of an idea that suggests itself as a solution to a problem (e.g., a possible explanation of an event or phenomenon, an action that seems likely to produce a desired result) is “uncritical thinking, the minimum of reflection” (Dewey 1910: 13). On-going suspension of judgment in the light of doubt about a possible solution is not critical thinking (Dewey 1910: 108). Critique driven by a dogmatically held political or religious ideology is not critical thinking; thus Paulo Freire (1968 [1970]) is using the term (e.g., at 1970: 71, 81, 100, 146) in a more politically freighted sense that includes not only reflection but also revolutionary action against oppression. Derivation of a conclusion from given data using an algorithm is not critical thinking.

What is critical thinking? There are many definitions. Ennis (2016) lists 14 philosophically oriented scholarly definitions and three dictionary definitions. Following Rawls (1971), who distinguished his conception of justice from a utilitarian conception but regarded them as rival conceptions of the same concept, Ennis maintains that the 17 definitions are different conceptions of the same concept. Rawls articulated the shared concept of justice as

a characteristic set of principles for assigning basic rights and duties and for determining… the proper distribution of the benefits and burdens of social cooperation. (Rawls 1971: 5)

Bailin et al. (1999b) claim that, if one considers what sorts of thinking an educator would take not to be critical thinking and what sorts to be critical thinking, one can conclude that educators typically understand critical thinking to have at least three features.

• It is done for the purpose of making up one’s mind about what to believe or do.
• The person engaging in the thinking is trying to fulfill standards of adequacy and accuracy appropriate to the thinking.
• The thinking fulfills the relevant standards to some threshold level.

One could sum up the core concept that involves these three features by saying that critical thinking is careful goal-directed thinking. This core concept seems to apply to all the examples of critical thinking described in the previous section. As for the non-examples, their exclusion depends on construing careful thinking as excluding jumping immediately to conclusions, suspending judgment no matter how strong the evidence, reasoning from an unquestioned ideological or religious perspective, and routinely using an algorithm to answer a question.

If the core of critical thinking is careful goal-directed thinking, conceptions of it can vary according to its presumed scope, its presumed goal, one’s criteria and threshold for being careful, and the thinking component on which one focuses. As to its scope, some conceptions (e.g., Dewey 1910, 1933) restrict it to constructive thinking on the basis of one’s own observations and experiments, others (e.g., Ennis 1962; Fisher & Scriven 1997; Johnson 1992) to appraisal of the products of such thinking. Ennis (1991) and Bailin et al. (1999b) take it to cover both construction and appraisal. As to its goal, some conceptions restrict it to forming a judgment (Dewey 1910, 1933; Lipman 1987; Facione 1990a). Others allow for actions as well as beliefs as the end point of a process of critical thinking (Ennis 1991; Bailin et al. 1999b). As to the criteria and threshold for being careful, definitions vary in the term used to indicate that critical thinking satisfies certain norms: “intellectually disciplined” (Scriven & Paul 1987), “reasonable” (Ennis 1991), “skillful” (Lipman 1987), “skilled” (Fisher & Scriven 1997), “careful” (Bailin & Battersby 2009). Some definitions specify these norms, referring variously to “consideration of any belief or supposed form of knowledge in the light of the grounds that support it and the further conclusions to which it tends” (Dewey 1910, 1933); “the methods of logical inquiry and reasoning” (Glaser 1941); “conceptualizing, applying, analyzing, synthesizing, and/or evaluating information gathered from, or generated by, observation, experience, reflection, reasoning, or communication” (Scriven & Paul 1987); the requirement that “it is sensitive to context, relies on criteria, and is self-correcting” (Lipman 1987); “evidential, conceptual, methodological, criteriological, or contextual considerations” (Facione 1990a); and “plus-minus considerations of the product in terms of appropriate standards (or criteria)” (Johnson 1992). Stanovich and Stanovich (2010) propose to ground the concept of critical thinking in the concept of rationality, which they understand as combining epistemic rationality (fitting one’s beliefs to the world) and instrumental rationality (optimizing goal fulfillment); a critical thinker, in their view, is someone with “a propensity to override suboptimal responses from the autonomous mind” (2010: 227). These variant specifications of norms for critical thinking are not necessarily incompatible with one another, and in any case presuppose the core notion of thinking carefully. As to the thinking component singled out, some definitions focus on suspension of judgment during the thinking (Dewey 1910; McPeck 1981), others on inquiry while judgment is suspended (Bailin & Battersby 2009, 2021), others on the resulting judgment (Facione 1990a), and still others on responsiveness to reasons (Siegel 1988). Kuhn (2019) takes critical thinking to be more a dialogic practice of advancing and responding to arguments than an individual ability.

In educational contexts, a definition of critical thinking is a “programmatic definition” (Scheffler 1960: 19). It expresses a practical program for achieving an educational goal. For this purpose, a one-sentence formulaic definition is much less useful than articulation of a critical thinking process, with criteria and standards for the kinds of thinking that the process may involve. The real educational goal is recognition, adoption and implementation by students of those criteria and standards. That adoption and implementation in turn consists in acquiring the knowledge, abilities and dispositions of a critical thinker.

Conceptions of critical thinking generally do not include moral integrity as part of the concept. Dewey, for example, took critical thinking to be the ultimate intellectual goal of education, but distinguished it from the development of social cooperation among school children, which he took to be the central moral goal. Ennis (1996, 2011) added to his previous list of critical thinking dispositions a group of dispositions to care about the dignity and worth of every person, which he described as a “correlative” (1996) disposition without which critical thinking would be less valuable and perhaps harmful. An educational program that aimed at developing critical thinking but not the correlative disposition to care about the dignity and worth of every person, he asserted, “would be deficient and perhaps dangerous” (Ennis 1996: 172).

Dewey thought that education for reflective thinking would be of value to both the individual and society; recognition in educational practice of the kinship to the scientific attitude of children’s native curiosity, fertile imagination and love of experimental inquiry “would make for individual happiness and the reduction of social waste” (Dewey 1910: iii). Schools participating in the Eight-Year Study took development of the habit of reflective thinking and skill in solving problems as a means to leading young people to understand, appreciate and live the democratic way of life characteristic of the United States (Aikin 1942: 17–18, 81). Harvey Siegel (1988: 55–61) has offered four considerations in support of adopting critical thinking as an educational ideal. (1) Respect for persons requires that schools and teachers honour students’ demands for reasons and explanations, deal with students honestly, and recognize the need to confront students’ independent judgment; these requirements concern the manner in which teachers treat students. (2) Education has the task of preparing children to be successful adults, a task that requires development of their self-sufficiency. (3) Education should initiate children into the rational traditions in such fields as history, science and mathematics. (4) Education should prepare children to become democratic citizens, which requires reasoned procedures and critical talents and attitudes. To supplement these considerations, Siegel (1988: 62–90) responds to two objections: the ideology objection that adoption of any educational ideal requires a prior ideological commitment and the indoctrination objection that cultivation of critical thinking cannot escape being a form of indoctrination.

Despite the diversity of our 11 examples, one can recognize a common pattern. Dewey analyzed it as consisting of five phases:

• suggestions , in which the mind leaps forward to a possible solution;
• an intellectualization of the difficulty or perplexity into a problem to be solved, a question for which the answer must be sought;
• the use of one suggestion after another as a leading idea, or hypothesis , to initiate and guide observation and other operations in collection of factual material;
• the mental elaboration of the idea or supposition as an idea or supposition ( reasoning , in the sense on which reasoning is a part, not the whole, of inference); and
• testing the hypothesis by overt or imaginative action. (Dewey 1933: 106–107; italics in original)

The process of reflective thinking consisting of these phases would be preceded by a perplexed, troubled or confused situation and followed by a cleared-up, unified, resolved situation (Dewey 1933: 106). The term ‘phases’ replaced the term ‘steps’ (Dewey 1910: 72), thus removing the earlier suggestion of an invariant sequence. Variants of the above analysis appeared in (Dewey 1916: 177) and (Dewey 1938: 101–119).

The variant formulations indicate the difficulty of giving a single logical analysis of such a varied process. The process of critical thinking may have a spiral pattern, with the problem being redefined in the light of obstacles to solving it as originally formulated. For example, the person in Transit might have concluded that getting to the appointment at the scheduled time was impossible and have reformulated the problem as that of rescheduling the appointment for a mutually convenient time. Further, defining a problem does not always follow after or lead immediately to an idea of a suggested solution. Nor should it do so, as Dewey himself recognized in describing the physician in Typhoid as avoiding any strong preference for this or that conclusion before getting further information (Dewey 1910: 85; 1933: 170). People with a hypothesis in mind, even one to which they have a very weak commitment, have a so-called “confirmation bias” (Nickerson 1998): they are likely to pay attention to evidence that confirms the hypothesis and to ignore evidence that counts against it or for some competing hypothesis. Detectives, intelligence agencies, and investigators of airplane accidents are well advised to gather relevant evidence systematically and to postpone even tentative adoption of an explanatory hypothesis until the collected evidence rules out with the appropriate degree of certainty all but one explanation. Dewey’s analysis of the critical thinking process can be faulted as well for requiring acceptance or rejection of a possible solution to a defined problem, with no allowance for deciding in the light of the available evidence to suspend judgment. Further, given the great variety of kinds of problems for which reflection is appropriate, there is likely to be variation in its component events. Perhaps the best way to conceptualize the critical thinking process is as a checklist whose component events can occur in a variety of orders, selectively, and more than once. These component events might include (1) noticing a difficulty, (2) defining the problem, (3) dividing the problem into manageable sub-problems, (4) formulating a variety of possible solutions to the problem or sub-problem, (5) determining what evidence is relevant to deciding among possible solutions to the problem or sub-problem, (6) devising a plan of systematic observation or experiment that will uncover the relevant evidence, (7) carrying out the plan of systematic observation or experimentation, (8) noting the results of the systematic observation or experiment, (9) gathering relevant testimony and information from others, (10) judging the credibility of testimony and information gathered from others, (11) drawing conclusions from gathered evidence and accepted testimony, and (12) accepting a solution that the evidence adequately supports (cf. Hitchcock 2017: 485).

Checklist conceptions of the process of critical thinking are open to the objection that they are too mechanical and procedural to fit the multi-dimensional and emotionally charged issues for which critical thinking is urgently needed (Paul 1984). For such issues, a more dialectical process is advocated, in which competing relevant world views are identified, their implications explored, and some sort of creative synthesis attempted.

If one considers the critical thinking process illustrated by the 11 examples, one can identify distinct kinds of mental acts and mental states that form part of it. To distinguish, label and briefly characterize these components is a useful preliminary to identifying abilities, skills, dispositions, attitudes, habits and the like that contribute causally to thinking critically. Identifying such abilities and habits is in turn a useful preliminary to setting educational goals. Setting the goals is in its turn a useful preliminary to designing strategies for helping learners to achieve the goals and to designing ways of measuring the extent to which learners have done so. Such measures provide both feedback to learners on their achievement and a basis for experimental research on the effectiveness of various strategies for educating people to think critically. Let us begin, then, by distinguishing the kinds of mental acts and mental events that can occur in a critical thinking process.

• Observing : One notices something in one’s immediate environment (sudden cooling of temperature in Weather , bubbles forming outside a glass and then going inside in Bubbles , a moving blur in the distance in Blur , a rash in Rash ). Or one notes the results of an experiment or systematic observation (valuables missing in Disorder , no suction without air pressure in Suction pump )
• Feeling : One feels puzzled or uncertain about something (how to get to an appointment on time in Transit , why the diamonds vary in spacing in Diamond ). One wants to resolve this perplexity. One feels satisfaction once one has worked out an answer (to take the subway express in Transit , diamonds closer when needed as a warning in Diamond ).
• Wondering : One formulates a question to be addressed (why bubbles form outside a tumbler taken from hot water in Bubbles , how suction pumps work in Suction pump , what caused the rash in Rash ).
• Imagining : One thinks of possible answers (bus or subway or elevated in Transit , flagpole or ornament or wireless communication aid or direction indicator in Ferryboat , allergic reaction or heat rash in Rash ).
• Inferring : One works out what would be the case if a possible answer were assumed (valuables missing if there has been a burglary in Disorder , earlier start to the rash if it is an allergic reaction to a sulfa drug in Rash ). Or one draws a conclusion once sufficient relevant evidence is gathered (take the subway in Transit , burglary in Disorder , discontinue blood pressure medication and new cream in Rash ).
• Knowledge : One uses stored knowledge of the subject-matter to generate possible answers or to infer what would be expected on the assumption of a particular answer (knowledge of a city’s public transit system in Transit , of the requirements for a flagpole in Ferryboat , of Boyle’s law in Bubbles , of allergic reactions in Rash ).
• Experimenting : One designs and carries out an experiment or a systematic observation to find out whether the results deduced from a possible answer will occur (looking at the location of the flagpole in relation to the pilot’s position in Ferryboat , putting an ice cube on top of a tumbler taken from hot water in Bubbles , measuring the height to which a suction pump will draw water at different elevations in Suction pump , noticing the spacing of diamonds when movement to or from a diamond lane is allowed in Diamond ).
• Consulting : One finds a source of information, gets the information from the source, and makes a judgment on whether to accept it. None of our 11 examples include searching for sources of information. In this respect they are unrepresentative, since most people nowadays have almost instant access to information relevant to answering any question, including many of those illustrated by the examples. However, Candidate includes the activities of extracting information from sources and evaluating its credibility.
• Identifying and analyzing arguments : One notices an argument and works out its structure and content as a preliminary to evaluating its strength. This activity is central to Candidate . It is an important part of a critical thinking process in which one surveys arguments for various positions on an issue.
• Judging : One makes a judgment on the basis of accumulated evidence and reasoning, such as the judgment in Ferryboat that the purpose of the pole is to provide direction to the pilot.
• Deciding : One makes a decision on what to do or on what policy to adopt, as in the decision in Transit to take the subway.

By definition, a person who does something voluntarily is both willing and able to do that thing at that time. Both the willingness and the ability contribute causally to the person’s action, in the sense that the voluntary action would not occur if either (or both) of these were lacking. For example, suppose that one is standing with one’s arms at one’s sides and one voluntarily lifts one’s right arm to an extended horizontal position. One would not do so if one were unable to lift one’s arm, if for example one’s right side was paralyzed as the result of a stroke. Nor would one do so if one were unwilling to lift one’s arm, if for example one were participating in a street demonstration at which a white supremacist was urging the crowd to lift their right arm in a Nazi salute and one were unwilling to express support in this way for the racist Nazi ideology. The same analysis applies to a voluntary mental process of thinking critically. It requires both willingness and ability to think critically, including willingness and ability to perform each of the mental acts that compose the process and to coordinate those acts in a sequence that is directed at resolving the initiating perplexity.

Consider willingness first. We can identify causal contributors to willingness to think critically by considering factors that would cause a person who was able to think critically about an issue nevertheless not to do so (Hamby 2014). For each factor, the opposite condition thus contributes causally to willingness to think critically on a particular occasion. For example, people who habitually jump to conclusions without considering alternatives will not think critically about issues that arise, even if they have the required abilities. The contrary condition of willingness to suspend judgment is thus a causal contributor to thinking critically.

