Critical Thinking Summary

Good critical thinking is skillful and responsible thinking in which you study problem from all angles, and then exercise your best judgment to draw conclusions. Supervisors, doctors, nurses and even students can use critical thinking everyday. Critical thinkers must listen carefully, look for evidence and be curious. Critical thinking begins when you question beyond what is given in order to draw conclusions. After that, you can end with a logical solution. This type of thinking has five important components: 1) Being Skillful. 2) Being Responsible. 3) Relies on sound criteria for making judgments. 4) Develops a presentation that is sensitive to context. 5) Correcting by yourself.

One way to classify thinking is Bloom’s Taxonomy. It is pyramidal in shape and illustrates six hierarchical levels of thinking, moving from simple at the bottom to more complex at the top. At the bottom is knowledge, which is remembering information. Then comes comprehension which is understanding and rewording information easily.After that is application which is paraphrasing in graphic format. Above application is analysis which is examination. Then above that is arranging events which are called synthesis. last is evaluation which is reading and reacting to the facts presented.

In sum, everybody has brains and thinks, but you should follow some tenets in order to be a critical thinker such as asking pertinent questions, observing, and becoming interested in finding new solutions.