Critical Thinking: What It Is and Why It Counts
01 Jan 2011-
TL;DR: Morante et al. as mentioned in this paper provided that whenever material from this essay is cited or extracted in whole or in part that appropriate citation is made by indicating this essay’s full title, author name, publisher's name, year, and page or pages where it appears in this edition.
Abstract: Permission to Reprint for Non-Commercial Uses This essay is published by Insight Assessment. The original appeared in 1992 and has been updated many times over the years. Although the author and the publisher hold all copyrights, in the interests of advancing education and improving critical thinking, permission is hereby granted for paper, electronic, or digital copies to be made in unlimited amounts, provided that their distribution is free of charge provided that whenever material from this essay is cited or extracted in whole or in part that appropriate citation is made by indicating this essay’s full title, author’s name, publisher’s name, year, and page or pages where it appears in this edition. For permission for reprints intended for sale contact Insight Assessment by phone at 650-697-5628 or by email to jmorante@insightassessment.com. ISBN 13: 978-1-891557-07-1.
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Journal Article•
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors provide best practices for incorporating critical thinking instructional methods into business education classrooms at both the secondary and post-secondary levels by analyzing and synthesizing secondary research.
Abstract: Critical thinking is a learned skill that requires instruction and practice. Business education instructors at both the secondary and post-secondary levels can enhance students' critical thinking skills by (1) using instructional strategies that actively engage students in the learning process rather than relying on lecture and rote memorization, (2) focusing instruction on the process of learning rather than solely on the content, and (3) using assessment techniques that provide students with an intellectual challenge rather than memory recall. Several barriers can impede critical thinking instruction. Lack of training, limited resources, biased preconceptions, and time constraints conspire to negate learning environments that promote critical thinking. However, actively engaging students in project-based or collaborative activities can encourage students' critical thinking development if instructors model the thinking process, use effective questioning techniques, and guide students' critical thinking processes. The examples provided challenge instructors to think of students as users of information rather than receivers of information. "It is possible to store the mind with a million facts and still be entirely uneducated. " -Alec Bourne Introduction What is critical thinking, and why is it so important? The Critical Thinking Community defined critical thinking as "the intellectually disciplined process of actively and skillfully conceptualizing, applying, analyzing, synthesizing, and/or evaluating information gathered from, or generated by, observation, experience, reflection, reasoning, or communication, as a guide to belief and action" (Scriven & Paul, 2007, p. 1). Critical thinking has also been referred to as metacognition (Tempelaar, 2006) or the process of "thinking about thinking" as defined and originally purposed by Flavell (1979). Critical thinking skills are important because they enable students "to deal effectively with social, scientific, and practical problems" (Shakirova, 2007, p. 42). Simply put, students who are able to think critically are able to solve problems effectively. Merely having knowledge or information is not enough. To be effective in the workplace (and in their personal lives), students must be able to solve problems to make effective decisions; they must be able to think critically. Critical thinking is not a new concept. "Throughout nearly 300 years of policymaking in the United States, educators have promoted eight broad goals of schooling: basic academic skills, critical thinking and problem solving, social skills and work ethic, citizenship, physical health, emotional health, the arts and literature, and preparation for skilled employment" (Rothstein, Wilder, & Jacobsen, 2007, p. 8). Business education directly addresses work ethic and the preparation for skilled employment as well as critical thinking and problem solving. Yet many teachers continually struggle to engage students in critical thinking activities (Tempelaar, 2006), and students seldom use critical thinking skills to solve complex, real-world problems (Bartlett, 2002; Rippin, Booth, Bowie, & Jordan, 2002). Why? The answer may be in our instructional methods. Two quotes that are often cited together reflect this supposition (as cited by Schaf ersman, 1991). First, Clement (1979) stated that "we should be teaching students how to think. Instead, we are teaching them what to think" (p. 1). Second, Norman (1981) noted that "it is strange that we expect students to learn, yet seldom teach them anything about learning" (p. 1). Although content is important, the process of how students learn the material is equally important. Therefore, the purpose of this article is to analyze and synthesize secondary research to provide best practices for incorporating critical thinking instructional methods into business education classrooms at both the secondary and post-secondary levels. …
377 citations
TL;DR: This paper found that the ability to avoid these biases was moderately correlated with a more traditional laboratory measure of critical thinking, i.e., the ability of a person to reason logically when logic conflicts with prior belief.
Abstract: In this article, the authors argue that there are a range of effects usually studied within cognitive psychology that are legitimately thought of as aspects of critical thinking: the cognitive biases studied in the heuristics and biases literature. In a study of 793 student participants, the authors found that the ability to avoid these biases was moderately correlated with a more traditional laboratory measure of critical thinking—the ability to reason logically when logic conflicts with prior belief. The correlation between these two classes of critical thinking skills was not due to a joint connection with general cognitive ability because it remained statistically significant after the variance due to cognitive ability was partialed out. Measures of thinking dispositions (actively open-minded thinking and need for cognition) predicted unique variance in both classes of critical thinking skills after general cognitive ability had been controlled.
341 citations
TL;DR: The authors reviewed the theory underlying the use of socioscientific issues (SSI) in science education and discussed how SSI units, which encourage evidence-based decision-making and compromise, can improve critical thinking, contribute to character education, and provide an interesting context for teaching required science content.