Now consider ability. In contrast to the ability to move one’s arm, which can be completely absent because a stroke has left the arm paralyzed, the ability to think critically is a developed ability, whose absence is not a complete absence of ability to think but absence of ability to think well. We can identify the ability to think well directly, in terms of the norms and standards for good thinking. In general, to be able do well the thinking activities that can be components of a critical thinking process, one needs to know the concepts and principles that characterize their good performance, to recognize in particular cases that the concepts and principles apply, and to apply them. The knowledge, recognition and application may be procedural rather than declarative. It may be domain-specific rather than widely applicable, and in either case may need subject-matter knowledge, sometimes of a deep kind.

Reflections of the sort illustrated by the previous two paragraphs have led scholars to identify the knowledge, abilities and dispositions of a “critical thinker”, i.e., someone who thinks critically whenever it is appropriate to do so. We turn now to these three types of causal contributors to thinking critically. We start with dispositions, since arguably these are the most powerful contributors to being a critical thinker, can be fostered at an early stage of a child’s development, and are susceptible to general improvement (Glaser 1941: 175)

8. Critical Thinking Dispositions

Educational researchers use the term ‘dispositions’ broadly for the habits of mind and attitudes that contribute causally to being a critical thinker. Some writers (e.g., Paul & Elder 2006; Hamby 2014; Bailin & Battersby 2016a) propose to use the term ‘virtues’ for this dimension of a critical thinker. The virtues in question, although they are virtues of character, concern the person’s ways of thinking rather than the person’s ways of behaving towards others. They are not moral virtues but intellectual virtues, of the sort articulated by Zagzebski (1996) and discussed by Turri, Alfano, and Greco (2017).

On a realistic conception, thinking dispositions or intellectual virtues are real properties of thinkers. They are general tendencies, propensities, or inclinations to think in particular ways in particular circumstances, and can be genuinely explanatory (Siegel 1999). Sceptics argue that there is no evidence for a specific mental basis for the habits of mind that contribute to thinking critically, and that it is pedagogically misleading to posit such a basis (Bailin et al. 1999a). Whatever their status, critical thinking dispositions need motivation for their initial formation in a child—motivation that may be external or internal. As children develop, the force of habit will gradually become important in sustaining the disposition (Nieto & Valenzuela 2012). Mere force of habit, however, is unlikely to sustain critical thinking dispositions. Critical thinkers must value and enjoy using their knowledge and abilities to think things through for themselves. They must be committed to, and lovers of, inquiry.

A person may have a critical thinking disposition with respect to only some kinds of issues. For example, one could be open-minded about scientific issues but not about religious issues. Similarly, one could be confident in one’s ability to reason about the theological implications of the existence of evil in the world but not in one’s ability to reason about the best design for a guided ballistic missile.

Facione (1990a: 25) divides “affective dispositions” of critical thinking into approaches to life and living in general and approaches to specific issues, questions or problems. Adapting this distinction, one can usefully divide critical thinking dispositions into initiating dispositions (those that contribute causally to starting to think critically about an issue) and internal dispositions (those that contribute causally to doing a good job of thinking critically once one has started). The two categories are not mutually exclusive. For example, open-mindedness, in the sense of willingness to consider alternative points of view to one’s own, is both an initiating and an internal disposition.

Using the strategy of considering factors that would block people with the ability to think critically from doing so, we can identify as initiating dispositions for thinking critically attentiveness, a habit of inquiry, self-confidence, courage, open-mindedness, willingness to suspend judgment, trust in reason, wanting evidence for one’s beliefs, and seeking the truth. We consider briefly what each of these dispositions amounts to, in each case citing sources that acknowledge them.

• Attentiveness : One will not think critically if one fails to recognize an issue that needs to be thought through. For example, the pedestrian in Weather would not have looked up if he had not noticed that the air was suddenly cooler. To be a critical thinker, then, one needs to be habitually attentive to one’s surroundings, noticing not only what one senses but also sources of perplexity in messages received and in one’s own beliefs and attitudes (Facione 1990a: 25; Facione, Facione, & Giancarlo 2001).
• Habit of inquiry : Inquiry is effortful, and one needs an internal push to engage in it. For example, the student in Bubbles could easily have stopped at idle wondering about the cause of the bubbles rather than reasoning to a hypothesis, then designing and executing an experiment to test it. Thus willingness to think critically needs mental energy and initiative. What can supply that energy? Love of inquiry, or perhaps just a habit of inquiry. Hamby (2015) has argued that willingness to inquire is the central critical thinking virtue, one that encompasses all the others. It is recognized as a critical thinking disposition by Dewey (1910: 29; 1933: 35), Glaser (1941: 5), Ennis (1987: 12; 1991: 8), Facione (1990a: 25), Bailin et al. (1999b: 294), Halpern (1998: 452), and Facione, Facione, & Giancarlo (2001).
• Self-confidence : Lack of confidence in one’s abilities can block critical thinking. For example, if the woman in Rash lacked confidence in her ability to figure things out for herself, she might just have assumed that the rash on her chest was the allergic reaction to her medication against which the pharmacist had warned her. Thus willingness to think critically requires confidence in one’s ability to inquire (Facione 1990a: 25; Facione, Facione, & Giancarlo 2001).
• Courage : Fear of thinking for oneself can stop one from doing it. Thus willingness to think critically requires intellectual courage (Paul & Elder 2006: 16).
• Open-mindedness : A dogmatic attitude will impede thinking critically. For example, a person who adheres rigidly to a “pro-choice” position on the issue of the legal status of induced abortion is likely to be unwilling to consider seriously the issue of when in its development an unborn child acquires a moral right to life. Thus willingness to think critically requires open-mindedness, in the sense of a willingness to examine questions to which one already accepts an answer but which further evidence or reasoning might cause one to answer differently (Dewey 1933; Facione 1990a; Ennis 1991; Bailin et al. 1999b; Halpern 1998, Facione, Facione, & Giancarlo 2001). Paul (1981) emphasizes open-mindedness about alternative world-views, and recommends a dialectical approach to integrating such views as central to what he calls “strong sense” critical thinking. In three studies, Haran, Ritov, & Mellers (2013) found that actively open-minded thinking, including “the tendency to weigh new evidence against a favored belief, to spend sufficient time on a problem before giving up, and to consider carefully the opinions of others in forming one’s own”, led study participants to acquire information and thus to make accurate estimations.
• Willingness to suspend judgment : Premature closure on an initial solution will block critical thinking. Thus willingness to think critically requires a willingness to suspend judgment while alternatives are explored (Facione 1990a; Ennis 1991; Halpern 1998).
• Trust in reason : Since distrust in the processes of reasoned inquiry will dissuade one from engaging in it, trust in them is an initiating critical thinking disposition (Facione 1990a, 25; Bailin et al. 1999b: 294; Facione, Facione, & Giancarlo 2001; Paul & Elder 2006). In reaction to an allegedly exclusive emphasis on reason in critical thinking theory and pedagogy, Thayer-Bacon (2000) argues that intuition, imagination, and emotion have important roles to play in an adequate conception of critical thinking that she calls “constructive thinking”. From her point of view, critical thinking requires trust not only in reason but also in intuition, imagination, and emotion.
• Seeking the truth : If one does not care about the truth but is content to stick with one’s initial bias on an issue, then one will not think critically about it. Seeking the truth is thus an initiating critical thinking disposition (Bailin et al. 1999b: 294; Facione, Facione, & Giancarlo 2001). A disposition to seek the truth is implicit in more specific critical thinking dispositions, such as trying to be well-informed, considering seriously points of view other than one’s own, looking for alternatives, suspending judgment when the evidence is insufficient, and adopting a position when the evidence supporting it is sufficient.

Some of the initiating dispositions, such as open-mindedness and willingness to suspend judgment, are also internal critical thinking dispositions, in the sense of mental habits or attitudes that contribute causally to doing a good job of critical thinking once one starts the process. But there are many other internal critical thinking dispositions. Some of them are parasitic on one’s conception of good thinking. For example, it is constitutive of good thinking about an issue to formulate the issue clearly and to maintain focus on it. For this purpose, one needs not only the corresponding ability but also the corresponding disposition. Ennis (1991: 8) describes it as the disposition “to determine and maintain focus on the conclusion or question”, Facione (1990a: 25) as “clarity in stating the question or concern”. Other internal dispositions are motivators to continue or adjust the critical thinking process, such as willingness to persist in a complex task and willingness to abandon nonproductive strategies in an attempt to self-correct (Halpern 1998: 452). For a list of identified internal critical thinking dispositions, see the Supplement on Internal Critical Thinking Dispositions .

Some theorists postulate skills, i.e., acquired abilities, as operative in critical thinking. It is not obvious, however, that a good mental act is the exercise of a generic acquired skill. Inferring an expected time of arrival, as in Transit , has some generic components but also uses non-generic subject-matter knowledge. Bailin et al. (1999a) argue against viewing critical thinking skills as generic and discrete, on the ground that skilled performance at a critical thinking task cannot be separated from knowledge of concepts and from domain-specific principles of good thinking. Talk of skills, they concede, is unproblematic if it means merely that a person with critical thinking skills is capable of intelligent performance.

Despite such scepticism, theorists of critical thinking have listed as general contributors to critical thinking what they variously call abilities (Glaser 1941; Ennis 1962, 1991), skills (Facione 1990a; Halpern 1998) or competencies (Fisher & Scriven 1997). Amalgamating these lists would produce a confusing and chaotic cornucopia of more than 50 possible educational objectives, with only partial overlap among them. It makes sense instead to try to understand the reasons for the multiplicity and diversity, and to make a selection according to one’s own reasons for singling out abilities to be developed in a critical thinking curriculum. Two reasons for diversity among lists of critical thinking abilities are the underlying conception of critical thinking and the envisaged educational level. Appraisal-only conceptions, for example, involve a different suite of abilities than constructive-only conceptions. Some lists, such as those in (Glaser 1941), are put forward as educational objectives for secondary school students, whereas others are proposed as objectives for college students (e.g., Facione 1990a).

The abilities described in the remaining paragraphs of this section emerge from reflection on the general abilities needed to do well the thinking activities identified in section 6 as components of the critical thinking process described in section 5 . The derivation of each collection of abilities is accompanied by citation of sources that list such abilities and of standardized tests that claim to test them.

Observational abilities : Careful and accurate observation sometimes requires specialist expertise and practice, as in the case of observing birds and observing accident scenes. However, there are general abilities of noticing what one’s senses are picking up from one’s environment and of being able to articulate clearly and accurately to oneself and others what one has observed. It helps in exercising them to be able to recognize and take into account factors that make one’s observation less trustworthy, such as prior framing of the situation, inadequate time, deficient senses, poor observation conditions, and the like. It helps as well to be skilled at taking steps to make one’s observation more trustworthy, such as moving closer to get a better look, measuring something three times and taking the average, and checking what one thinks one is observing with someone else who is in a good position to observe it. It also helps to be skilled at recognizing respects in which one’s report of one’s observation involves inference rather than direct observation, so that one can then consider whether the inference is justified. These abilities come into play as well when one thinks about whether and with what degree of confidence to accept an observation report, for example in the study of history or in a criminal investigation or in assessing news reports. Observational abilities show up in some lists of critical thinking abilities (Ennis 1962: 90; Facione 1990a: 16; Ennis 1991: 9). There are items testing a person’s ability to judge the credibility of observation reports in the Cornell Critical Thinking Tests, Levels X and Z (Ennis & Millman 1971; Ennis, Millman, & Tomko 1985, 2005). Norris and King (1983, 1985, 1990a, 1990b) is a test of ability to appraise observation reports.

Emotional abilities : The emotions that drive a critical thinking process are perplexity or puzzlement, a wish to resolve it, and satisfaction at achieving the desired resolution. Children experience these emotions at an early age, without being trained to do so. Education that takes critical thinking as a goal needs only to channel these emotions and to make sure not to stifle them. Collaborative critical thinking benefits from ability to recognize one’s own and others’ emotional commitments and reactions.

Questioning abilities : A critical thinking process needs transformation of an inchoate sense of perplexity into a clear question. Formulating a question well requires not building in questionable assumptions, not prejudging the issue, and using language that in context is unambiguous and precise enough (Ennis 1962: 97; 1991: 9).

Imaginative abilities : Thinking directed at finding the correct causal explanation of a general phenomenon or particular event requires an ability to imagine possible explanations. Thinking about what policy or plan of action to adopt requires generation of options and consideration of possible consequences of each option. Domain knowledge is required for such creative activity, but a general ability to imagine alternatives is helpful and can be nurtured so as to become easier, quicker, more extensive, and deeper (Dewey 1910: 34–39; 1933: 40–47). Facione (1990a) and Halpern (1998) include the ability to imagine alternatives as a critical thinking ability.

Inferential abilities : The ability to draw conclusions from given information, and to recognize with what degree of certainty one’s own or others’ conclusions follow, is universally recognized as a general critical thinking ability. All 11 examples in section 2 of this article include inferences, some from hypotheses or options (as in Transit , Ferryboat and Disorder ), others from something observed (as in Weather and Rash ). None of these inferences is formally valid. Rather, they are licensed by general, sometimes qualified substantive rules of inference (Toulmin 1958) that rest on domain knowledge—that a bus trip takes about the same time in each direction, that the terminal of a wireless telegraph would be located on the highest possible place, that sudden cooling is often followed by rain, that an allergic reaction to a sulfa drug generally shows up soon after one starts taking it. It is a matter of controversy to what extent the specialized ability to deduce conclusions from premisses using formal rules of inference is needed for critical thinking. Dewey (1933) locates logical forms in setting out the products of reflection rather than in the process of reflection. Ennis (1981a), on the other hand, maintains that a liberally-educated person should have the following abilities: to translate natural-language statements into statements using the standard logical operators, to use appropriately the language of necessary and sufficient conditions, to deal with argument forms and arguments containing symbols, to determine whether in virtue of an argument’s form its conclusion follows necessarily from its premisses, to reason with logically complex propositions, and to apply the rules and procedures of deductive logic. Inferential abilities are recognized as critical thinking abilities by Glaser (1941: 6), Facione (1990a: 9), Ennis (1991: 9), Fisher & Scriven (1997: 99, 111), and Halpern (1998: 452). Items testing inferential abilities constitute two of the five subtests of the Watson Glaser Critical Thinking Appraisal (Watson & Glaser 1980a, 1980b, 1994), two of the four sections in the Cornell Critical Thinking Test Level X (Ennis & Millman 1971; Ennis, Millman, & Tomko 1985, 2005), three of the seven sections in the Cornell Critical Thinking Test Level Z (Ennis & Millman 1971; Ennis, Millman, & Tomko 1985, 2005), 11 of the 34 items on Forms A and B of the California Critical Thinking Skills Test (Facione 1990b, 1992), and a high but variable proportion of the 25 selected-response questions in the Collegiate Learning Assessment (Council for Aid to Education 2017).

