You (hopefully!) apply critical thinking in other areas of your life, so you should be able to do think critically about your coursework. Basically, critical thinking is taking information, evaluating it and making decisions about its value. The first thing you have to do if you want to think critically about something is
Stop and think about the following questions:
- What does the statement say?
- Who is saying it?
- Why are they saying it?
- Do they present any evidence to justify what they say?
- Would you draw the same conclusions from the evidence?
- What sources do they use to support what they're saying?
Suppose you saw a headline, "Eating butter helps you live longer!". When you look at the article, you see that it's written by someone who works for a butter producer. Do you think maybe that they could be stretching the truth a bit? It's not in the best interests of butter producers to say bad things about their product, is it?
You may be aware that the third Monday in January is called "Blue Monday" and is considered to be the most depressing day of the year. Says who? Says a travel firm who first came up with the idea in 2005 as a PR stunt to get their name in newspapers. They calculated the day using an "equation" that included totally random and unrelated factors such as "debt", "motivation", "weather" and "need to take action" (like book a holiday!). Sadly, lots of stories in newspapers are like this. This is the only Blue Monday worth the name!
It’s important to note that "critical" does not mean being negative. "Critical" may be most commonly used negatively, as in finding fault with something, but "critical" in critical thinking means taking time to think things out and draw conclusions based on the evidence.
The library has access to some ebooks on critical thinking that might help you get started. To access these, you will need a ProQuest Central eBook account - contact the library or fill in the form on this page. Please read the text below the Request Account button!
Critical Thinking Skills Success in 20 Minutes a Day
Think Smarter : Critical Thinking to Improve Problem-Solving and Decision-Making Skills
Image United Nations CC BY-SA 4.0 via Wikimedia Commons
