Critical Thinking Skills
Participant Guide
Critical Thinking Skills
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Course ActivitiesModule One: Characteristics of Critical ThinkingType of Activity Segment Timing (minutes)
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Facilitation
Critical Thinking Skills
Course Objectives 5
What is Critical Thinking? 10
Why Is It Important? 5
Curiosity 10
Awareness 5
Flexibility 10
Common Sense 10
Module Two: Critical Thinking Mistakes
Rationalization 10
Emotional Thinking 10
Biases 5
Course Activities (cont.)Module Two: Critical Thinking Mistakes (cont.)
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Facilitation
Group Activity
WrittenExercise
Reading
WrittenExercise
Group Activity
Facilitation
Critical Thinking Skills
Type of Activity Segment
Tunnel Vision 10
Module Three: The Critical Thinking ProcessType of Activity Segment
EEE 5
Examine 5
Explore 45
Evaluate 30
Module Four: Turning Thinking into Action
Critical Thinking Practice 45
Critical Thinking Evaluation Tool 10
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Critical Thinking Skills
ContentsModule One: Characteristics of Critical Thinking...................................................1Course Objectives........................................................................................................2
What Is Critical Thinking?............................................................................................3
Why Is It Important?.....................................................................................................4
Curiosity.......................................................................................................................5
Awareness...................................................................................................................6
Flexibility......................................................................................................................7
Common Sense...........................................................................................................8
Module Two: Critical Thinking Mistakes..................................................................9Rationalization............................................................................................................10
Emotional Thinking.....................................................................................................11
Biases........................................................................................................................12
Tunnel Vision.............................................................................................................13
Module Three: The Critical Thinking Process.......................................................14EEE............................................................................................................................15
Examine.....................................................................................................................16
Explore.......................................................................................................................17
Evaluate.....................................................................................................................21
Module Four: Turning Thinking into Action..........................................................23Critical Thinking Practice............................................................................................24
Thinking about Critical Thinking.................................................................................26
Appendix...................................................................................................................29Action plan.................................................................................................................30
Course review............................................................................................................31
Suggested resource list..............................................................................................33
Course evaluation......................................................................................................34
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Critical Thinking Skills
Module One
Characteristics of Critical Thinking
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Critical Thinking Skills
Course ObjectivesSuccessful completion of this course will increase your knowledge and ability to:
Define critical thinking
Identify and adopt the characteristics of critical thinking
Recognize and avoid critical thinking mistakes
Identify assumptions
Evaluate information accurately and thoroughly
Distinguish between fact and opinion
Implement the critical thinking process in business situations
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What Is Critical Thinking? What kind of transportation do you use?
Descriptions of critical thinking ________________________________________________
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Definition of critical thinking ________________________________________________
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What critical thinking is not Acquisition of information without evaluation
Evaluation of information without investigating it
Being argumentative or critical of other people
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Critical Thinking Skills
Why Is It Important?
Critical thinking enables you to: Think independently
Make better decisions
Solve problems systematically
Think more creatively
Increase self-reflection
Specific benefits of critical thinking Detect inconsistencies and common mistakes in reasoning
Recognize your own assumptions and biases
Identify the importance and relevance of various ideas
Reach well-reasoned conclusions and solutions
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According to a study by The Conference Board, 400 senior HR professionals were
asked to name the most important skill their employees will need in the next five years.
Critical thinking ranked #1—above innovation or technology.
Critical Thinking Skills
Curiosity
Think like a kid Take a “naïve observer” perspective instead of being a know-it-all
Show some humility; don’t let pride or ego get in the way of clear thinking
Ask questions that reflect your willingness to grasp and accept new ideas and conclusions
Project inquisitiveness and excitement rather than skepticism or negativity
ActivityInstructions: Take a ruler and rubber band and combine them to make as many different uses as you can think of. List them below.
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Critical Thinking Skills
AwarenessAwareness is knowing what you know, and knowing what you don’t know.