Experimenting abilities : Knowing how to design and execute an experiment is important not just in scientific research but also in everyday life, as in Rash . Dewey devoted a whole chapter of his How We Think (1910: 145–156; 1933: 190–202) to the superiority of experimentation over observation in advancing knowledge. Experimenting abilities come into play at one remove in appraising reports of scientific studies. Skill in designing and executing experiments includes the acknowledged abilities to appraise evidence (Glaser 1941: 6), to carry out experiments and to apply appropriate statistical inference techniques (Facione 1990a: 9), to judge inductions to an explanatory hypothesis (Ennis 1991: 9), and to recognize the need for an adequately large sample size (Halpern 1998). The Cornell Critical Thinking Test Level Z (Ennis & Millman 1971; Ennis, Millman, & Tomko 1985, 2005) includes four items (out of 52) on experimental design. The Collegiate Learning Assessment (Council for Aid to Education 2017) makes room for appraisal of study design in both its performance task and its selected-response questions.

Consulting abilities : Skill at consulting sources of information comes into play when one seeks information to help resolve a problem, as in Candidate . Ability to find and appraise information includes ability to gather and marshal pertinent information (Glaser 1941: 6), to judge whether a statement made by an alleged authority is acceptable (Ennis 1962: 84), to plan a search for desired information (Facione 1990a: 9), and to judge the credibility of a source (Ennis 1991: 9). Ability to judge the credibility of statements is tested by 24 items (out of 76) in the Cornell Critical Thinking Test Level X (Ennis & Millman 1971; Ennis, Millman, & Tomko 1985, 2005) and by four items (out of 52) in the Cornell Critical Thinking Test Level Z (Ennis & Millman 1971; Ennis, Millman, & Tomko 1985, 2005). The College Learning Assessment’s performance task requires evaluation of whether information in documents is credible or unreliable (Council for Aid to Education 2017).

Argument analysis abilities : The ability to identify and analyze arguments contributes to the process of surveying arguments on an issue in order to form one’s own reasoned judgment, as in Candidate . The ability to detect and analyze arguments is recognized as a critical thinking skill by Facione (1990a: 7–8), Ennis (1991: 9) and Halpern (1998). Five items (out of 34) on the California Critical Thinking Skills Test (Facione 1990b, 1992) test skill at argument analysis. The College Learning Assessment (Council for Aid to Education 2017) incorporates argument analysis in its selected-response tests of critical reading and evaluation and of critiquing an argument.

Judging skills and deciding skills : Skill at judging and deciding is skill at recognizing what judgment or decision the available evidence and argument supports, and with what degree of confidence. It is thus a component of the inferential skills already discussed.

Lists and tests of critical thinking abilities often include two more abilities: identifying assumptions and constructing and evaluating definitions.

In addition to dispositions and abilities, critical thinking needs knowledge: of critical thinking concepts, of critical thinking principles, and of the subject-matter of the thinking.

We can derive a short list of concepts whose understanding contributes to critical thinking from the critical thinking abilities described in the preceding section. Observational abilities require an understanding of the difference between observation and inference. Questioning abilities require an understanding of the concepts of ambiguity and vagueness. Inferential abilities require an understanding of the difference between conclusive and defeasible inference (traditionally, between deduction and induction), as well as of the difference between necessary and sufficient conditions. Experimenting abilities require an understanding of the concepts of hypothesis, null hypothesis, assumption and prediction, as well as of the concept of statistical significance and of its difference from importance. They also require an understanding of the difference between an experiment and an observational study, and in particular of the difference between a randomized controlled trial, a prospective correlational study and a retrospective (case-control) study. Argument analysis abilities require an understanding of the concepts of argument, premiss, assumption, conclusion and counter-consideration. Additional critical thinking concepts are proposed by Bailin et al. (1999b: 293), Fisher & Scriven (1997: 105–106), Black (2012), and Blair (2021).

According to Glaser (1941: 25), ability to think critically requires knowledge of the methods of logical inquiry and reasoning. If we review the list of abilities in the preceding section, however, we can see that some of them can be acquired and exercised merely through practice, possibly guided in an educational setting, followed by feedback. Searching intelligently for a causal explanation of some phenomenon or event requires that one consider a full range of possible causal contributors, but it seems more important that one implements this principle in one’s practice than that one is able to articulate it. What is important is “operational knowledge” of the standards and principles of good thinking (Bailin et al. 1999b: 291–293). But the development of such critical thinking abilities as designing an experiment or constructing an operational definition can benefit from learning their underlying theory. Further, explicit knowledge of quirks of human thinking seems useful as a cautionary guide. Human memory is not just fallible about details, as people learn from their own experiences of misremembering, but is so malleable that a detailed, clear and vivid recollection of an event can be a total fabrication (Loftus 2017). People seek or interpret evidence in ways that are partial to their existing beliefs and expectations, often unconscious of their “confirmation bias” (Nickerson 1998). Not only are people subject to this and other cognitive biases (Kahneman 2011), of which they are typically unaware, but it may be counter-productive for one to make oneself aware of them and try consciously to counteract them or to counteract social biases such as racial or sexual stereotypes (Kenyon & Beaulac 2014). It is helpful to be aware of these facts and of the superior effectiveness of blocking the operation of biases—for example, by making an immediate record of one’s observations, refraining from forming a preliminary explanatory hypothesis, blind refereeing, double-blind randomized trials, and blind grading of students’ work. It is also helpful to be aware of the prevalence of “noise” (unwanted unsystematic variability of judgments), of how to detect noise (through a noise audit), and of how to reduce noise: make accuracy the goal, think statistically, break a process of arriving at a judgment into independent tasks, resist premature intuitions, in a group get independent judgments first, favour comparative judgments and scales (Kahneman, Sibony, & Sunstein 2021). It is helpful as well to be aware of the concept of “bounded rationality” in decision-making and of the related distinction between “satisficing” and optimizing (Simon 1956; Gigerenzer 2001).

Critical thinking about an issue requires substantive knowledge of the domain to which the issue belongs. Critical thinking abilities are not a magic elixir that can be applied to any issue whatever by somebody who has no knowledge of the facts relevant to exploring that issue. For example, the student in Bubbles needed to know that gases do not penetrate solid objects like a glass, that air expands when heated, that the volume of an enclosed gas varies directly with its temperature and inversely with its pressure, and that hot objects will spontaneously cool down to the ambient temperature of their surroundings unless kept hot by insulation or a source of heat. Critical thinkers thus need a rich fund of subject-matter knowledge relevant to the variety of situations they encounter. This fact is recognized in the inclusion among critical thinking dispositions of a concern to become and remain generally well informed.

Experimental educational interventions, with control groups, have shown that education can improve critical thinking skills and dispositions, as measured by standardized tests. For information about these tests, see the Supplement on Assessment .

What educational methods are most effective at developing the dispositions, abilities and knowledge of a critical thinker? In a comprehensive meta-analysis of experimental and quasi-experimental studies of strategies for teaching students to think critically, Abrami et al. (2015) found that dialogue, anchored instruction, and mentoring each increased the effectiveness of the educational intervention, and that they were most effective when combined. They also found that in these studies a combination of separate instruction in critical thinking with subject-matter instruction in which students are encouraged to think critically was more effective than either by itself. However, the difference was not statistically significant; that is, it might have arisen by chance.

Most of these studies lack the longitudinal follow-up required to determine whether the observed differential improvements in critical thinking abilities or dispositions continue over time, for example until high school or college graduation. For details on studies of methods of developing critical thinking skills and dispositions, see the Supplement on Educational Methods .

12. Controversies

Scholars have denied the generalizability of critical thinking abilities across subject domains, have alleged bias in critical thinking theory and pedagogy, and have investigated the relationship of critical thinking to other kinds of thinking.

McPeck (1981) attacked the thinking skills movement of the 1970s, including the critical thinking movement. He argued that there are no general thinking skills, since thinking is always thinking about some subject-matter. It is futile, he claimed, for schools and colleges to teach thinking as if it were a separate subject. Rather, teachers should lead their pupils to become autonomous thinkers by teaching school subjects in a way that brings out their cognitive structure and that encourages and rewards discussion and argument. As some of his critics (e.g., Paul 1985; Siegel 1985) pointed out, McPeck’s central argument needs elaboration, since it has obvious counter-examples in writing and speaking, for which (up to a certain level of complexity) there are teachable general abilities even though they are always about some subject-matter. To make his argument convincing, McPeck needs to explain how thinking differs from writing and speaking in a way that does not permit useful abstraction of its components from the subject-matters with which it deals. He has not done so. Nevertheless, his position that the dispositions and abilities of a critical thinker are best developed in the context of subject-matter instruction is shared by many theorists of critical thinking, including Dewey (1910, 1933), Glaser (1941), Passmore (1980), Weinstein (1990), Bailin et al. (1999b), and Willingham (2019).

McPeck’s challenge prompted reflection on the extent to which critical thinking is subject-specific. McPeck argued for a strong subject-specificity thesis, according to which it is a conceptual truth that all critical thinking abilities are specific to a subject. (He did not however extend his subject-specificity thesis to critical thinking dispositions. In particular, he took the disposition to suspend judgment in situations of cognitive dissonance to be a general disposition.) Conceptual subject-specificity is subject to obvious counter-examples, such as the general ability to recognize confusion of necessary and sufficient conditions. A more modest thesis, also endorsed by McPeck, is epistemological subject-specificity, according to which the norms of good thinking vary from one field to another. Epistemological subject-specificity clearly holds to a certain extent; for example, the principles in accordance with which one solves a differential equation are quite different from the principles in accordance with which one determines whether a painting is a genuine Picasso. But the thesis suffers, as Ennis (1989) points out, from vagueness of the concept of a field or subject and from the obvious existence of inter-field principles, however broadly the concept of a field is construed. For example, the principles of hypothetico-deductive reasoning hold for all the varied fields in which such reasoning occurs. A third kind of subject-specificity is empirical subject-specificity, according to which as a matter of empirically observable fact a person with the abilities and dispositions of a critical thinker in one area of investigation will not necessarily have them in another area of investigation.

The thesis of empirical subject-specificity raises the general problem of transfer. If critical thinking abilities and dispositions have to be developed independently in each school subject, how are they of any use in dealing with the problems of everyday life and the political and social issues of contemporary society, most of which do not fit into the framework of a traditional school subject? Proponents of empirical subject-specificity tend to argue that transfer is more likely to occur if there is critical thinking instruction in a variety of domains, with explicit attention to dispositions and abilities that cut across domains. But evidence for this claim is scanty. There is a need for well-designed empirical studies that investigate the conditions that make transfer more likely.

It is common ground in debates about the generality or subject-specificity of critical thinking dispositions and abilities that critical thinking about any topic requires background knowledge about the topic. For example, the most sophisticated understanding of the principles of hypothetico-deductive reasoning is of no help unless accompanied by some knowledge of what might be plausible explanations of some phenomenon under investigation.

Critics have objected to bias in the theory, pedagogy and practice of critical thinking. Commentators (e.g., Alston 1995; Ennis 1998) have noted that anyone who takes a position has a bias in the neutral sense of being inclined in one direction rather than others. The critics, however, are objecting to bias in the pejorative sense of an unjustified favoring of certain ways of knowing over others, frequently alleging that the unjustly favoured ways are those of a dominant sex or culture (Bailin 1995). These ways favour:

• reinforcement of egocentric and sociocentric biases over dialectical engagement with opposing world-views (Paul 1981, 1984; Warren 1998)
• distancing from the object of inquiry over closeness to it (Martin 1992; Thayer-Bacon 1992)
• indifference to the situation of others over care for them (Martin 1992)
• orientation to thought over orientation to action (Martin 1992)
• being reasonable over caring to understand people’s ideas (Thayer-Bacon 1993)
• being neutral and objective over being embodied and situated (Thayer-Bacon 1995a)
• doubting over believing (Thayer-Bacon 1995b)
• reason over emotion, imagination and intuition (Thayer-Bacon 2000)
• solitary thinking over collaborative thinking (Thayer-Bacon 2000)
• written and spoken assignments over other forms of expression (Alston 2001)
• attention to written and spoken communications over attention to human problems (Alston 2001)
• winning debates in the public sphere over making and understanding meaning (Alston 2001)

A common thread in this smorgasbord of accusations is dissatisfaction with focusing on the logical analysis and evaluation of reasoning and arguments. While these authors acknowledge that such analysis and evaluation is part of critical thinking and should be part of its conceptualization and pedagogy, they insist that it is only a part. Paul (1981), for example, bemoans the tendency of atomistic teaching of methods of analyzing and evaluating arguments to turn students into more able sophists, adept at finding fault with positions and arguments with which they disagree but even more entrenched in the egocentric and sociocentric biases with which they began. Martin (1992) and Thayer-Bacon (1992) cite with approval the self-reported intimacy with their subject-matter of leading researchers in biology and medicine, an intimacy that conflicts with the distancing allegedly recommended in standard conceptions and pedagogy of critical thinking. Thayer-Bacon (2000) contrasts the embodied and socially embedded learning of her elementary school students in a Montessori school, who used their imagination, intuition and emotions as well as their reason, with conceptions of critical thinking as

thinking that is used to critique arguments, offer justifications, and make judgments about what are the good reasons, or the right answers. (Thayer-Bacon 2000: 127–128)

Alston (2001) reports that her students in a women’s studies class were able to see the flaws in the Cinderella myth that pervades much romantic fiction but in their own romantic relationships still acted as if all failures were the woman’s fault and still accepted the notions of love at first sight and living happily ever after. Students, she writes, should

be able to connect their intellectual critique to a more affective, somatic, and ethical account of making risky choices that have sexist, racist, classist, familial, sexual, or other consequences for themselves and those both near and far… critical thinking that reads arguments, texts, or practices merely on the surface without connections to feeling/desiring/doing or action lacks an ethical depth that should infuse the difference between mere cognitive activity and something we want to call critical thinking. (Alston 2001: 34)

Some critics portray such biases as unfair to women. Thayer-Bacon (1992), for example, has charged modern critical thinking theory with being sexist, on the ground that it separates the self from the object and causes one to lose touch with one’s inner voice, and thus stigmatizes women, who (she asserts) link self to object and listen to their inner voice. Her charge does not imply that women as a group are on average less able than men to analyze and evaluate arguments. Facione (1990c) found no difference by sex in performance on his California Critical Thinking Skills Test. Kuhn (1991: 280–281) found no difference by sex in either the disposition or the competence to engage in argumentative thinking.

The critics propose a variety of remedies for the biases that they allege. In general, they do not propose to eliminate or downplay critical thinking as an educational goal. Rather, they propose to conceptualize critical thinking differently and to change its pedagogy accordingly. Their pedagogical proposals arise logically from their objections. They can be summarized as follows:

• Focus on argument networks with dialectical exchanges reflecting contesting points of view rather than on atomic arguments, so as to develop “strong sense” critical thinking that transcends egocentric and sociocentric biases (Paul 1981, 1984).
• Foster closeness to the subject-matter and feeling connected to others in order to inform a humane democracy (Martin 1992).
• Develop “constructive thinking” as a social activity in a community of physically embodied and socially embedded inquirers with personal voices who value not only reason but also imagination, intuition and emotion (Thayer-Bacon 2000).
• In developing critical thinking in school subjects, treat as important neither skills nor dispositions but opening worlds of meaning (Alston 2001).
• Attend to the development of critical thinking dispositions as well as skills, and adopt the “critical pedagogy” practised and advocated by Freire (1968 [1970]) and hooks (1994) (Dalgleish, Girard, & Davies 2017).

