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Critical Thinking

"Explore issues, ideas, artifacts, and events before accepting or formulating an opinion or conclusion."

What is critical thinking?

There are many definitions for critical thinking! Put simply, most would say it is thinking about ideas, arguments, and information with the goal of being reasonable, by noticing your own biases and faults and working to improve them. But some people might disagree - here are a few more definitions you can look through.

Defining Critical Thinking - The Foundation for Critical Thinking

Critical Thinking - Credo Reference

Critical Thinking About Sources - Molloy University

What is Critical Thinking? - University of Louisville

Critical Thinking and Problem Solving - University of Tennessee Chattanooga

Models

These models can help you think through critical thinking methods visually. They're just guidelines (they don't need to be followed perfectly step-by-step or anything), but they can be helpful to work through.

Visual guide to Bloom's Taxonomy.

Source: Jono Hey, Sketchplanations, CC 4.0.

 

Circular guide to critical thinking, going from "Do Something" to "What happened?" to "So what?" to "What next?" and then back around.

Source: University of Southampton Critical Thinking LibGuide (via Batista, 2007).