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Critical Thinking Skills
Flexibility
Someone who is flexible: Is open to new information
Changes approach or perspective in response to unexpected obstacles or changing conditions
Adapts easily and rapidly to new situations and new information
Considers alternative points of view without being attached to any one perspective
Plays devil’s advocate
Deals with ambiguity without getting stressed out
Solves problems through compromise and consensus and is willing to experiment with another person’s ideas
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Critical Thinking Skills
ActivityInstructions: Look at each group of words and think of another word that is associated with all three of them.
1. turkey shoulder war ______________________
2. sun back television ______________________
3. floor play fair ______________________
4. coffee heart down ______________________
5. rage tobacco rash ______________________
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Critical Thinking Skills
Common Sense Pay attention to the obvious
Verification and accuracy: Are numerical figures accurate?
Does it pass the “sniff test”? Think of outlandish urban legends, like stories of people who follow their GPS when it tells them to drive into a building!
Consider the source
Common sense quiz1. How many birthdays does the average man have?
2. You have two US coins totaling 55 cents. One is not a nickel. What are the coins?
3. If there are 3 apples and you take away two, how many do you have?
4. Divide 30 by 1/2 and add 10. What is the answer?
5. Two men play five games of checkers. Each man wins the same number of games. There are no ties. Explain this.
6. If you have only one match and you walked into a room where there was an oil burner, a kerosene lamp, and a wood burning stove, what would you light first?
7. A farmer has 17 sheep; all but 9 die. How many are left?
8. Is it legal for a man in California to marry his widow’s sister? Why?
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Critical Thinking Skills
Module Two
Critical Thinking Mistakes
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Rationalization Evidence → Conclusion = Logic
Conclusion → Evidence = Rationalization
Commonly known as excuses!
Arises from a desire to avoid being wrong or not wanting to accept another conclusion
Examples A manager who wants to hire a personal friend keeps finding
reasons to reject resumes from other, perhaps more qualified, applicants
A restaurant cuts portion sizes of its entrees without reducing the price to save money and tries to convince customers that the “healthier portion size” is better for them
To avoid: Determine your true motivation for thinking or believing a certain
conclusion.
Listen carefully to others’ explanations—both to uncover valid reasoning you haven’t thought about and to detect whether they are using invalid reasoning.
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Critical Thinking Skills
Emotional Thinking Reacting to a feeling
Reacting to emotional language
Example: “Public employee” vs. “Bureaucrat”
Wishful thinking
Polarization: Emotional attachment to one side of an issue
Trusting evidence for your belief/position without questioning it
Rejecting evidence for other beliefs/positions without examining it
Thinking: Good (“us”) versus bad (“them”)
To avoid: Separate facts from feelings
Focus on developing flexibility
Carefully follow the critical thinking process
ActivityInstructions: Read the sentence below and rewrite it to eliminate any emotional or polarizing language.
The new manager’s leadership is disastrous; she intends to dismantle a perfectly good system just so she can cling to her familiar way of doing things.
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Critical Thinking Skills
BiasesConfirmation bias The tendency to seek information that proves, rather than
disproves, our theories. Example: Deciding your boss doesn’t like you and providing examples to support that conclusion, while ignoring instances that might refute that conclusion.
One piece of false evidence can completely invalidate other, more visible supporting factors.
Hindsight bias The tendency to see past results as different or more probable
than initially thought. “I knew we were going to lose.”
Recency effect The tendency to give more credence to the most recent data you
receive. Studies show that people remember information more easily from the end of a list than from the middle.
Overconfidence Studies show that people tend to overestimate their abilities—
asked to rank themselves against others, more than 80% of people place themselves in the top 30% of the group.
Trusting a source just because you’re familiar with it.
To avoid: Carefully reflect on your reactions, looking for bias.
Trust, but verify.
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Critical Thinking Skills
Tunnel Vision
Arises from conditioning that causes us to behave in certain patterns
Blinders
Missing the big picture
We can’t grasp any options other than the ones we see/know
Example When is four half of five?