A common thread in these proposals is treatment of critical thinking as a social, interactive, personally engaged activity like that of a quilting bee or a barn-raising (Thayer-Bacon 2000) rather than as an individual, solitary, distanced activity symbolized by Rodin’s The Thinker . One can get a vivid description of education with the former type of goal from the writings of bell hooks (1994, 2010). Critical thinking for her is open-minded dialectical exchange across opposing standpoints and from multiple perspectives, a conception similar to Paul’s “strong sense” critical thinking (Paul 1981). She abandons the structure of domination in the traditional classroom. In an introductory course on black women writers, for example, she assigns students to write an autobiographical paragraph about an early racial memory, then to read it aloud as the others listen, thus affirming the uniqueness and value of each voice and creating a communal awareness of the diversity of the group’s experiences (hooks 1994: 84). Her “engaged pedagogy” is thus similar to the “freedom under guidance” implemented in John Dewey’s Laboratory School of Chicago in the late 1890s and early 1900s. It incorporates the dialogue, anchored instruction, and mentoring that Abrami (2015) found to be most effective in improving critical thinking skills and dispositions.

What is the relationship of critical thinking to problem solving, decision-making, higher-order thinking, creative thinking, and other recognized types of thinking? One’s answer to this question obviously depends on how one defines the terms used in the question. If critical thinking is conceived broadly to cover any careful thinking about any topic for any purpose, then problem solving and decision making will be kinds of critical thinking, if they are done carefully. Historically, ‘critical thinking’ and ‘problem solving’ were two names for the same thing. If critical thinking is conceived more narrowly as consisting solely of appraisal of intellectual products, then it will be disjoint with problem solving and decision making, which are constructive.

Bloom’s taxonomy of educational objectives used the phrase “intellectual abilities and skills” for what had been labeled “critical thinking” by some, “reflective thinking” by Dewey and others, and “problem solving” by still others (Bloom et al. 1956: 38). Thus, the so-called “higher-order thinking skills” at the taxonomy’s top levels of analysis, synthesis and evaluation are just critical thinking skills, although they do not come with general criteria for their assessment (Ennis 1981b). The revised version of Bloom’s taxonomy (Anderson et al. 2001) likewise treats critical thinking as cutting across those types of cognitive process that involve more than remembering (Anderson et al. 2001: 269–270). For details, see the Supplement on History .

As to creative thinking, it overlaps with critical thinking (Bailin 1987, 1988). Thinking about the explanation of some phenomenon or event, as in Ferryboat , requires creative imagination in constructing plausible explanatory hypotheses. Likewise, thinking about a policy question, as in Candidate , requires creativity in coming up with options. Conversely, creativity in any field needs to be balanced by critical appraisal of the draft painting or novel or mathematical theory.

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Critical Thinking and Decision-Making  - What is Critical Thinking?

Critical thinking and decision-making  -, what is critical thinking, critical thinking and decision-making what is critical thinking.

Critical Thinking and Decision-Making: What is Critical Thinking?

Lesson 1: what is critical thinking, what is critical thinking.

Critical thinking is a term that gets thrown around a lot. You've probably heard it used often throughout the years whether it was in school, at work, or in everyday conversation. But when you stop to think about it, what exactly is critical thinking and how do you do it ?

Watch the video below to learn more about critical thinking.

Simply put, critical thinking is the act of deliberately analyzing information so that you can make better judgements and decisions . It involves using things like logic, reasoning, and creativity, to draw conclusions and generally understand things better.

This may sound like a pretty broad definition, and that's because critical thinking is a broad skill that can be applied to so many different situations. You can use it to prepare for a job interview, manage your time better, make decisions about purchasing things, and so much more.

The process

As humans, we are constantly thinking . It's something we can't turn off. But not all of it is critical thinking. No one thinks critically 100% of the time... that would be pretty exhausting! Instead, it's an intentional process , something that we consciously use when we're presented with difficult problems or important decisions.

Improving your critical thinking

In order to become a better critical thinker, it's important to ask questions when you're presented with a problem or decision, before jumping to any conclusions. You can start with simple ones like What do I currently know? and How do I know this? These can help to give you a better idea of what you're working with and, in some cases, simplify more complex issues.  

Real-world applications

Let's take a look at how we can use critical thinking to evaluate online information . Say a friend of yours posts a news article on social media and you're drawn to its headline. If you were to use your everyday automatic thinking, you might accept it as fact and move on. But if you were thinking critically, you would first analyze the available information and ask some questions :

• What's the source of this article?
• Is the headline potentially misleading?
• What are my friend's general beliefs?
• Do their beliefs inform why they might have shared this?

After analyzing all of this information, you can draw a conclusion about whether or not you think the article is trustworthy.

Critical thinking has a wide range of real-world applications . It can help you to make better decisions, become more hireable, and generally better understand the world around you.

/en/problem-solving-and-decision-making/why-is-it-so-hard-to-make-decisions/content/

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Project zero's thinking routine toolbox.

Welcome to Project Zero’s Thinking Routines Toolbox. This toolbox highlights thinking routines developed across a number of research projects at PZ. A thinking routine is a set of questions or a brief sequence of steps used to scaffold and support student thinking. PZ researchers designed thinking routines to deepen students’ thinking and to help make that thinking “visible.” Thinking routines help to reveal students’ thinking to the teacher and also help students themselves to notice and name particular “thinking moves,” making those moves more available and useful to them in other contexts. If you're new to thinking routines and PZ's research, please click here to explore more about thinking routines . For Tips for Using Thinking Routines Effectively, click here . For an overview of the Thinking Categories, click here . For an alphabetical list of thinking routines, click here .

• Artful Thinking ,
• Cultures of Thinking ,
• Agency by Design ,
• PZ Connect & Visible Thinking Resources ,
• and Interdisciplinary & Global Studies .

Background on PZ’s Visible Thinking

Project Zero’s broader work on Visible Thinking can be defined as a flexible and systematic research-based approach to integrating the development of students' thinking with content learning across subject matters. An extensive and adaptable collection of practices, the Visible Thinking research has a double goal: on the one hand, to cultivate students' thinking skills and dispositions, and, on the other, to deepen content learning. The PZ researchers working on the first Visible Thinking initiative, including Dave Perkins, Shari Tishman, and Ron Ritchhart, developed a number of important products, but the one that is best known over two decades later is the set of practices called Thinking Routines, which help make thinking visible. Thinking Routines loosely guide learners' thought processes. They are short, easy-to-learn mini-strategies that extend and deepen students' thinking and become part of the fabric of everyday classroom life.

Thinking routines exist in all classrooms. They are the patterns by which teachers and students operate and go about the job of learning and working together in a classroom environment. A routine can be thought of as any procedure, process, or pattern of actionthat is used repeatedly to manage and facilitate the accomplishment of specific goals or tasks. Classrooms have routines that serve to manage student behavior and interactions, to organize the work of learning, and to establish rules for communication and discourse. Classrooms also have routines that structure the way students go about the process of learning. These learning routines can be simple structures, such as reading from a text and answering the questions at the end of the chapter, or they may be designed to promote students' thinking, such as asking students what they know, what they want to know, and what they have learned as part of a unit of study.

PZ’s Visible Thinking research, both the initial project and the many projects that followed, makes extensive use of learning routines that are rich in thinking. These routines are simple structures, for example a set of questions or a short sequence of steps, that can be used across various grade levels and content areas. What makes them routines, versus mere strategies, is that they get used over and over again in the classroom so that they become part of the fabric of classroom' culture. The routines were designed by PZ researchers to become one of the regular ways students go aboutthe process of learning. Routines are patterns of action that can be integrated and used in a variety of contexts. Educators might even use more than one routine in teaching a single lesson. Routines don’t take time away from anything else educators are doing; instead, they enhance learning in the classroom.

The thinking routines included in this toolbox are organized in four ways –

• by a small set of “ Core Routines ” that target different types of thinking, are easy to get started with, and are commonly used by teachers in many disciplines and with learners of many ages,
• by the way educators use routines during a unit of study, similar to the arrangement used by Ritchhart, Church and Morrison (2011) ( Introducing and Exploring Ideas , Digging Deeper into Ideas , Synthesizing Ideas ),
• by the subject-area or topic the routines were developed to explore ( Objects & Systems , Art & Objects ), and,
• by the way educators use routines for conceptual exploration ( Possibilities and Analogies , Perspective Taking , & Perspectives, Controversies and Dilemmas ).

The Toolbox organizes the Thinking Routines into categories that describe the types of thinking the routines help to facilitate. Some routines appear in more than one category, and some routines have different versions that offer modifications for specific age groups or more specific conceptual challenges. When clicking on a routine in the Toolbox, a separate page opens with links to the downloadable PDF of the routine. All routines use a common PZ template describing the purpose of the routine, offering potential applications for the routine, and often providing suggestions for its use and tips for getting started. The PZ research project responsible for developing the routine is noted at the bottom of each page along with the copyright and licensing information and guidance about how to reference the routine. We invite and encourage educators to share their experiences using the routines! Each routine has a #hashtag listed just above the reference information. Jump in and get started!

Tips for Using Thinking Routines Effectively

• Thinking routines are designed to support particular kinds of thinking, so it’s important to choose the right tool for the specific type of thinking skill to be developed or nurtured.
• Thinking routines are also designed to be used routinely. In the same way that physical exercises need to be repeated in order to develop certain muscles, thinking routines, used repeatedly, help students to develop certain kinds of thinking. Rather than using a different thinking routine with every artifact, consider using the same thinking routine (such as See, Think, Wonder) with multiple artifacts.
• As you use the thinking routines, consider how you (or the students) will document students’ ideas and questions. Try to return to these ideas and questions at the end of the learning experience and in subsequent class sessions, so that you and the students can see how their thinking and understanding are developing.

Overview of Types of Thinking Categories

Core Thinking Routines Simple routines that are applicable across disciplines, topics, and age groups, and can be used at multiple points throughout a learning experience or unit of study. (A good place to start if you or your students are new to thinking routines.)

Introducing and Exploring Ideas Routines that help students articulate their thinking at the beginning of a learning experience and spark student curiosity and wonder, motivating further exploration.

Digging Deeper Into Ideas Routines that support students in building a deeper understanding of topics or experiences by asking them to analyze, evaluate, find complexity, and make connections.

Synthesizing and Organizing Ideas Routines that help students find coherence, draw conclusions, and distill the essence of topics or experiences.

Investigating Objects and Systems Routines that encourage students to examine everyday objects and systems, appreciate their design features, and explore their complexity.

Perspective-taking Routines that cultivate students’ capacity to look beyond their own perspective and to consider others’ experiences, thoughts, and feelings.

Considering Controversies, Dilemmas, and Perspectives Routines that promote students’ inclination to seek out and explore differences and tensions among multiple facets of complex issues.

Generating Possibilities and Analogies Routines that help students learn to formulate questions, consider alternatives, and make comparisons.

Exploring Art, Images, and Objects Routines that help develop students’ cultivate key skills of observation, interpretation, and questioning through engagement with art and objects.

Types of Thinking Categories

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Core Thinking Routines

Simple routines that are applicable across disciplines, topics, and age groups, and can be used at multiple points throughout a learning experience or unit of study. (A good place to start if you or your students are new to thinking routines.)

Digging Deeper Into Ideas

Routines that support students in building a deeper understanding of topics or experiences by asking them to analyze, evaluate, find complexity, and make connections.

Introducing & Exploring Ideas

Routines that help students articulate their thinking at the beginning of a learning experience and spark student curiosity and wonder, motivating further exploration.

Investigating Objects & Systems

Routines that encourage students to examine everyday objects and systems, appreciate their design features, and explore their complexity.

Perspective-taking

Routines that cultivate students’ capacity to look beyond their own perspective and to consider others’ experiences, thoughts, and feelings.

Considering Controversies, Dilemmas, and Perspectives

Routines that promote students’ inclination to seek out and explore differences and tensions among multiple facets of complex issues.

Generating Possibilities and Analogies

Routines that help students learn to formulate questions, consider alternatives, and make comparisons.

Synthesizing & Organizing Ideas

Routines that help students find coherence, draw conclusions, and distill the essence of topics or experiences.

Exploring Art, Images, and Objects

Routines that help develop students’ cultivate key skills of observation, interpretation, and questioning through engagement with art and objects.

Global Thinking

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1.3: The Critical Thinking Process

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• Jim Marteney
• Los Angeles Valley College via ASCCC Open Educational Resources Initiative (OERI)

In the critical thinking process , many factors are taken into consideration before a decision is made. Critical thinking involves using logical, emotional, and ethical criteria as one strives to make up his or her mind. Decisions are reached only after a careful examination of all available data, and are made as a result of considering all of the alternatives and their various consequences.

Can critical thinking be taught? From the work of Dr. Edward de Bono and others like Richard Paul the answer appears to be yes.

Professor of Social Ecology, Peter Scharf, is concerned about the lack of a school curriculum that teaches thinking. Scharf says,

“To be a professional of any kind in the next 20 years, or even an enlightened citizen, will require a complicated set of thinking skills, more than reading and writing. The world isn’t as filtered as it once was. Kids are thinking. What we’re trying to do is have them do it well.”

No one approach is the best, and no one approach works well all of the time. Different presidents have been different types of thinkers. In 1962, when President Kennedy was faced with Soviet missiles in Cuba, he brought together all of his personal advisors, cabinet members, and military personnel to advise him on what course of action ought to be taken by the United States. Kennedy solicited suggestions from numerous advisors who advocated many different positions, from doing nothing to eliminating the missiles with a nuclear strike.

Patterson and Zarefsky write in their book, CONTEMPORARY DEBATE,

“President Kennedy recognized the invaluable benefits derived from a clash of ideas in reaching a decision. Faced with the Cuban missile crisis, Kennedy rejected the decision- making methods of chance, impulse, or authoritarian action. Instead, he insisted in a high- level debate among experts before making a final decision about the action to take .” 1

The term we use for examining our thinking is metacognition or the metacognitive process, which simply means “thinking about our thinking.” By stepping back and looking at our level of intellectual and emotional intelligence and seeing how we think, we can improve our thinking.

The good news is that we can become smarter and smarter. We can improve our critical thinking ability and our argumentative skills. This allows us to be in better control of our lives.

• J. W. Patterson, and David Zarefsky. Contemporary Deba te

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Critical Decision-Making Techniques

An overview of some decision making tools.

By the Mind Tools Content Team

Critical thinking is the mental process that individuals go through to reach an answer or a conclusion. The critical thinking process can be a valuable tool in problem-solving and decision-making. Here we look at some of the techniques involved.

