Critical thinking is the art of asking questions
“Which questions should I ask? Should I question the answers to the questions
that I ask? Should I question the question? Are some questions better to ask
than others? How do I recognize a useful as opposed to an unhelpful question?
If thinking is something I do inside my head and I ask all these questions do
I have to come up with the answers?”
- Tips to start critical thinking
- Describe – state what it is
- Analyse – Break it down into its component parts and
- Name the parts
- Look at the relationships between the parts
- What are the possible problems/issues with these relationships?
- Evaluate the ‘problems’ is it an important issue/ why do you
think that?
- Imagine an alternative
- Apply steps 1-7 to the alternative.
Another way to organize these eight steps is to use the general categories
of
What
|
How
|
Why
|
Why Not
|
Background
Context
Parts |
Relationships of
parts, to each other and to the whole |
The meaning of it:
Why are the relationships between the parts structured that way |
Alternatives:
How could it be different? What would it look like if it was different?
|
It is possible to think critically about anything, look at this example
of thinking critically about a ball point pen. Alternatively try
your hand at some critical thinking. If you would like to have more practise
at critical thinking sign up for one of the workshops run by the Student Learning
section in the non-teaching weeks.
From Julia Hobson’s Critical Thinking workshop, Murdoch University, 2002.
|