Abstract: Drawing upon recent research, this article reviews the theory underlying the use of socioscientific issues (SSI) in science education. We begin with a definition and rationale for SSI and note the importance of SSI for advancing functional scientific literacy. We then examine the various roles of context, teachers, and students in SSI lessons as well as the importance of classroom discourse, including sociomoral discourse, argumentation, discussion, and debate. Finally, we discuss how SSI units, which encourage evidence-based decisionmaking and compromise, can improve critical thinking, contribute to character education, and provide an interesting context for teaching required science content.
337 citations
Cites background from "Critical Thinking: What It Is and W..."
...The core creative thinking skills of analysis, inference, explanation, evaluation, interpretation, and self-regulation (Facione, 2007) will all be encouraged by SSI units as will the dispositions associated with them....
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TL;DR: This paper outlines a general schema of how cognitive change occurs and the constraints that may apply, and examines the major strategies that have been developed in the social sciences and in medicine to achieve cognitive and affective debiasing, including the important concept of forcing functions.
Abstract: In a companion paper, we proposed that cognitive debiasing is a skill essential in developing sound clinical reasoning to mitigate the incidence of diagnostic failure. We reviewed the origins of cognitive biases and some proposed mechanisms for how debiasing processes might work. In this paper, we first outline a general schema of how cognitive change occurs and the constraints that may apply. We review a variety of individual factors, many of them biases themselves, which may be impediments to change. We then examine the major strategies that have been developed in the social sciences and in medicine to achieve cognitive and affective debiasing, including the important concept of forcing functions. The abundance and rich variety of approaches that exist in the literature and in individual clinical domains illustrate the difficulties inherent in achieving cognitive change, and also the need for such interventions. Ongoing cognitive debiasing is arguably the most important feature of the critical thinker and the well-calibrated mind. We outline three groups of suggested interventions going forward: educational strategies, workplace strategies and forcing functions. We stress the importance of ambient and contextual influences on the quality of individual decision making and the need to address factors known to impair calibration of the decision maker. We also emphasise the importance of introducing these concepts and corollary development of training in critical thinking in the undergraduate level in medical education.
293 citations
TL;DR: Findings of an integrative literature review related to emotional intelligence (EI) and nursing reveal widespread support of EI concepts in nursing, and theoretical and editorial literature confirms Ei concepts are central to nursing practice.
285 citations
References
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Book•
01 Jan 1974TL;DR: The authors described three heuristics that are employed in making judgements under uncertainty: representativeness, availability of instances or scenarios, and adjustment from an anchor, which is usually employed in numerical prediction when a relevant value is available.
Abstract: This article described three heuristics that are employed in making judgements under uncertainty: (i) representativeness, which is usually employed when people are asked to judge the probability that an object or event A belongs to class or process B; (ii) availability of instances or scenarios, which is often employed when people are asked to assess the frequency of a class or the plausibility of a particular development; and (iii) adjustment from an anchor, which is usually employed in numerical prediction when a relevant value is available. These heuristics are highly economical and usually effective, but they lead to systematic and predictable errors. A better understanding of these heuristics and of the biases to which they lead could improve judgements and decisions in situations of uncertainty.
31,082 citations
Book•
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TL;DR: In this paper, the origins of epistemological theory are discussed and the layout of argument and modal arguments are discussed, as well as the history of working logic and idealised logic.
Abstract: Preface Introduction 1. Fields of argument and modals 2. Probability 3. The layout of arguments 4. Working logic and idealised logic 5. The origins of epistemological theory Conclusion References Index.
6,407 citations
TL;DR: Three heuristics that are employed in making judgements under uncertainty are described: representativeness, availability of instances or scenarios, which is often employed when people are asked to assess the frequency of a class or the plausibility of a particular development.
5,935 citations
TL;DR: A wine-loving economist we know purchased some nice Bordeaux wines years ago at low prices as discussed by the authors, but would neither be willing to sell the wine at the auction price nor buy an additional bottle at that price.
Abstract: A wine-loving economist we know purchased some nice Bordeaux wines years ago at low prices. The wines have greatly appreciated in value, so that a bottle that cost only $10 when purchased would now fetch $200 at auction. This economist now drinks some of this wine occasionally, but would neither be willing to sell the wine at the auction price nor buy an additional bottle at that price. Thaler (1980) called this pattern—the fact that people often demand much more to give up an object than they would be willing to pay to acquire it—the endowment effect. The example also illustrates what Samuelson and Zeckhauser (1988) call a status quo bias, a preference for the current state that biases the economist against both buying and selling his wine. These anomalies are a manifestation of an asymmetry of value that Kahneman and Tversky (1984) call loss aversion—the disutility of giving up an object is greater that the utility associated with acquiring it. This column documents the evidence supporting endowment effects and status quo biases, and discusses their relation to loss aversion.
4,025 citations
Book•
01 Jul 2002TL;DR: In this article, a review is presented of the book "Heuristics and Biases: The Psychology of Intuitive Judgment, edited by Thomas Gilovich, Dale Griffin, and Daniel Kahneman".
Abstract: A review is presented of the book “Heuristics and Biases: The Psychology of Intuitive Judgment,” edited by Thomas Gilovich, Dale Griffin, and Daniel Kahneman.
3,642 citations