Critical thinking is essentially the process of taking information gathered through day-to-day activities such as observation, reflection and reasoning, and, using personal experience and beliefs, analyzing and applying that information to a given situation. Critical thinking tends to be used in conjunction with creative thinking, where the ideas and processes themselves are generated. Critical thinking can then be used to interpret, assess and evaluate these ideas and processes.

Critical Decision-Making Characteristics

When faced with a difficult or complicated decision, there are a number of characteristics found in those who approach the process critically.

• Truth seeking. The process of critical decision-making requires a desire for the best possible knowledge or outcome, even if, as a result, personal preconceptions, beliefs or self-interests are undermined.
• Open-minded. Successful critical decision-makers are tolerant to divergent views, and are aware of possible bias in their thought process.
• Analytical. The decision-making process is necessarily analytical. The application of reason and evidence, remaining alert to problematic situations and being able to anticipate potential consequences are all important.
• Systematic. Organization, focus and diligence when approaching decisions of all levels of complexity are beneficial to the critical decision-maker.
• Self-Confidence. When using critical thinking as a decision-making tool, the user must have a high level of trust in their personal reasoning.
• Inquisitive. A natural curiosity and eagerness to acquire knowledge and seek explanations will help to ensure the decision is made using as much relevant information as can be found.

In addition to these characteristics, critical decision-making requires a certain level of cognitive maturity. The user will be aware of the importance of prudence in making, suspending, or revising their original judgment, and will have an awareness that multiple solutions can be acceptable.

As well as developing the characteristics above, there are a number of techniques which will aid in critical decision-making.

Argument Mapping

Argument mapping is, roughly, making a picture of reasoning. Typically, argument maps are box and arrow diagrams, a bit like flowcharts. Belonging to the same family as mind mapping, argument mapping focuses specifically on the structure of a reason or argument, Argument mapping helps the user to come to a decision by weighing up the evidence for and against specifics, as well as providing a visual picture of where an argument or decision may fail due to an assumption being made.

Positive and negative arguments for potential alternative decisions can then be identified.

A simple decision-making example might look like this.

Should we build more roads in order to reduce traffic congestion in the city?

More information on the uses of argument maps and how to create them can be found using these links.

http://philosophy.hku.hk/think/arg/complex.php https://www.rationaleonline.com/docs/en/tutorials#tvy5fw

Critical Decision-Making Model

The critical decision-making model is a quick and easy tool that can be used by anyone who needs to make a decision. First briefly state the problem or decision to be made. Then identify at least three possible options or courses of action. As a simple example: Decision to be made: Should we employ more staff to answer the phones? Possible courses of action/options:

• Employ more staff.
• Install an automated system.
• Accept that some people may have to be kept on hold until the existing staff can answer the phone.
• Add a frequently asked questions section to the website to reduce the volume of similar calls.

Each course or action/option can then be evaluated to determine the best possible outcome. An argument map or a simple pros and cons list will help here.

Fact or Fiction

Simply write down a list of reasons supporting each possible option for the decision that needs to be made. Then write beside each one whether it is fact or fiction. Only determine something to be fact if the information can be backed up by accepted evidence such as statistics or case studies. For example:

The available options and the accompanying reasons might include:

Build more roads

• more roads will reduce the amount of congestions
• more roads will keep traffic moving faster
• road users are less stressed when more roads are built

Develop public transport instead

• improved public transport will reduce congestion
• improved public transport is better for the environment
• more people will use public transport if the service is more frequent

Some or all of these options may well be fact, however it should be checked that there is available evidence before stating this categorically. The purpose of this exercise is to show where assumptions have been made which may result in making the wrong decision.

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Three Steps to Critical Thinking

Edutopia blogger Todd Finley praises Edward de Bono’s PMI model and demonstrates its uses as a student-friendly springboard to the critical thinking process.

Edward Charles Francis Publius de Bono is a bona fide genius. The author, inventor, Rhodes scholar and Nobel prize-nominated economist graduated from college at age 15. In the field of education and business, he is famous for originating the term lateral thinking . In his spare time, he also wrote Six Thinking Hats and several other books on creativity. Of all his contributions to the field of education, there is one critical thinking method that I use in classes more than any other: the PMI , a brainstorming model built on the categories of plus , minus and interesting .

Creative and Critical Thinking Can Be Taught

De Bono repeats throughout his writing that critical and creative thinking can be taught. Reinforcing his belief, Common Core documents state that critical thinking is "a key performance outcome" -- it should be taught. I've used the PMI with second grade, middle school and high school students. Here are four classroom scenarios where the PMI can aid teaching and learning:

Teaching scenario #1

When you ask a volunteer from your AP English class to analyze the Gettysburg Address, not one hand raises.

Teaching scenario #2

You post an anonymous 10th grade argumentative essay on the document camera for your students to critique, but the same three volunteers who always answer are the only kids with comments to contribute.

Teaching scenario #3

You want to prime your 7th grade social studies students to look more deeply at the pros and cons of gun control legislation.

Teaching scenario #4

You can't think of a good pre- or post-reading exercise to tell your substitute teacher to use.

Handier than a Blendtec Countertop appliance, the PMI writing/thinking protocol is intellectually useful in dozens of contexts. Because it has never failed me, I want you test out the PMI this week, unequivocally confident that de Bono's strategy will enhance critical appraisal of any subject. A side note: writing is thinking; try typing a sentence without thinking -- it doesn't work.

The PMI Steps

For two minutes in the plus column, write (with laser-beam focus) about all of the possible positive things regarding a subject or about taking an action.

For two minutes in the minus column, write (with the focus of a begging Labrador) about all the possible negative things related to a subject, or about the negative effects of taking an action.

For two minutes in the interesting column, write (with the focus of a pre-tenure NYU professor) about all the interesting things related to the subject, or implications and possible outcomes of taking an action, whether positive, negative or uncertain.

The PMI in Action

As I mentioned before, the PMI is useful in almost any process-oriented classroom context. It is particularly powerful for analyzing case studies and prewriting. To illustrate the later, let us imagine that my 1982 high school English teacher, Mrs. Beverly Forslof, tracks me down and asks me to write a "think piece" on the topic of drones. Furthermore, she directs me to demonstrate critical and creative thinking in fewer than 500 words.

I don't know much about predator drones, except that the U.S. military uses them extensively and that they are terrifying . Putting aside my ignorance, I set my timer for three two-minute intervals and develop the following PMI. 

Whew! That was intense! The six minutes that I spent working through the PMI protocol helped me arrive at a topic that I am passionate about exploring: not the drones as weapon aspect of the technology, but drones as precursors of technologies that empower individuals . My prewriting has excited my imagination; technology might herald the dawn of private smart robots, personal flying companions that solve problems for us and negotiate with other robots on our behalf -- a scenario envisioned by speculative fiction author David Marusek in Counting Heads . If we assigned basic literacies to robots, what literacies would then become critical for humans to master? That's a topic I've never really thought about before. Thank you, PMI! In six minutes, I surveyed possibilities and came up with an action plan, effectively jump-starting my imaginary essay. The PMI has never failed to generate an "aha" idea for me.

Edward de Bono came up with numerous other critical thinking activities that help students solve problems. Try out his To Lo Po So Go strategy. That link also includes numerous sponge and transition questions to nourish kids' creative intelligence. David Koutsoukis has compiled 50 more of these questions, with answers included.

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6 Steps to better critical thinking

Rationale’s interface has been designed to provide a path for critical thinking. From gathering research, to weighing up evidence to formulating a judgement, Rationale will assist you.

Take a look at these 6 critical thinking steps with examples to demonstrate the path to better outcomes.

Step 1: ORGANISE INFORMATION We have no difficulty in locating information. The key is that the information is selected and structured appropriately. With Rationale’s grouping maps you can drag information from the web onto your workspace via the scratchpad and include colour, hyperlinks and images. The structured, pyramid like maps provide a guide for students to structure the information in such a way that reveals the connections between the main topic and its various themes or categories.

Step 2: STRUCTURE REASONING Many people provide opinions but rarely provide supporting reasons for their view. Rationale’s reasoning maps encourage people to support their responses and to consider different opinions. It uses colour conventions to display reasoning – green for reasons, red for objections and orange for rebuttals. It also includes indicator or connecting words so that the relationship between statements is clearly understood.

Step 3: CONSIDER EVIDENCE A test of a solid argument is how good the evidence is that underpins the claims. Rationale’s basis boxes provide a means to identify the basis upon which a statement is given. The icons provide a visual guide as to the range of research utilised and the strength of the evidence that is provided.

Step 4: IDENTIFY ASSUMPTIONS We often talk about analysing arguments. This can mean a few things including looking at the logical structure of the argument to ensure it is valid or well formed and also identifying assumptions or co premises. For those who require higher levels of analysis, Rationale provides the analysis map format to show the relationships between main premises and co premises.

Step 5: EVALUATE ARGUMENTS Once arguments for and against an issue have been logically structured, they need to be evaluated. Rationale provides a visual guide for the evaluation of claims and evidence – the stronger the colour, the stronger the argument while icons designate acceptable or rejected claims. While learning this process of evaluating arguments, the colour and icons provide immediate undertanding and communication of the conclusion.

Step 6: COMMUNICATE CONCLUSION Presenting ideas orally or in writing is crucial and is often the distinguishing feature between good results and average ones. Rationale has essay and letter writing templates to build skills and confidence. Templates provide instruction and generation of prose. When exported, there is a structured essay plan with detailed instructions to assist understanding of clear and systematic prose.

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Conceptual analysis article, key information processes for thinking critically in data-rich environments.

• Centre for Research in Applied Measurement and Evaluation, University of Alberta, Edmonton, AB, Canada

The objective of the present paper is to propose a refined conception of critical thinking in data-rich environments. The rationale for refining critical thinking stems from the need to identify specific information processes that direct the suspension of prior beliefs and activate broader interpretations of data. Established definitions of critical thinking, many of them originating in philosophy, do not include such processes. A refinement of critical thinking in the digital age is developed by integrating two of the most relevant areas of research for this purpose: First, the tripartite model of critical thinking is used to outline proactive and reactive information processes in data-rich environments. Second, a new assessment framework is used to illustrate how educational interventions and assessments can be used to incorporate processes outlined in the tripartite model, thus providing a defensible conceptual foundation for inferences about higher-level thinking in data-rich environments. Third, recommendations are provided for how a performance-based teaching and assessment module of critical thinking can be designed.

Introduction

In response to the question, how much data are on the internet, Gareth Mitchell from Science Focus Magazine answers the question by considering the overall data held by just four companies - Amazon, Facebook, Google, and Microsoft ( https://www.sciencefocus.com/future-technology/how-much-data-is-on-the-internet/ ). These four companies are estimated to hold a sum total of at least 1,200 petabytes (PB) of online data, which equals 1.2 million terabytes (TB) or 1.2 trillion gigabytes (GB). Neuroscientists propose that the average human brain holds 2.5 PB or 2.5 million GB of information in memory ( Reber, 2010 ), or just over 7 billion 60,000-word books. However, information stored in memory is often subject to error not only from the way it is encoded but also retrieved ( Mullet and Marsh, 2016 ).

Critical thinking requires people to minimize bias and error in information processing. Students entering post-secondary education today may be “digital natives” ( Prensky, 2001 ) but they are still surprisingly naïve about how to critically think about the wealth of digital information available. According to Ridsdale et al. (2015) , youth may be quite adept at using digital hardware such as smart phones and apps but they often lack the mindware to think and act critically with the information they access with their devices ( Stanovich, 2012 ). Although this lack of mindware can be observed in the mundane activities of how some first-year undergraduates might tackle their research assignments, it is dramatically illustrated in the political narratives of radicalized young adults ( Alava et al., 2017 ). Young adults are particularly vulnerable to misinformation because they are in the process of developing their cognitive abilities and identities ( Boyd, 2014 ). The objective or rationale for this paper is to propose a refined conception ( Ennis, 2016 ) of critical thinking in data-rich environments. It is the authors’ view that a refined conception is required because data-rich environments have ushered in many cognitive traps and the potential for personal biases to derail critical thinking as traditional understood. The research questions addressed in this conceptual paper are as follows: What can traditional definitions of critical thinking gain by considering explicit inclusion of cognitive biases? How can refined definitions of critical thinking be incorporated into theoretical frameworks for the design of performance assessments?

One of the most recommended strategies for helping young adults analyze and navigate online information is to directly and explicitly teach and assess critical thinking ( Alava et al., 2017 ; Shavelson et al., 2019 ). However, teaching and assessing critical thinking is fraught with difficulties, including a multitude of definitions, improper evaluation, and studies that incorporate small samples and controls ( Behar-Horenstein and Niu, 2011 ; El Soufi and Huat See, 2019 ). Aside from these predictable difficulties, new challenges have emerged. For example, the informational landscape has changed over the course of the last 30 years. The rapid increase in quantity coupled with the decrease in quality of much online information challenges the limits of human information processing.

Critical thinking today is primarily conducted in data-rich online environments, meaning that postsecondary students are searching, navigating, and thinking about a virtually limitless number of sources. Oxford University’s Change Data Lab ( Roser et al., 2020 ) writes: “adults aged 18–29 in the US are more likely to get news indirectly via social media than directly from print newspapers on news sites; and they also report being online ‘almost constantly.’” As shown in Figure 1 , not only is the total time spent online increasing but the increase is mostly the time spent on mobile phones. As mobile phones are smaller devices, compared to desktops, laptops, and tablets, they can be expected to force even faster navigation and processing of information, which would be expected to increase the odds of error-prone thinking.

FIGURE 1 . Max Roser, Hannah Ritchie, and Esteban Ortiz-Ospina (2020) - Internet . Published online at OurWorldInData.org . Retrieved from: https://ourworldindata.org/internet [Online Resource]; Data source accessed https://www.bondcap.com/report/itr19/ . Permission granted under the common creative license.

Cognitive traps are ubiquitous in online data-rich environments. For example, information can be presented as serious and credible when it is not. However, traditional critical thinking definitions have not tended to focus on avoiding cognitive traps; namely, how processing errors can be avoided. This creates a problem not only for teaching but also assessing critical thinking among postsecondary students in today’s classrooms. Thus, there are at least two research opportunities in addressing this problem: 1) provide a refinement of what critical thinking entails specifically for the teaching and assessment of critical thinking in data-rich environments and 2) illustrate a framework for the design of teaching and assessment modules that can lead to stronger inferences about students’ critical thinking skills in today’s information world.

