Critical Thinking

Kathleen Carpenter Katelyn Lewis Taylor Bruer

What is critical thinking?

Critical thinking is the mental process of actively and skillfully conceptualizing, applying, analyzing, synthesizing, and evaluating information to reach an answer or conclusion.

Why is critical thinking important?

Critical thinking is important because “we acquire a means of assessing and upgrading our ability to judge well. In enables us to go into virtually any situation and to figure out the logic of whatever is happening in that situation. It provides a way for us to learn from new experiences through the process of continual self-assessment. Critical thinking, then, enables us to form sound beliefs and judgments, and in doing so, provides us with a basis for a ‘rational and reasonable’ emotional life.” – Inquiry: Critical Thinking Across the Disciplines, Winter, 1996. Vol. XVI, No. 2.

How does critical thinking apply to 21st century education? When researching how critical thinking applies in 21st century education, we found that critical thinking was the answer to the question, “how are 21st century learning skills defined?”

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An example of how to apply critical thinking

Example: John is over two meters tall, so he is tall.

“The conclusion is “he is tall”, and the reason to believe the conclusion is “John is over 2 meters tall”. If all arguments were as elementary as the example above, there would be little call to develop standardizing conventions, but arguments can be quite complex, and so we need to develop some notation to keep track of everything.”

The use of technology when critically thinking • WebQuest • Web 2.0• Online Discussion Boards (questions the students

would like to ask the teacher or classmates) o Wiki Spaceso Blogs

• Podcasts, Twitter, & Facebooko Each day require the students to listen to a podcast that the teacher

has set up with questions that the students will have to answer. These questions may take the students time in-class or out of class to answer.

Work Cited• Critical Thinking By Example. (n.d.). Retrieved February 12,

2013, from Critical Thinking By Example: http://www.criticalthinkingbyexample.com/Chapter1/chapter1.html

• critical thinking. (n.d.). Dictionary.com's 21st Century Lexicon. Retrieved February 12, 2013, from Dictionary.com website: http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/critical thinking

• Pacific Policy Research Center. 2010. 21st Century Skills for Students and Teachers. Honolulu: Kamehameha Schools, Research & Evaluation Division. Website: http://www.ksbe.edu/spi/PDFS/21%20century%20skills%20full.pdf

• The Importance of Logic and Critical Thinking. (2011, March 8). In Wired.com. Retrieved February 12, 2013, from http://www.wired.com/geekdad/2011/03/the-importance-of-logic-critical-thinking/