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As I discussed in another article, critical thinking is the key to improve mind and society
and any graduate student needs to master it. The starting point for critical thinking is the
process you follow to analyze and make judgments about what has happened. In other
words, critical thinking begins with your reflection about what you have experienced.
First, you revisit experiences. Then, you analyze and judge them using your own
framework of values, beliefs, attitudes, and assumptions. Finally, you assign meaning to
them, change them, justify actions, and/or solve problems. When you achieve that last step,
you are thinking critically.
Critical thinking is the raw material for performing intellectual and social processes.
Problem solving, strategic thinking, decision-making, creativity, planning, and openness
to differences and new visions are based on it. The better your critical thinking is, the more
effective and significant those processes are.
So, focusing on improving critical thinking is a path to perform better at such important
processes. To do that, it is necessary to know what skills you need to develop and master
in order to think critically. Despite the fact that there are many proposals of what skills
are required, it is also true there are some commonalities upon which you can build the
process to improve your critical thinking. Let us have a look at some of them.
Observation
This is an essential skill to master because a well-focused and intended observation
provides relevant input information to begin or reshape the process that will end by
assigning meaning, changing situations, solving problems, etc. An observation with a clear
purpose is a must to think critically.
Interpretation
It is the ability to understand and express information. By using this skill, decoded
information is enriched and then the improved message is expressed and/or applied to
new situations or contexts. Such interpretation is based on understanding the language
of the information and the characteristics of the context from which it emerges. It has
three sub-skills: categorization, decoding significance, and clarifying meaning.
Explanation
It refers to the ability to add clarity and perspective to information so it can be fully
understood. It means that information is reshaped to make it more accessible to the
target population. It may be approached from different points of view in order to
provide a more comprehensive and understandable version of it and include a
description of how the explanation was conceived. It is a basic skill for academic and
research writing since it lets us make our thinking accessible to the audience.
Analysis
It is the ability to identify components of information, connect them, and assign meaning
in relation to specific and/or general contexts. That implies that patterns and
relationships are determined and that elements are not only established but linked to
have a clear idea of the whole and the details.
Inference
This is the skill that lets you reach logical conclusions from information using evidence
and reasoning to derive implicit information from explicit one and related contexts. It is
commonly referred to as “reading between lines”. The accuracy of the inference is related
to the accuracy of the input information and the coherence of reasoning. Low levels of
both lead to misinterpretations of the judged experiences or situations.
Evaluation
It is the ability to establish the credibility or validity of information based on the
application of specific criteria. This judgment is guided by evidence provided as well as
the framework of beliefs, values, and opinions of the person who makes the judgment. As
a result of the application of this skill, actions are taken, attitudes are adopted, new things
are created, etc.
Metacognition
It refers to the ability to monitor your own thinking process and adapt it to the peculiarities
of the task and the effectiveness of the actions taken. It has two sub-skills: self-examination
and self-correction. This self-regulatory skill is used to improve the thinking process and
get better results.
All these skills are necessary to perform critical thinking. Therefore, they should be
understood, practiced, and mastered. They certainly constitute a complex set of high-order
thinking skills, but those characteristics should not frighten you. They are reachable and
you can master them. Although formal education seems to be the best environment to
develop them, it is not the only context to do it. Once you have a good picture of what they
are and imply, you can even work independently to develop and master them. In another
article, I will present different ways of doing that.