The present paper contributes to the literature on critical thinking in data-rich environments by providing a refinement of what critical thinking entails for teaching and assessment in data-rich environments. The refinement is rooted in cognitive scientific advancements, both theoretical and empirical, of higher-level thinking, and essentially attempts to offer test designers an update on the construct of critical thinking. In other words, this conceptual analysis does the work of translating key psychological aspects of the critical thinking construct for pragmatic purposes–student assessment. Building on the refinement of this construct, the paper also includes recommendations for the type of framework that should guide the design of teaching and assessment modules so that key aspects of students’ critical thinking skills are not missed. Toward this end, this refinement can enhance the construct representation of assessments of critical thinking in data-rich environments. Educational assessments are only as good as their representation of the construct intended for measurement. Without the ongoing refinement of test constructs such as critical thinking, assessments will not provide the most accurate information in the generation of inferences of student thought; refinements of test constructs are especially vital in complex informational landscapes ( Leighton and Gierl, 2007 ). Thus, a refinement of critical thinking among young adults in data-rich environments is developed by integrating two of the most topical and relevant areas of research for this purpose: First, Stanovich and Stanovich’s (2010) tripartite model of critical thinking is used to outline the limitations of human information processing systems in data-rich environments. Second, Shavelson et al.’s (2019) assessment framework is used to illustrate how specific educational assessment designs can be built on the tripartite model and can provide a more defensible evidentiary base for teaching and drawing inferences about critical thinking in data-rich environments. The paper concludes with an illustration of how mindware can be better integrated into teaching and performance-based assessments of critical thinking. The present paper contributes directly to the special issue on Assessing Information Processing and Online Reasoning as a Prerequisite for Learning in Higher Education by refining the conceptualization of critical thinking in data-rich environments among postsecondary students. This refinement provides an opportunity to guide instructive and performance-based assessment programs in the digital age.

Theoretical Frameworks Underlying Mindware for Critical Thinking

In the 1999 science fiction movie Matrix Wachowski et al. (1999) , human beings download computer “programs” to allow them to think and function in a world that has been overtaken by intelligent machines. Not only do these programs allow human beings to live in a dream world, which normalizes a dystopian reality, but also to effortlessly disregard their colonization. Cognitive scientists propose something analogous to these “programs” for human information processing. For example, Perkins (1995) coined the term mindware to refer to information processes, knowledge structures, and attitudes that can be acquired through instruction to foster good thinking. Rizeq et al. (2020 , p. 2) indicate contaminated mindware as “beliefs that may be unhelpful and that may inhibit reasoning processes … ( Stanovich, 2009 ; Stanovich et al., 2008 ; Stanovich, 2016 ).”

Treating human information processing as analogous to computer programs, which can be contaminated, is useful and powerful because it highlights the presence of errors or bugs in thinking that can invariably distort the way in which data are perceived and understood, and instantaneously “infect” the thinking of both self and others. However, the predictability of such programs also permits anticipating when these thinking errors are likely to occur. Educational interventions and assessments can be designed to capitalize on the predictability of thinking errors to provide a more comprehensive level of thinking instruction and evaluation. Specifying what critical thinking entails in data-rich environments requires explicit attention not only to the information processes, knowledge structures, and attitudes that instantiate good critical thinking but also to the thinking bugs that derail it. Hyytinen et al. (2019 , p. 76) indicate that a critical thinker needs to have knowledge of what is reasonable, the thinking skills to evaluate and use that knowledge, as well as dispositions to do so (Facione, 1990; Halpern, 2014; Hyytinen et al., 2015).” We agree but we would go further in so far as critical thinkers also need to know what their own biases are and how to avoid cognitive traps ( Toplak and Flora, 2020 ).

Traditional Definitions of Critical Thinking

Established or traditional definitions of critical thinking have typically focused on the proactive processes that comprise critical thinking ( Leighton, 2011 ). Proactive processes are positive in action. Proactive processes, such as analyzing and evaluating, are often the focus of educational objectives (e.g., Bloom’s taxonomy; Bloom, 1956 ). Proactive processes help to identify the actions and goals of good thinking in ideal or optimal conditions. However, they are not particularly useful for creating interventions or assessments intended to diagnose faulty thinking ( Leighton and Gierl, 2007 ). The problem is that these processes reflect only aspects of good thinking and do not reflect other processes that should be avoided for good thinking to occur. For example, reactive thinking processes such as neglecting and confirming must be resisted in order for proactive processes do their good work. Reactive processes are not bad in many circumstances, especially those where thinking has to be quick to avoid imminent danger ( Kahneman, 2011 ). However, in circumstances where imminent danger is not present and actions can be enhanced by careful processing of information, it can be useful to learn about reactive processes; this is especially relevant for designing teaching interventions and assessments of critical thinking ( Leighton, 2011 ).

The omission of reactive processes in traditional definitions of critical thinking is perhaps not surprising since many of these definitions grew out of philosophy and not out of empirical disciplines such as experimental psychology ( Ennis, 2015 , Ennis, 2016 ). Nonetheless, this section addresses established definitions in order to provide a conceptual foundation on which to build more, targeted definitions of critical thinking for specific purposes.

Proactive Processes in Critical Thinking

Ennis (2016) provides a justification for distinguishing the basic concept of critical thinking from a particular conception of it; that is, a particular definitional instance of it in specific situations. In an analysis of the many theoretically inspired definitions of critical thinking, Ennis (2016 , p. 8) explains that many established definitions share a conceptual core. To illustrate this core, consider three definitions of critical thinking outlined in Ennis (2016 , p.8-9):

1. “Active, persistent, and careful consideration of any belief or supposed form of knowledge in the light of the grounds that support it and the further conclusions to which it tends” ( Dewey, 1933 , p. 9 [first edition 1910]).

2. “Purposeful, self-regulatory judgment which results in interpretation, analysis, evaluation, and inference, as well as explanation of the evidential, conceptual, methodological, criteriological, or contextual considerations upon which that judgment is based” ( Facione 1990 ; Table 1).

3. “Critical thinking is skilled, active interpretation and evaluation of observations, communications, information, and argumentation as a guide to thought and action” ( Fisher and Scriven 1997 , p. 20).

These three examples illustrate what Ennis (2016 , p. 11) considers to be the defining processes of critical thinking, namely, “the abilities to analyze, criticize, and advocate ideas” and “reach well-supported … conclusions.” These proactive processes represent the conceptual core.

Aside from the conceptual core, Ennis (2016) suggests that variations or distinct conceptions of critical thinking can be proposed without endangering the core concept. These variations arise from particular teaching and assessment situations to which the core concept is applied and operationalized. For example, in reviewing four different examples of particular teaching and assessment cases [i.e., Ennis’s (1996) Alpha Conception, Clemson’s (2016) Brief Conception, California State University (2011) , and Edward Glaser’s (1941) Brief Conception of Critical Thinking], Ennis (2016) explains that in each case the concept of critical thinking is operationalized to have a particular meaning in a given context. Ennis (2016) concludes:

In sum, differences in the mainstream concept [of critical thinking] do not really exist, and differences in conceptions that are based on the mainstream concept of critical thinking are usually to a great extent attributable to and appropriate for the differences in the situations of the people promoting the conception. (p. 13)

Building on Ennis’ (2016) proposal, then, a conception of critical thinking is offered herein to serve a specific purpose: to teach and assess critical thinking skills in data-rich environments. To do this, the core concept of critical thinking must include those information processes that guard against manipulability in data-rich environments.

Reactive Processes in Critical Thinking

Educational interventions and assessments must address reactive processes if they are to bolster critical thinking in non-idealized conditions. This is especially important in data-rich environments where information is likely to be novel, abundant (almost limitless), and quickly accessible. The tendency for people to simplify their information processing is amplified in data-rich environments compared to data-poor environments where information is routine and can be comfortably processed serially (e.g., writing a term paper on a familiar topic with ample time allowance). The simplification of data is necessary as the human brain only processes about 5–7 pieces of information in working memory at any one time ( Miller, 1956 ; see also; Cowan, 2001 ). This limitation exists atop the more basic limitation of what can be consciously perceived in the visual field ( Kroll et al., 2010 ). Thus, human beings instinctively simplify the signals they receive in order to create a manageable information processing experience ( Kroll et al., 2010 ).

Most of the information simplified and perceived will be forgotten unless it is actively processed via rehearsal and transfer into long-term memory. However, rehearsed information is not stored without error. Storage contains errors because another limitation of information processing is that memory is a constructive process ( Schacter, 2012 ). What is encoded is imbued with the schemata already in memory, and what is then retrieved depends on how the information was encoded. Thus, aside from the error-prone simplification process that permits the human information process to perceive successful navigation of the environment, there is the error-prone storage-and-retrieval process that characterizes memory. Data-rich environments accentuate these significant limitations of human information processing. Consequently, identifying both proactive and reactive information processes is necessary to generate realistic educational interventions and assessments that can help 1) ameliorate thinking bugs in today’s data-rich environments while at the same time 2) cultivating better mindware for critical thinking.

The Tripartite Model of Critical Thinking

One of the largest problems with modern initiatives to teach and assess critical thinking in data-rich environments is the neglect of empirically based theoretical frameworks to guide efforts ( Leighton, 2011 ). Without such frameworks, the information processes taught and measured are primarily informed by philosophical instead of psychological considerations. The former emphasizes proactive over reactive processes but both are needed. The emphases on proactive processes does not actually help educators identify and rectify the existing bugs in students’ mindware.

The conception of critical thinking that is advanced here is based on Stanovich and Stanovich’s (2010 ; see also Stanovich, 2021 ) Tripartite Model . The model focuses on both proactive and reactive processes. Unlike philosophical treatments of critical thinking, the tripartite model devotes significant attention to biased and error-prone information processing. According to Stanovich and Stanovich (2010 , p. 219; italics added): “the tendency to process information incompletely has been a major theme throughout the past 30 years of research in psychology and cognitive science ( Dawes, 1976 ; Taylor, 1981 ; Tversky and Kahneman, 1974 ).” The tripartite model does not provide a simple definition of what critical thinking entails given the complexity of the processes involved. Instead, it provides an outline of three levels of mindware that have been found to be constantly interacting in the process of critical thinking.

Three Levels of the Mind

The tripartite model integrates decades of cognitive and neuroscientific research, ranging from Tversky and Kahneman’s (1974) early work on biases and heuristics to the later work on dual process models of thinking ( Evans, 2003 ). The model shown in Figure 2 illustrates the relations between three distinct levels of information processing–the reflective mind (RM), the algorithmic mind (AM), and the autonomous mind (AUM). In Figure 2 , the level of information processing that functions to manipulate data in working memory, store, retrieve, and generate responses is the AM. This is the level that is directly on display and observed when human beings process and respond to questions, for example, on educational assessments and tests of intelligence. The AM can be defined by its processing speed, pattern recognition and retrieval from long-term memory, and manipulation of data in working memory.

FIGURE 2 . Adapted tripartite model ( Stanovich and Stanovich, 2010 ) to illustrate the connections among three different aspects or minds integral to human cognition.

The AM takes direction from two sources–the reflective mind or RM and the autonomous mind or AUM. The AUM is the subconscious part of human information processing that retains data acquired by means of imprinting, tacit and procedural learning, and emotionally laden events, resulting in many forms of automatic responses and implicit biases. The AUM is the level at which encapsulated or modularized knowledge can be retrieved to generate a quick and simplified response, which exerts minimal load on working memory. Depending on the influence of the AUM, the AM is capable of biased or unbiased responses. For example, in view of what appears to be a large insect, the AUM signals the AM to focus on getting out of the way. This is a biased response but it is an expedient response that is often observed in logical tasks (see Leighton and Dawson, 2001 ).

Unlike the AUM, the RM is a conscious and deliberative aspect of human information processing. The RM is the part of information processing that involves goals, beliefs, and values. It is the part of the mind that provides intentionality to human behavior ( Dennett, 1987 ). It directs the AM to suspend simple processing and expend the cognitive effort to deeply process information. The RM also functions to direct the AM to resist or override signals from the AUM to respond too quickly. Thus, it is the information processing directed by the RM–to engage and suspend certain processes - that needs to be the focus of most educational interventions and assessments of critical thinking.

Decoupling and Simulation Processes

According to Stanovich and Stanovich (2010) , the RM directs the AM to engage in two forms of proactive information processes. Both require cognitive effort. First, decoupling involves the process of suspending prior beliefs and attending to information in the context in which it is provided. For example, decoupling processes have been examined in belief bias studies ( Leighton and Sternberg, 2004 ). In these studies, participants are typically asked to evaluate arguments that have been created to differ along two dimensions–logical soundness and believability of conclusion. For example, a logically flawed argument is paired with a believable conclusion, for example, All politicians are liars; All crooks are liars; Therefore, all politicians are crooks. In response to these types of arguments, participants have been found to accept conclusions that are believable rather than logically sound. However, performance can be improved by instructing participants to explicitly consider the structure of the argument. In other words, the instructions are clearly designed to engage the RM. When explicit instructions are included, participants will show improved performance in correctly rejecting conclusions from flawed arguments.

Second, for decoupling to work, simulation is often activated in tandem. Simulation involves the process of actively considering distinct ways of interpreting information. For example, shown in Figure 3 are two panels showing distinct interpretations of the premises of the argument provided earlier about politicians and crooks. The one on the left shows the easiest interpretation or mental model of the argument about politicians (conclusion - All politicians are crooks ). The interpretation shown on the left is one which often may correspond to prior beliefs. On the right, an additional interpretation can be created to indicate that no politicians are crooks . The interpretation shown on the right may be less common but equally plausible given the premises of the argument. The effort to create additional interpretations or simulate information that contradicts prior beliefs has been found to correlate positively with working memory capacity ( Johnson-Laird and Bara, 1984 ). In fact, both decoupling and simulation have been found to require significant working memory resources and, thus, cognitive effort for participants to willingly adopt ( Johnson-Laird and Bara, 1984 ; Leighton and Sternberg, 2004 ; Stanovich, 2011 ; Leighton and Sternberg, 2012 ).

FIGURE 3 . Two types of information interpretations.

Most classroom assessments and achievement tests, even those that are purportedly designed to be cognitively complex, are not developed to evaluate whether students can decouple or simulate thinking ( Leighton, 2011 ). Instead most tests are developed to measure whether students can reproduce what they have learned in the classroom, namely, a form of optimal performance given instruction ( Leighton and Gierl, 2007 ; Stanovich and Stanovich, 2010 ). Often, then, there is little incentive for students to begin to suspend beliefs and imagine situations where what they have been told does not hold. Not surprisingly, most students try to avoid “overthinking” their responses on multiple-choice or even short-answer tests precisely because such simulated thinking could lead to choosing an unexpected or non-keyed response.

Suspending Serial Associative Processing

Unlike the thinking evoked by most classroom and achievement tests, information processing in data-rich environments calls for a different standard of evaluation. Data-rich environments typically offer students the possibility to navigate freely through multiple sites, unrestricted by time limits and/or instructions about how their performance will be evaluated. In such open, data-rich environments, individuals set their own standard of performance. According to the tripartite model, serial associative processing is likely to be the standard most often set by individuals. Serial associative processing is directed by the RM but it is simple processing nonetheless. It means that information is accepted as it is presented or rejected if it fails to conform with what is already known (prior beliefs). There is no decoupling or simulation. Johnson-Laird and Bara (1984 ; Johnson-Laird, 2004 ) called this simple type of processing single-model reasoning because information is attended and processed but goes unchallenged. Serial associative processing is different from the automatic responses originating in the AUM. Serial associative processing does involve analysis and evaluation but it does not consider multiple perspectives and so it is biased in its implementation.

