Bernie's Blog Week 13: Fordham Futures: Critical Thinking

December 18th 2006, Time magazine printed a special issue titled " How to Build a Student for the 21st Century". Time editors declared that to be effective in the 21st century students must think their way through abstract problems, be able to work in teams, recognize good information from bad, be multilingual, and globally sensitive.
In addition students must...
- be critical thinkers
- be problem solvers
- be innovators
- be effective communicators
- be self-directed learners
- be information and media literate
- be globally aware
- be civically engaged
- be financial and economically literate.

      Critical thinking dates back to the days of Socrates [470-399 BC]. The Socratic method focuses on asking the student thought provoking questions. Through questions and answers the teacher guides the student through a critical thinking experience. A process that allows you to examine your beliefs for the purpose of enhancing your understanding and problem-solving abilities.
      A skilled Socratic teacher guides the student's thought process through proper questioning, assisting you in critically evaluating and restructuring your beliefs and knowledge, as you build your confidence and your curiosity. Two elements essential to becoming a critical thinker. Critical thinking can only happen for you if you are motivated and challenged to engage in higher-level thought.
      Critical thinking has its genesis in a rational, logical, and philosophical cognitive thought process that can be taught and studied. Metaphysics and epistemology are the two branches of philosophy that inform and inspire the critical thinking involved in your internal and external career conversations.
      Career metaphysics will assist you in understanding the big pictures that connect your own creative career exploration with the connectivity of a highly complex and competitive world of work. You need to remember that all 'career metaphysicists' share two foundational psychological predispositions: first, a passion for unity, and second, a belief in the hidden harmony of the universe. Career epistemology serves as your unique perspective as you look to discover "...how you know what you know", an invaluable awareness in an economy where you will be thinking for a living.
      Critical thinking is driven by your desire for knowledge acquisition and action. You observe, experience, reflect, reason, and communicate a process that actively and skillfully conceptualizes, applies, analyzes, synthesizes, and evaluates information and knowledge. Critical thinking is the art of cognitively bringing together the content and context; the theory and the practice; and the action and the reflection.
      Critical thinking needs to be experiential and surrounded by feedback in a quest for understanding how things work and how systems can be improved. A critical thinker takes the time and effort to learn from your experiences. Reflection is an important tool in your critical thinker's cognitive repertoire. Some of the benefits of critical thinking include the promotion of creativity, the better expression of ideas, an enhanced ability in self-reflection, and the cultivation of flexible intellectual skills that you can apply to different areas of your life.
      Professor Peter Facione of the American Philosophical Association led a research group of forty-six experts, from the fields of humanities, physical sciences, social sciences, and education, in determining core critical thinking skills. The experts concluded that there were six core critical thinking skills:

• Inference: To identify and secure elements needed to draw reasonable conclusions; to form conjectures and hypotheses; to consider relevant information; as well as, the consequences flowing from data, statements, principles, evidence, judgments, beliefs, opinions, concepts, descriptions, questions, or other forms of representation.
• Explanation: To state the results of one's reasoning, to justify that reasoning in terms of the evidence, conceptual, methodological, criteria, and contextual considerations upon which one's results were based, and to present one's reasoning in the form of cogent arguments.
• Evaluation: To assess the creditability of statements or other representations which are accounts or descriptions of a person's perspective, experience, situational judgment, belief, or opinion, and to assess the logical strength of the actual or intended inferential relationships among statements, descriptions, questions, or other forms of representation.
• Self-Regulation: Self-consciously to monitor one's cognitive activities, the elements used in those activities, and the results facilitated, particularly by applying skills in analysis and evaluation to one's own inferential judgments, with a view toward questioning, validating, or correcting either one's reasoning or one's results.
• Interpretation: To comprehend and express the meaning or significance of a wide variety of experiences, situations, data, events, judgments, connections, beliefs, rules, procedures, or criteria.
• Analysis: To identify the intended and actual inferential relationships among statements, questions, concepts, descriptions, or other forms of representation intended to express belief, judgment, experiences, reasons, information, or opinions.

      Critical thinking is not an isolated goal unrelated to other important goals in education. Rather it is a seminal goal which when done well facilitates a wide spectrum of possibilities and opportunities. It is best conceived as a cognitive epicenter around which all other educational questions and answers gather.
      As you learn to think more critically you become more proficient at historical, scientific, and mathematical thinking. You will develop skills, abilities, and values crucial to success in everyday life. As you realize and actualize your critical thinking, you will begin to understand that your career is created by your own choices. Also, you will discover that your career will emerge from a personal restless curiosity that focuses on the interplay and the integration of your experience within the context of the world of work.