SLOA Committee Workshop

Salt Lake Community College

Faculty Convention, 2013
Critical Thinking Definitions
Critical thinking is a strategic process that is:
Objective guided by a willing and o open mind (e.g., data regarding, non-biased, etc.)
Purposeful aimed at a specific goal regarding what to believe or do (e.g., problem
solving, decision making, etc.)
Contextual situated within a specific context using discipline-specific knowledge
Metacognitive using active thinking about the process (executive control, epistemic
maturity, self-correction, reflection, etc.)
Complex using various (and often multiple) thinking skills as the needs demand
(interpretation, inference, evaluation, etc.)
(Zane, 2011)
Other Authors Definitions of Critical Thinking
May be a process, a strategy, skill, or set of skills depending on the type of CT one
accepts
Attitude or Dispositions + Knowledge or Information + Thinking Skills = critical
thinking
Purposeful, contextual, reasoned, thoughtful, effective, and goal directed thinking that
results in solving problems, formulating inferences, calculating likelihoods, making
decisions. Critical thinking increases the probability of a desirable outcome.
Going beyond acceptance of the world view, authoritative knowledge, and beyond
blindly carrying out procedures
Reasonable reflective thinking focused on deciding what to believe or do
Actively and skillfully conceptualizing, applying, analyzing, synthesizing, and/or
evaluating information gathered from, or generated by, observation, experience,
reflection, reasoning, or communication, and a guide to belief and action
Purposeful, reflective judgment which manifests itself in reasoned consideration of
evidence, context, methods, standards, and conceptualizations in deciding what to
believe or what to do

What you might ask your students to do:

To begin, do your students have a set of beliefs, aspirations, feelings, desires, etc. to critically
analyze something? The thinker has to want to think critically about something, be motivated
toward thinking rather than learning a specific skill. This is called Dispositions or Critical
Spirit.
Interpret
This includes the act of making sense of various inputs
Arguments
Evidence
Statements
Ideas
Concepts
Graphics
Pictures
Questions
Problems
Situations
Beliefs, etc.
Analyze
The act of breaking a complex construct, situation, or other entity into component parts to
aid understanding
Connected to: reading, viewing, or listening
Recognizing relationships, listing constraints and assumptions
Finding ideas within a work, considering diverse perspectives, identifying
implications or consequences, discriminating, etc.
Related terms: consideration, investigation, looking deeply at issues, comparing,
contrasting, reasoning, etc.
Have students:
Categorize
Classify
Deconstruct
Identify connections
Identify arguments
Consider diverse perspectives
Evaluation
The skill of determining merit, efficacy, advantages, worth, authenticity, validity, impact,
or significance of something
Have students:
Assess
Judge

Inference
Coming to a conclusion or making decisions, deductions, assumptions, etc., based on
evidence at hand
Have students:
Create an alternative
Make a decision
Draw conclusions
Generalize
Make connections
Plan
Predict
Reason
Explanation
This is a blend of dispositions, interpretation, analysis, evaluation, inference
Students must have the ability to communicate well
Orally
Written narrative
To grade a critical thinking oral or written paper, you must look for evidence that includes stating
and justifying the reasoning in terms of the evidential, conceptual, methodological,
criteriological, and contextual considerations upon which ones results were based, and to present
ones reasoning in the form of cogent arguments (Facione, 2011).
Example: Students can construct an argument. The term argument is most often defined as the
ability to construct reasons for a position or to support a conclusion. In writing, the term
argument may relate to the ability to persuasively explain a point of view, position, decision, etc.
Like most other terms related to critical thinking, it is similar to, or a part of, or a super-set to
terms like logical reasoning, mathematical proofs, analysis, evaluation, prediction, presentation
of evidence, use of examples, etc.
Metacognition for self-regulation
Is a special form of critical thinking
Related to different sorts of critical thinking and has different goals
Self-consciously monitor and control ones own cognitive activities
Thinking about thinking
Self-awareness
Knowing about knowing
Epistemic awareness