Critical Thinking as Coordinated Suspension and Engagement of Information Processes

Consider again the defining processes Ennis (2016 , p. 11) proposes for critical thinking: “the abilities to analyze, criticize, and advocate ideas” and “reach well-supported … conclusions.” In light of Stanovich and Stanovich’s (2010) model, the processes mentioned by Ennis only reflect the AM and do not reflect the coordinated effort of the RM and AM to suspend serial associative processing and engage in decoupling and simulation. In other words, what is missing in most traditional conceptions of critical thinking are reactive processes, namely, processes that lead thinking astray such as serial associative processing, which must be suspended for better thinking to emerge.

In data-rich environments, actively resisting serial associative processing is a necessary component of critical thinking. This form of information processing must be actively resisted because the incentive is for individuals to do the opposite in the wake of massive amounts of information. Although applying this resistance will be cognitively effortful, it can be learned by teaching students to become more meta-cognitively aware of their information processing. However, even meta-cognitive awareness training is unlikely to help students resist serial associative processing, if critical thinking is under-valued by the RM. Thus, the design of teaching interventions and assessments must consider the construct of critical thinking not as a universally accepted and desired form of thinking but as a skill that students choose to apply or ignore ( Leighton et al., 2013 ). Consequently, interventions must persuade students of the benefits associated with critical thinking and assessments need to measure the processes that are most relevant for critical thought (e.g., decoupling and simulation). In the next section, Shavelson et al.’s (2019) assessment framework is used to illustrate how specific educational assessment designs can build on the tripartite model of critical thinking, and provide a more defensible conceptual foundation for inferences about critical thinking in data-rich environments.

Measuring Decoupling and Simulation: Shavelson et al.’s (2019) Assessment Framework

Shavelson et al.’s (2019) assessment framework is premised on three objectives. First, performance assessments are appropriate for measuring higher-level thinking constructs; second, assessments of higher-level thinking constructs should be developed in ways that clearly link scores to claims about postsecondary students’ capabilities; and third, higher-level thinking constructs, such as critical thinking, should require postsecondary students to make sense of complex information outside typical classroom environments. Each of these objectives is elaborated and connected to measuring key information processes for critical thinking.

Performance Assessments

Performance assessments typically contain tasks (i.e., selected and constructed) that require test-takers to attend to multiple types of materials (e.g., articles, testimonials, videos) and generate responses that involve an evaluation of those materials for the purpose of providing a reasoned answer on a topic. The topic is often novel and the tasks are complex such as evaluating a claim about whether a privately funded health-care clinic should be adopted by a community. The goal of a performance assessment is to approximate the informational demands of a real-world situation, calling on individuals to have to weigh different perspectives in the process of analyzing and evaluating materials.

The motivation to approximate real-world situations is a requirement in performance assessments. The constructs measured need to be assessed in the types of situations that justify making claims about what the test-taker can do in a context that approximates real-life. For example, performance assessments would not be the tool to use if the objective was to measure criterion or optimal performance ( Stanovich and Stanovich, 2010 ), that is, whether someone has learned the normative timeline for the Second World War or to factor polynomials. Both of these objectives do not reflect the types of skills required in complex environments, where typical performance is sought in determining whether the test-taker can invoke and manage specific information processes in providing a response.

Measuring the Mindware

In Shavelson et al.’s (2019 , p. 4) framework, the environments or contexts in which to measure critical thinking are broadly conceived:

a. contexts in which thought processes are needed for solving problems and making decisions in everyday life, and

b. contexts in which mental processes can be applied that must be developed by formal instruction, including processes such as comparing, evaluating, and justifying.

In considering both these measurement contexts, data-rich environments satisfy both. For example, the real-life contexts in which people must solve problems and make decisions nowadays typically involve seeking, analyzing, and evaluating a lot of information. Most of this information may be online where there is almost no oversight on quantity or quality control.

However, people do not solve problems and make decisions in a cognitive vacuum. This is where Stanovich and Stanovich’s (2010) tripartite model provides the necessary conceptual foundation to Shavelson et al.’s (2019) assessment framework for measuring critical thinking. The beliefs and values of the RM direct the type of information that is sought and how that information should be analyzed. Heretofore, the idea of values has not been elaborated. The valuing of critical thinking or stated differently, holding the value that beliefs should line up with evidence provides an impetus for engaging in effortful thinking. Churchland (2011) indicates that such values–what we consider good, bad, worthwhile or not–are rooted in the brain and have evolved as mechanisms to help human beings adapt and survive. Thus, the question for the reflective mind is one of why is critical thinking beneficial for me? Consequently, the design of performance assessments must include opportunities for measuring two fundamental catalytic processes for critical thinking: (a) whether the RM values critical thinking and for what reasons and (b) how the RM then directs the AM to engage or suspend serial associative processing for analyzing and evaluating the resources provided so that critical thinking can be achieved. The reason for measuring whether the RM values critical thinking is to establishing that a student is indeed motivated to engage in the effort it requires. A student may value critical thinking but not know how to do it, but it is also necessary to determine whether a student does not value it and therefore, irrespective of having the skills to do it, chooses not to do it. The educational intervention for each of these scenarios will be different depending on the cognitive and affective state of the student ( Leighton et al., 2013 ).

The question of how this engagement or suspension is measured is not trivial as it would involve finding a way to measure test-takers’ epistemic values, prior beliefs, and biases about the topic. Moreover, it would involve providing confirming or disconfirming sources of data in the assessment at different levels of quality. As test-takers select data sources to analyze and evaluate, evidence of the active suspension of prior belief (i.e., decoupling) and rejection of information at face value (i.e., simulation) needs to be collected to warrant the claim that the information processes inherent to critical thinking were applied.

Creating the Performance Assessment

According to Evidence Centered Design (ECD; Mislevy et al., 2003 ), an assessment is most defensibly designed by paying careful attention to the claim that is expected to be made from the assessment performance. In the case of Shavelson et al.’s (2019) assessment framework, the following high-level claim is desired:

[T]he assessment task presented here taps critical thinking on everyday complex issues, events, problems, and the like. The evidence comes from evaluating test-takers’ responses to the assessment tasks and potential accompanying analyses of response processes such as think-aloud interviews or log file analyses. (p. 9)

Because the claim includes ‘ critical thinking on everyday complex issues, events, problems, and the like ’ it becomes necessary to situate this claim within the specific data-rich environment that is of most interest to the developer but also the environment that is of most interest to the test-taker. In data-rich environments, thinking will not be general but specifically guided by the relevance of topics. In particular, what is essential to consider in such environments is that individuals are unconstrained by how they search and attend to information given the vast quantity and quality of sources. Thus, test takers’ value proposition of thinking critically for a given topic needs to be considered in their performance. If respondents do not value it, they are unlikely to engage in the effort required to suspend serial processing. And claims about what they can or cannot do will be less defensible.

At the outset of a performance assessment, a test-taker who does not value critical thinking for a given topic is unlikely to engage the critical information processes expected on the assessment. The following four facets of the data that Shavelson et al. (2019) indicate must be attended are unlikely to be invoked in depth:

1. Trustworthiness of the information or data—is it reliable, unreliable, or uncertain?

2. Relevance of the information or data—is it relevant or irrelevant to the problem under consideration?

3. Manipulability of the information to judgmental/decision/bias—is the information subject to judgmental errors and well-known biases?

4. Solution to the story problem—is the problem one where a judgment can be reached, a decision recommended, or a course of action suggested?

Each of these facets forms the basis of a question that is designed to direct the algorithmic mind (AM) to process the data in a particular way. However, the AM is an information processor that does not direct itself; it is directed by the RM. Consequently, for each of these facets, it is important to consider that both the RM and the AM are being induced and measured. For example, if critical thinking is to be demonstrated, all facets–trustworthiness, relevance, manipulability, and solution generation–require the RM to direct the AM to (a) override the autonomous mind (AU) in its reactionary response, (b) suspend serial associative processing, (c) decouple from pre-existing beliefs, and (d) simulate alternative worlds where the information is considered in the context in which it is presented. Although it is beyond the scope of the paper to illustrate the interplay of the RM and AM for each of these four facets, an example may suffice. Consider a critical thinking task that begins with a story about the delivery of a new vaccine for inoculating people against the COVID19 virus. After presentation of the story, the first item needs to probes the RM - whether the test-taker indicates importance in comprehending a story about vaccine safety. If the test-taker responds “yes,” the self-report can be validated against eye tracking reaction time data to check its validity (assuming greater importance would lead to more time spent reading). The second set of items can then probe the test-taker’s analysis of the trustworthiness of the information, for example, is the story reliable and how do you know? What information was irrelevant (e.g., the color of the viles) and was it decoupled from relevant information (e.g., the temperature at which the vaccine must be stored)? What variables in the story were re-imagined or simulated (e.g., transportation of a vaccine across multiple freezers might erode its integrity), leading to a different conclusion than the one stated in the story. The response to these second set of items must be evaluated, in aggregate, against the response for the first item in order to determine the rigor of AM thinking devoted to analyzing the veracity of the story and it elements. If the second response is weak, in light of a motivated RM, then one might generate the inference that the test-takers lacks the essential skills to think critically.

The induction of the RM to engage the AM in a specific manner in a performance assessment becomes an integral part of the critical thinking construct that is being measured in data-rich environments. In fact, one of the most important questions to be presented to test-takers before they engage with a performance measure of critical thinking might be a question that directly probes the RM to reveal the goals that drive its performance–does the RM value holding beliefs that are in line with evidence? In the absence of inducing the RM to accept the objective of the performance assessment, the RM’s direction of the AM will simply reflect the least effortful course of thinking.

Shown in Figure 4 are examples of preliminary questions to ask the respondent at the initiation of the performance assessment. These would be required to measure the meta-cognitive approach adopted by the test-taker in the specific data-rich environment in which the performance assessment is embedded. By incorporating preliminary questions into the design of the assessment such as how do you define critical thinking and do you value it , the assessment yields two sources of evidentiary data about the test-taker: First, what do they believe critically thinking entails? And second, are they motivated to demonstrate this type of thinking, namely, the construct of interest? Both these sources of data about the test-taker would help in the interpretation of their assessments results. If test-takers can define critical thinking but do not value it or are not willing to suspend associative serial processing, low scores may only reveal their lack of interest or motivation. The latter of which becomes a key challenge for educational interventions unless the reasons for its benefits can be shown.

FIGURE 4 . Refining the connections among three different aspects or minds ( Stanovich and Stanovich, 2010 ) integral to engaging facets of critical thinking on performance assessments ( Shavelson et al., 2019 ) in data-rich environments.

Moving Beyond Just Teaching Critical Thinking Skills

How well educators are poised to teach and assess critical thinking in data-rich environments might depend less on a specific instructional formula and more on how it is incentivized for students. In other words, there needs to be a clear message to students about what it is that they gain by suspending personal biases and engaging analytical strategies; for example, “Did you know that by becoming aware that you are reacting positively to the flashiest site of health information you may not be getting the best information? Or “Did you know that in searching for information about a political issue you will typically be drawn to information that confirms your prior beliefs? If you want to be fully prepared for debates, try searching for information that challenges what you believe so you can be prepared for both sides of the argument.”

A shortcoming with almost all assessments of critical thinking as of the writing of this paper is that they are designed from traditional definitions of critical thinking; meaning that these assessments do not test for cognitive biases explicitly. For example, the Halpern Critical Thinking Assessments ( Butler, 2012 ) measure five dimension of critical thinking premised on traditional conceptions of critical thinking (i.e., verbal reasoning, argument analysis, thinking as hypothesis testing, likelihood/uncertainty, and decision making and problem solving) but not cognitive biases. Another popular critical thinking test is the Cornell Critical Thinking Level Test Z ( Ennis and Millman, 2005 ) which measures induction, deduction, credibility, identification of assumptions, semantics, definitions, and prediction in planning experiments. However, all these attributes are proactive and not reactive. Only measuring proactive attributes can almost be viewed, ironically, as yet another instance of our tendency to confirm biases. What is needed is actively falsifying what we believe–testing the limits of what we want to think is true. There are at least two notable exceptions to the typical critical thinking tests. One is the Cognitive Reflection Test ( Frederick, 2005 ), which measures a person’s skill at reflecting on a question and resisting answering with the first response that comes to mind. In essence, this test measures reactive processes. The other is the Comprehensive Assessment of Rational Thinking (CART) by Stanovich (2016) . The CART is focused on measuring the preponderance and avoidance of thinking errors or contaminated mindware. For example, the CART contains 20 subtests that assess tendencies toward overconfidence, showing inconsistent preferences and being swayed by irrelevant information. Critical thinking tests designed to measure avoidance of reactive processes are relatively new and perhaps not surprisingly there are no large-scale studies of whether it can be effectively taught. It is for this reason that the work we present here is necessary and we believe presents a contribution to the literature.

Proactive critical thinking can be taught so there is no reason to think that awareness of reactive critical thinking cannot also be taught. To be sure, most of the research on teaching critical thinking skills has been in the area of proactive skills. A meta-analysis of strategic approaches to teaching critical thinking uncovered that various forms of critical thinking can be taught with measurable positive effects ( Abrami et al., 2015 ). However, the average effect size of educational interventions was 0.30 (Cohen’s d); thus, weak to moderate at best ( Cohen, 1977 ; Abrami et al., 2015 ). Part of the challenge is that critical thinking, like any other disposition and/or skill, takes time to cultivate and uptake is determined by how well the audience (students) buys into what is being taught.

One would expect different approaches for teaching critical thinking depend not only on the specific goal of instruction but also how well students believe in the benefits articulated. For example, Lorencová et al. (2019) conducted a systematic review of 39 studies of critical thinking instruction in teacher education programs. The most often cited targeted skills for instruction were analysis and evaluation. A majority of the educational interventions had the following characteristics: (a) took place during a course in one semester with an average number of 66 students, (b) were face-to-face, (c) used infusion (i.e., critical thinking added as a separate module to existing curriculum), or immersion (i.e., critical thinking integrated into the full curriculum) as the primary context for instruction with (d) discussion and self-learning as tools for pedagogy. The most frequently used standardized assessment tool for measuring learning gains was the CCTDI or California Critical Thinking Disposition Inventory, which is a measure of thinking dispositions instead of actual critical thinking performance.

In addition to the CCTDI, most instructors also developed their own assessments, including assessment of typical case studies, essays, and portfolios. Most of the 39 studies reviewed showed fully positive or some positive results; only 3 studies reported null results. Not surprisingly, however, larger effects between pre- and post-intervention were observed for studies employing instructor-created , non-standardized tools compared to standardized assessment tools.

One of the biggest challenges identified by Lorencová et al. (2019) is not with the interventions of critical thinking but with assessments to measure gains. Instructor-developed assessments suffer from a variety of problems such as demand characteristics, low reliability, and potentially biased grading. Thus, little can be concluded about what reliably works among the many strategies for critical thinking without good measures. A related problem is that many of these interventions do not indicate how long the effects last; good measures are also required to gauge the temporal effects of interventions. Additional problems that often plague intervention studies involve relatively small sample sizes. These challenges may be overcome in a variety of ways. For example, moving away from idiosyncratic instructor-developed critical thinking assessments and moving toward the establishment of a consortia of researchers that can pool their items for review, field-testing, refinement and ultimately leverage large enough samples to establish reliable norms for inferences. Toward this end, Shavelson et al. (2019) exemplify this work in their International Performance Assessment of Learning (iPAL) consortium.

