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Critical Thinking

The document discusses the importance of critical thinking in education, emphasizing that students can learn from repeated information and engage actively in their learning process. It outlines various levels of knowledge acquisition, from basic recall to evaluation, and highlights the necessity of questioning beliefs and assumptions. The text also references philosophical perspectives on thinking from Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle, advocating for a reflective and purposeful approach to decision-making and belief formation.

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Zeenat Ansari
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10 views

Critical Thinking

The document discusses the importance of critical thinking in education, emphasizing that students can learn from repeated information and engage actively in their learning process. It outlines various levels of knowledge acquisition, from basic recall to evaluation, and highlights the necessity of questioning beliefs and assumptions. The text also references philosophical perspectives on thinking from Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle, advocating for a reflective and purposeful approach to decision-making and belief formation.

Uploaded by

Zeenat Ansari
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
Available Formats
Download as PPTX, PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
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Warning:

This workshop or session might be familiar or in your words repetitive according to the data we collected from the
MUWCI air because you might have heard these ideas before.
But
We as teachers who work for the mission called UWC have heard that the students at the UWC colleges are active
and lifelong learners and are capable of learning something new everytime they get an opportunity regardless of
the information presented or the people who presented that information.
We also found out that the MUWCI students specifically discussed the UWC values recently and they believe that
personal responsibility, integrity and mutual respect are very important as values in order to become better people.
So we believe that they all are going to have their cameras on as it is being respectful towards the people who have
prepared this session for them.
Once the information is presented to you maybe you want to teach us more about it and change the way we your
teachers look at it.
Terms and conditions applied.
Critical Thinking
Why Concern
Ourselves With
Thinking?
Because whenever we are dealing with
human life, we are almost always
dealing with thinking.
Thinking is the way that the mind makes
sense of the world and everything that
is within it and beyond it.
There is no way to understand anything
except through thinking.
Socrates: "To find yourself, think for yourself."

From Socrates, we get great


emphasis on argument and
critical thinking. Socrates chose
to make argument the main
thinking tool. Within argument,
there was to be critical thinking:

Why do you say that?


What do you mean by that?
Plato: “Knowledge is true opinion.”

From Plato we get the


notion that there is the
"truth" somewhere but
that we have to search
for it to find it. The way
to search for the truth is
to use critical thinking
to attack what is untrue.
Aristotle : "It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to
entertain a thought without accepting it."

From Aristotle
we get a type of
logic, based on
identity and non-
identity, as well
as on inclusion
and exclusion.
Belardo

“Critical Thinking is
purposeful goal directed
thinking. It is an art of
thinking about what one
is thinking about in order
to make it more accurate,
clear and defensible”
So we can say that Critical Thinking is
purposeful judgement which results in
Knowledge

The basic level of acquisition of knowledge requires the student to


be able to exhibit memory of previously learned material by
recalling facts, terms, basic concepts and answers.

Keywords: Define, list, describe, identify, show, name, quote


Comprehension

Comprehension means students understanding the material read,


heard or seen. In comprehending, you make the new knowledge that
you have acquired your own by relating it to what you already
know.

Keywords: Explain, describe, summarise, differentiate, discuss,


interpret
Application

Application requires that you know what you have read, heard, or
seen, that you comprehend it, and that you carry out some task to
apply what you comprehend to an actual situation.

Keywords: Illustrate, Use the information, Apply, Demonstrate,


Show, Solve, Classify, Discover
Analysis

Analysis involves breaking what you read or hear into its


component parts, in order to make clear how the ideas are ordered,
related, or connected to other ideas. Analysis deals with both form
and content to improve your critical thinking.

Keywords: Breakdown, distinguish, infer, prioritise, order, justify,


classify, arrange, divide
Synthesis

Synthesis involves the ability to put together the parts you analysed
with other information to create something original.

Keywords: Integrate, modify, rearrange, substitute, plan, create,


design, invent, incorporate
Evaluation

Evaluation occurs once we have understood and analysed what is


said or written and the reasons offered to support it. Then we can
appraise this information in order to decide whether you can give or
withhold belief, and whether or not to take a particular action

Keywords: Decide, rank, test, measure, recommend, support,


conclude, compare, appraise, defend
Why do we think?
1. In order to decide what to do
2. In order to decide what to believe

3. For fun (because it makes you look cool, you pretend to be busy
thinking to keep the others away, or you just simply do not know what
thinking is and you are trying to find the true meaning of life, and I
kind of lost the thinking part while I was thinking about making this
funny enough.)
1) We think in order to decide what to do

We all think carefully and logically whenever we care about our decisions. Consider an important decision:

“I should buy a dog”

•Because I’ve always had dogs and I love them

•Because dogs are peoples’ best friend

•Because I can go out walking every evening, keep fit and meet other people with dogs

•But walking my dog every evening will mean I cannot pursue my new hobby

•But I’ll feel guilty if I’m forced to leave my dog alone in the house all day

•But a new dog would be expensive and I’m really short of money right now.

How do we arrive at our final decision in this context?


2) We think in order to decide what to believe

But our ultimate decision about what to do very often hinges upon
our decision about what we believe. For example, what would
make you believe the statement: Dogs are peoples’ best friend?

Consider a list of reasons


Dogs are peoples’ best friend

Because Dogs are loyal


Because Dogs aid people’s mental wellbeing
Because Dogs have evolved to have strong classified social instincts - they respect the
leader of the pack, you
Because my Dogs have always been faithful
Because Dogs decrease their cholesterol levels

OBJECTIONS???

How do we ultimately decide what to believe in this context?


Questioning our beliefs: adding but to because

When deciding what to believe, we need to be careful not to focus only on


reasons for accepting our beliefs.

We should avoid simply working to confirm our beliefs (confirmation bias).

We need to question our beliefs and the reasons we provide as a basis for our
beliefs.

We need to be sceptical.

Are dogs really peoples’ best friend. What would make you disbelieve?
Dogs are people’s best friend
Because Dogs are loyal but without sufficient training, dogs can wander off and
fail to obey their owners. In this sense they are not always loyal.
Because Dogs aid people’s mental wellbeing but there is limited research
studies in this area is of poor quality
Because they protect their owner but some dogs are quite vicious
Arguments are hierarchical structures.

We can continue to add more levels if we like.


Robert Ennis

“Critical thinking is reasonable, reflective


thinking focused on deciding what to believe or
do.”
Critical Thinking: Abilities

to recognize problems,
to find workable means for meeting those problems,
to gather and marshal pertinent information,
to recognize unstated assumptions and values,
to comprehend and use language with accuracy, clarity, and discrimination,
to interpret data,
to appraise evidence and evaluate arguments,
to recognize the existence (or non-existence) of logical relationships between
propositions,
to draw warranted conclusions and generalizations,
to put to test the conclusions and generalizations at which one arrives,
to reconstruct one's patterns of beliefs on the basis of wider experience,
and to render accurate judgments about specific things and qualities in
everyday life.
(Glaser, 1941)

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