Activity Just _________________________________________________
Good to the ___________________________________________
We try _______________________________________________
Melts in your mouth ____________________________________
Takes a licking and _____________________________________
To avoid: Actively consider other perspectives
Seek out someone with a different perspective and ask for his or her input
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Module Three
The Critical Thinking Process
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EEE
Examine Identify the issue or problem
Collect information
Explore Uncover assumptions and biases
Interpret information
Brainstorm alternative explanations or solutions
Evaluate Assess explanations or solutions
Reach a conclusion
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Critical Thinking Skills
Examine
Identify the issue You can’t evaluate what you can’t identify
Issue: The question or situation that requires an answer or conclusion
What the issue is NOT:
Examples
Statistics
Evidence
Conclusion
Collect informationSearch for the 5 W’s and H
Observation/personal experience
Intuition
Recognize a situation that may mislead other people. Example: When a sensational but extremely rare catastrophic earthquake occurs in a city, people may begin to think of that city as earthquake-prone or unsafe, even though that may not be the case.
Examples
Statistics
Research findings
Expert testimony
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Critical Thinking Skills
Explore
Interpret information Separate fact from opinion: look or ask for the evidence to back up
the information.
Clarify ambiguous words, phrases, examples, or statistics.
Example: “Produced excellent results.” What does “excellent” mean? What “results” were produced?
Clarify numbers that are too big or too small to picture
A million versus a billion versus a trillion dollars
Recognize euphemisms
Examples:
“Profit-taking” = selling or cutting losses
“Downsizing,” “rightsizing,” “RIF” (reduction in force), “reorganizing” = cutting jobs, layoffs, or if you want to call it what it is, firing people.
“Categorical inaccuracy” = lie
“Asset” or “resource” = people
ActivityInstructions: Complete each sentence below.
Babies are ______________________________________________
Elderly people are ________________________________________
My neighbors are _________________________________________
Girl Scouts are ___________________________________________
CEOs are _______________________________________________
Customers are ___________________________________________
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Critical Thinking Skills
Explore (cont.)
Uncover assumptionsAssumptions are unstated beliefs, usually related to values, priorities, and preferences. They are the filter through which we view the issue.
Typical values conflicts include: loyalty vs. honesty, competition vs. cooperation, security vs. excitement, self-control vs. spontaneity, individual rights vs. group/community interests
Recognize the assumptions being made: Ask, “How do I/we know that?”
Seek alternative viewpoints: find out how other people view the same situation.
Consider the assumption’s relevance: understand the extent to which an assumption applies to the situation.
ActivityInstructions: Look at the photo and tell a story about what you see.__________________________________________________________
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“When you assume, you make an ass out of u and me.”
Oscar Wilde
Critical Thinking Skills
Explore (cont.)
Generate alternative explanations What are all the explanations and options you can come up with?
Put yourself in someone else’s shoes: If you look at the issue and evidence from other perspectives, what possible solutions might you reach?
Dare to be different: Consider the most outlandish explanations and solutions.
Brainstorming techniques Mind mapping
Start with your issue or problem in the center of a flip chart or whiteboard. Create branches of sub-topics, and branch out from those until you capture all of the ideas related to the issue.
Drawing
Think of an issue or problem. Consider: What are the major obstacles? What isn’t working? What’s bothering me most is…
Next, draw any pictures, scribbles, doodles, etc. that come into your mind without trying to make them look decipherable. Then look at them and see what ideas or solutions arise from them.
Brainwriting
Get a group of people and have them write their ideas for how to solve the problem on their own sheets of paper. After three minutes, ask them to rotate the sheets to different people and build off what the last person wrote. Rotate as many times as you want, or until everyone has written on everyone else’s sheet.
Reverse brainstorming
Instead of asking, “How can I solve this problem?” ask, “How can I create this problem?” From those ideas, see if you can work backward to solve your actual problem or issue.
Role model
Brainstorm ideas as if you were your role model, or a public figure you admire. What would your parent do? Best friend? Beloved teacher? Bill Gates? Warren Buffett? Thomas Jefferson? Albert Einstein? Mother Teresa? What would this person think or do about the issue or problem?
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Critical Thinking Skills
Explore (cont.)