In another recent review of critical thinking interventions in professional programs in the social sciences and STEM fields, Puig et al. (2019) noted the prevalence of unstandardized forms of assessments for measuring critical thinking, most of which were qualitative. For example, Puig et al. (2019 , p. 867) indicate that most of the studies they reviewed based their results largely on “the opinions of students and/or teachers, as well as on other factors such as students’ motivation, or their level of engagement to the task... students’ perceptions, learning reflections and their participation in the task, and others even did not assess CT.” These measures may begin to probe the values and beliefs of the RM but they ignore the information processes of the AM in instantiating critical thinking.

Schmaltz et al. (2017) indicate that part of the reason educators at all levels of instruction, including postsecondary institutions, find it so challenging to teach critical thinking is that it is not well defined and there are not enough empirical studies to show what works. Although the deficits raised by Schmaltz et al. (2017) are justified, the problem of showing what works requires measuring human behavior with minimal bias. Thus, the deficits identified by Schmaltz et al. (2017) may actually reside more with the assessments used to evaluate interventions than with the interventions themselves. Just as there many ways to teach algebra or essay composition successfully depending on the students involved, so must teaching critical thinking take on different methods as shown in the literature (e.g., Abrami et al., 2015 ; Lorencová et al., 2019 ). However, focusing so intently on the specific characteristics of educational interventions may hurt more than it helps if it distracts from the assessments that need to be designed to measure changes in thinking. In whatever form critical thinking is taught, what is certainly needed are assessments that reliably measure the construct of critical thinking, however it has been conceptualized and operationalized ( Ennis, 2016 ).

Teaching and Assessing Critical Thinking in Data-Rich Environments

Teaching and assessing critical thinking in data-rich environments requires not only a conception of what critical thinking entails in such environments but also an adequate assessment of the information processes associated with this type of thinking. Building first on Stanovich and Stanovich’s (2010) tripartite model, the instructional goals must include (a) students becoming self-aware of what types of thinking they value and in what circumstances and (b) students learning to apply strategies they believe are valuable in thinking critically in identified circumstances. The premise is this: If critical thinking is valued for a given topic, strategies such as decoupling and simulation can be explicitly taught, taken up by students, practiced and assessed using online information sources and tasks. This is also where Shavelson et al.’s (2019) framework provides an excellent assessment foundation to structure teaching and assessment modules. Prompts and performance tasks can be embedded throughout digital modules to assess students’ goals for information processing, strategies for searching and analyzing data tables, reports, and graphs for the stated goals, time spent on different informational resources, and evaluation of conclusions.

Teaching and assessment modules for critical thinking must motivate students to expend the cognitive resources to suspend certain information processes (e.g., serial associative processing). As previous reviews have found (e.g., Lorencová et al., 2019 ), motivation is a pre-requisite to decouple and simulate as these are cognitively taxing forms of processing. In the pre-development stage of any teaching or assessment form, one of the most important tasks is to survey the population of students about interests warranting critical thinking. Then, digital teaching modules and assessments can be designed around topics that would motivate students to expend the resources needed to engage with tasks; for example, the effects of social media on mental health, the cost and value of postsecondary education or even a learning disability can be used as topics to spark the interest of students. Starting from a position of awareness about the topics that warrant attention, students can be invited to learn about resisting serial associative processing in the collection of data (e.g., finding high-quality data that are relevant but opposed to what is believed about a topic), decoupling in the analysis of conclusions (e.g., looking at statistics that do not misrepresent the data), and simulation in evaluations of conclusions (e.g., weighing the evidence in line with its quality).

However, incentivizing students to pay attention to what they are processing does not mean it will be processed critically. Especially when topics are of interest, individuals are likely to hold strong opinions and seek to actively confirm what they already believe. Thus, teaching modules must begin with a process of having students become aware of a bias to confirm, and invoking reminders to students that this bias can surface unless it is constantly under check in their self-awareness. For example, a prompt for students to become aware of their biases can be integrated into the introductory sections of a teaching and assessment module. Prompts can also be designed to remind them of the critical thinking they have indicated they value. Previously presented information processes (e.g., suspending prior beliefs or decoupling) can be flashed as reminders in searching, assessing task information, and evaluating conclusions. Another option might be to have students choose to assume the perspective of a professional such as a journalist, a lawyer, or a counselor and to challenge them to process information as that professional would be expected to do.

Consider the following screenshot in Figure 5 from a storyboard associated with the design of a teaching and assessment module on autism . Following an introductory screen, participating students are advised in the second screen that they are going to be learning about ways to collect, manage, evaluate, and apply data on autism. The third screen introduces them to the research project and poses initial questions they are unlikely to be able to answer critically. The fourth screen introduces them to potential data sources, such as an online report from a mainstream news channel and a report from a national statistics agency. At this point, students can be prompted to rate the trustworthiness of the sources, which reflects the first facet of Shavelson et al.‘s framework. In the fifth screen, students navigate to the data source(s) selected. Irrespective of the data source selected, students are probed on the manipulability and relevance of the data source, and how it advances the investigation. At each point during the module, students are scaffolded in evidence-based learning about autism and asked to provide responses designed to reveal their chosen information processing. For example, in the fourth screen where students are asked to list the data sources for autism, the sources students indicate can be categorized according to at least two dimensions. First, is each source trustworthy? Relevant? Second, how much time and effort did students spend analyzing the sources (using reaction time data). If students appear to carefully choose what they think are trustworthy and relevant sources but do not ascribe the trustworthiness or relevance to substantive criteria, then students may value critical thinking (RM) but do not have the knowledge or skills to properly direct this value (RM) in their information processing. In this case, the scaffolding comes in the form of an instructional part of the module that explains the criteria that should be used for judging reliability, and relevancy in the case of neurodevelopmental disorders such as Autism.

FIGURE 5 . Example of story board to illustrate the design of a digital teaching and assessment module of critical thinking in the area of autism.

The storyboard shown in Figure 5 does not show how students’ potential bias may be assessed at the beginning of the module. However, opportunities to bring bias into students’ awareness can be inserted as is shown in the fourth screen in Figure 6 . Following this fourth screen, another screen (not shown) could be inserted to teach students what it means to decouple and simulate in the process of information processing. For example, the instructional module can show why an uncontrolled variable (e.g., a diet supplement) should be decoupled from another variable that was controlled (e.g., age of the mother). In this way, students are reminded of their biases (e.g., diet supplements are bad for you), instructed on what it means to think critically in an information-rich environment and also prompted to decide whether such strategies should be applied in considering data during the assessment.

FIGURE 6 . Example of how to insert a probe for students to consider their own biases about the topic of autism.

Discussion and Conclusion

New ways of teaching and assessing critical thinking in data-rich environments are needed, given the explosion of online information. This means employing definitions of critical thinking that explicitly outline the contaminated mindware that should be avoided in data-rich environments. The democratization of information in the digital age means that anyone, regardless of qualifications or motivation, can share stories, ideas, and facts with anyone who is willing to read, watch, and be convinced. Although misinformation has always existed, never before has it been as ubiquitous as it is today and cloaked in the pretense of trustworthiness as found on the world-wide web. Errors in reasoning and bias in information processing are, therefore, central to the study of critical thinking ( Leighton and Sternberg, 2004 ). Consequently, three lines of thinking were presented for why a refined conception of critical thinking in data-rich environments is warranted. First, traditional definitions of critical thinking typically lack connections to the information processes that are required to overcome bias. Second, data-rich environments pose cognitive traps in critical thinking that require more attention to bias. Third, personal dispositions such as motivation are more important than previously thought in the teaching and measurement of critical information processes. Because the present paper is not empirical but rather conceptual, we end not with main findings but with essential take home ideas. The first essential idea is that explicitly articulating a refined conception of critical thinking, one that includes reactive processes and/or mindware, must become part of how good thinking is described and taught. The second essential idea is that teaching and assessing proactive and reactive processes of critical thinking must be empirically examined.

The contemporary teaching and assessment of critical thinking must be situated within environments that are rich in data and evoke more than proactive but mechanistic information processes of analysis and evaluation. Teaching and assessment of critical thinking in data-rich environments must become more sophisticated to consider students’ 1) interest in the topics that merit critical thinking, 2) self-awareness of human bias, and 3) how both interest and self-awareness are used by students’ reflective minds (RM) to guide strategic application of critical-thinking processes in the AM. A conceptual refinement of critical thinking in data-rich environments, then, must be based on a strong theoretical foundation that presents a coordination of the reflective, algorithmic, and autonomous minds ( Stanovich and Stanovich, 2010 ). This is provided by Stanovich and Stanovich’s (2010) tripartite model and supported by decades of empirical research into human thinking processes ( Leighton and Sternberg, 2004 ; Kahneman, 2011 ; Stanovich, 2012 ; Shavelson et al., 2019 ).

A theoretical foundation for operationalizing a new conception of critical thinking, however, is useless for practice unless there is a framework that permits the principled design of teaching and assessment modules. Shavelson et al. (2019) provides such a framework. Shavelson et al. (2019) assessment framework provide the structure for generating performance-based tasks that evoke the reflective and algorithmic information processes required of critical thinking in data-rich environments.

The mindware that students download in performance assessments of critical thinking must reflect the sophistication of this form of information processing. Most students do not acquire these skills in secondary school or even post-secondary education ( Stanovich, 2012 ; Ridsdale et al., 2015 ; Shavelson et al., 2019 ). Stanovich (2012 , p. 356) states: “Explicit teaching of this mindware is not uniform in the school curriculum at any level. That such principles are taught very inconsistently means that some intelligent people may fail to learn these important aspects of critical thinking.” He indicates that although cognitive biases are often learned implicitly, without conscious awareness, critical-thinking skills must be taught explicitly to help individuals come to know when and how to apply higher-level skills. Instruction in critical thinking thus requires domain-specific knowledge and transferable skills that allow individuals to 1) coordinate the RM and AM, 2) recognize bias, and 3) regulate the application of higher-level thinking strategies. A more sophisticated conception of critical thinking provides an opportunity to guide instructive and performance-based assessment programs in the digital age.

Author Contributions

The authors confirm being the sole contributors of this work and have approved it for publication.

Acknowledgements

Preparation of this paper was supported by a grant to the first author from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRC Grant No. 435-2016-0114).

Conflict of Interest

The authors declare that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest.

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Keywords: post-secondary education, critical thinking, data-rich environments, cognitive biases, performance assessments

Citation: Leighton JP, Cui Y and Cutumisu M (2021) Key Information Processes for Thinking Critically in Data-Rich Environments. Front. Educ. 6:561847. doi: 10.3389/feduc.2021.561847

Received: 13 May 2020; Accepted: 21 January 2021; Published: 24 February 2021.

Reviewed by:

Copyright © 2021 Leighton, Cui and Cutumisu. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) and the copyright owner(s) are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.

*Correspondence: Jacqueline P. Leighton, [email protected]

This article is part of the Research Topic

Assessing Information Processing and Online Reasoning as a Prerequisite for Learning in Higher Education

Unit of competency details

Bsbcrt404 - apply advanced critical thinking to work processes (release 1).

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Unit of competency

Modification history, application, unit sector, elements and performance criteria, foundation skills.

• Reflects on own performance and seeks opportunities to improve own skills and knowledge
• Interprets, evaluates and extracts relevant information from a range of texts for work requirements
• Documents key research findings and ideas
• Develops clear workplace documents appropriate to audience and context
• Articulates ideas and requirements clearly and persuasively using techniques appropriate to audience and environment
• Participates in a verbal exchange of ideas and elicits the view and opinions of others by listening and questioning
• Uses a range of persuasive responses and makes comparisons which show an understanding of topics and concepts
• Interprets and critically analyses numerical data to determine work process requirements
• Recognises and considers the implications of legal and regulatory responsibilities on own work
• Adheres to implicit and explicit organisational procedures and policies, seeking advice from others if necessary
• Demonstrates sophisticated control over oral, visual and/or written formats, drawing on a range of communication practices to achieve goals
• Actively identifies the requirements of important communication exchanges, selecting appropriate channel, format, tone and content to suit purpose and audience
• Reflects on personal values, behaviours and assumptions and considers how these might be perceived by others
• Looks for ways of establishing connections and building genuine understanding with a diverse range of people
• Takes responsibility for systematically planning, sequencing and prioritising tasks according to agreed timelines
• Uses systematic processes to gather and analyse information required to make decisions
• Recognises opportunities to develop and apply new ideas and select ideas for implementation
• Considers the key themes and ideas to be explored and identifies ways to response to and use diverse perspectives
• Uses features and functions of digital tools and technologies to store and present information
• Contributes to creating a climate where people feel comfortable to suggest, explore, adapt and adopt new ideas as a regular part of work life
• Uses problem-solving skills to evaluate and challenge ideas and move towards solutions

Unit Mapping Information

Assessment requirements, performance evidence.

• explain critical thinking concepts and approaches, the value of applying such approaches, and how they may apply to a workplace context
• use a range of critical thinking techniques to identify and address limitations in workplace processes, products or services
• ask questions of self and others to broaden own knowledge and understanding
• use various information sources to provide answers to own questions
• develop a proposal to articulate to a broad range of workplace stakeholders a solution to an identified issue
• incorporate feedback and self-reflection to critically assess performance

Knowledge Evidence

• key features and characteristics of critical thinking concepts and approaches
• key features and limitations of workplace procedures
• key legislative requirements relating to workplace procedures
• key sources of reliable information relevant to workplace procedures.

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• office equipment, technology, software and consumables required to implement internal and maintain internal control procedures
• corporate governance documentation required for role
• organisational operational policies and procedures required for role.
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How to promote critical thinking in the workplace

What is critical thinking?

• I have a tendency to think before I act
• I use solid information to inform my decisions
• I don’t base decisions on feelings
• I am happy to change methods
• I find it easy to explain the reasoning behind my decisions

How do we use critical thinking in the workplace?

• Ensuring you always have your eye on the end goal
• Talking to other people and collecting relevant information
• Using information and facts to inform your actions
• Making sure your own preconceptions don’t influence a situation
• Building solutions that are individual to each situation
• Anticipating both the long and the short-term consequences of decisions

Why is workplace critical thinking so significant?

• Poor decision making
• Unhappy colleagues
• A lack of necessary action
• Dysfunctional systems
• Financial losses
• Wasted time and effort

How can I develop my critical thinking skills?

• Get into the habit of asking important but basic questions such as, ‘What do we already know about this situation?’ or ‘What is our main goal here?’
• Gain a solid understanding of your own preconceptions. Learn how to override them
• Do plenty of research but don’t forget to think for yourself as well
• Talk to your employer about a whole organisation approach
• Consider a career move into job roles that often require expert critical thinking. There are many of these but IT business analyst , project analyst and supervisor are popular cross-industry examples.
• Investigate training opportunities. For example, Upskilled’s BSB50215 - Diploma of Business can help you develop a competitive edge and includes a unit on applying advanced critical thinking to work processes.

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