Brainstorming practiceInstructions: Read the following scenario and then use the brainstorming technique assigned to your group to generate ideas, options and possible solutions to the issue.
You are the supervisor for a team of 12 people. Your IT department has installed new accounting software for the entire organization. Some of your team members are eager to use it, some greatly prefer the old software, and some don’t want to use any software at all. Your goal is to get all team members to use the new software without complaining.
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Evaluate
Assess explanations or solutions Are there erroneous or incorrect assumptions?
Are there any fallacies in the reasoning?
Review critical thinking mistakes.
How good is the information?
What is the source?
Can you test it?
Is it vague?
Did you observe for yourself? Check for yourself?
Is the information based on only one occurrence? Or is there a pattern?
Is information omitted?
Context
Negative or opposing ideas or information
How dependable are the statistics?
Are there other statistics that contradict the data you collected?
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Evaluate (cont.) What options/solutions/conclusions can you toss out due to faulty
reasoning, incorrect assumptions, bad information, etc.?
List the pros and cons of the remaining choices.
Consider mapping choices on a value/effort grid.
Prioritize each choice.
Reach a conclusion What reasonable conclusions are possible?
Multiple conclusions are usually possible from a single set of data/information.
Beware of either-or choices.
What is the most reasonable conclusion?
PracticeInstructions: Read the article and evaluate the information and the conclusion reached in it.
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Critical Thinking Skills
Module Four
Turning Thinking into Action:
Critical Thinking Practice
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Critical Thinking PracticeInstructions: Read the following scenario and answer the questions.
A commercial building is under construction. The construction company has submitted additional bills above and beyond the signed contract because the building owner has requested so many changes. The owner believes the changes are within the allowable limits of the contract, but the construction company disagrees and is threatening to halt construction if the situation can’t be resolved.
Identify the problem or issue:__________________________________________________________
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What information do you have?__________________________________________________________
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What additional information would help you to reach a reasonable conclusion?__________________________________________________________
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Critical Thinking Practice (cont.)
What assumptions have been made?__________________________________________________________
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What alternative explanations or solutions are possible?__________________________________________________________
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What is the most reasonable choice or conclusion?__________________________________________________________
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Thinking about Critical Thinking Use this tool to evaluate the critical thinking process for the scenario.
Instructions: Reviewing the behavior and conversations you observed while completing the practice activity, choose the response that most accurately reflects the performance of the group.
Accurately and thoroughly EXAMINES the issue or problem1 Unskilled
No in-depth look at the issue, no attempt to gather data or evidence outside of personal knowledge and perspective.
2 DevelopingGathers data and evidence but doesn’t verify its accuracy, limits data gathering to familiar sources.
3 ProficientMakes first-hand observations when possible, gathers data and evidence from a variety of sources and verifies its accuracy.
Comments:
Accurately and thoroughly IDENTIFIES the issue or problem1 Unskilled
Fails to identify and/or summarize the problem or issue in any detail.
2 DevelopingSummarizes the issue, though some aspects are incorrect or mixed up. Key details are superficially covered or missing entirely.
3 ProficientClearly and completely summarizes the issue, including all relevant aspects of the issue, even if seemingly small.
Comments:
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Accurately and thoroughly identifies theASSUMPTIONS and BIASES
1 UnskilledApproach to the issue or problem is one-dimensional, doesn’t recognize assumptions or biases.
2 DevelopingRecognizes some assumptions and biases, and attempts to account for them in the analysis of the issue or problem.
3 ProficientClearly identifies assumptions and biases. Delves into the assumptions to separate valid from invalid.
Comments:
Accurately and thoroughly EXPLORES the issue or problem1 Unskilled
Accepts evidence and statistics at face value, makes no attempt to separate facts from opinions.
2 DevelopingAnalyzes and verifies the evidence, uses objective questioning to separate facts from opinions.
3 ProficientChallenges the evidence to verify its accuracy, actively looks for fallacies in reasoning or for information that may have been omitted that may be relevant to the issue.
Comments:
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Accurately and thoroughly EVALUATES the issue1 Unskilled
Presents conclusion as a simplistic summary of information, rather than analysis. Fails to identify implications or consequences of the conclusion.
2 DevelopingPresents conclusion as the most reasonable based on the evidence. Does not fully consider the implications and consequences of the conclusion.
3 ProficientPresents conclusion as the most reasonable based on the evidence. Carefully considers the implications and consequences of the conclusion or decision.
Comments:
Demonstrates critical thinking CHARACTERISTICS: awareness, curiosity, flexibility and common sense
1 UnskilledDoesn’t demonstrate any of the characteristics.
2 DevelopingDemonstrates some of the characteristics, or demonstrates all the characteristics but for only part of the process.
3 ProficientDemonstrates all characteristics throughout the entire critical thinking process.
Comments:
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Critical Thinking Skills
Appendix
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Action PlanStep One: Skill ReviewSkills I want to master: Start/Finish Date
Step Two: ImplementationWhat do you need to implement your plan?
List additional skills and projects you could accomplish with more training.
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Critical Thinking Skills
Course Review1. Write a definition of critical thinking.
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2. List three benefits of critical thinking. _________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
3. Which of the following is NOT a characteristic of critical thinking?
a. Curiosity
b. Awareness
c. Standing your ground
d. Common sense
4. Which of the following describes rationalization?
a. Evidence → Conclusion = Rationalization
b. Conclusion → Evidence = Rationalization
5. What of the following is NOT an example of emotional thinking?
a. Checking your intuition
b. Reacting to loaded language
c. Polarization
d. Wishful thinking
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6. “The tendency to seek information that proves, rather than disproves, your belief” describes which type of bias?
a. Hindsight bias
b. Confirmation bias
c. Recency effect
d. Overconfidence
7. What are the three parts of the critical thinking process?_________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
8. List three brainstorming strategies._________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
9. Statistics serve as proof of your belief/idea/conclusion.
a. True
b. False
10. Multiple conclusions are possible from a single set of data/information.
a. True
b. False
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Suggested Resource List Brown, M. Neil and Stuart M. Keeley. Asking the Right Questions: A Guide to Critical Thinking. 9th ed. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall, 2009.
de Bono, Edward. de Bono’s Thinking Course. New York: Facts on File, 1994.
Hurson, Tim. Think Better: An Innovator’s Guide to Productive Thinking. New York: McGraw-Hill, 2007.
McInerny, D.Q. Being Logical: A Guide to Good Thinking. New York: Random House Trade Paperbacks, 2005.
Michalko, Michael. Thinkertoys: A Handbook of Creative Thinking Techniques, 2nd edition. Berkeley, CA: Ten Speed Press, 2008.
Schoenberg, Bob. Critical Thinking in Business. Chesterfield, MO: Heuristic Books, 2008.
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Course EvaluationCourse title: Date:
Instructor: Your name (optional):
Indicate how you would rate each item by circling the best response provided.
1 = Poor 2 = Acceptable 3 = Average 4 = Good 5 = Excellent
Course Content Rating
Practical and relevant course topics 1 2 3 4 5
Course objectives were met 1 2 3 4 5
Length of time to cover course topics 1 2 3 4 5
Effectiveness of exercises to reinforce skills 1 2 3 4 5
Course materials were easy to use and follow 1 2 3 4 5
Materials contributed to achieving learning objectives 1 2 3 4 5
Instructor Effectiveness Rating
Knowledge of course subject matter 1 2 3 4 5
Level of professionalism 1 2 3 4 5
Enthusiasm for the course 1 2 3 4 5
Ability to answer questions effectively 1 2 3 4 5
Ability to encourage participation 1 2 3 4 5
Pace of training Too slow Too fast Just right
Length of training Too short Too long Just right
General Rating
Appropriate room temperature 1 2 3 4 5
Facilities conducive to learning 1 2 3 4 5
Overall I rate the learning experience… 1 2 3 4 5
The course objectives met my expectations Yes No
I would recommend this course to others Yes No
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Course Evaluation (cont.)Additional Comments
The most valuable thing(s) I learned were…
To improve the training I would suggest that you…
Additional comments I can offer are…
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