Critical thinking is a fundamental skill which you will need to apply to all areas of study, from reading, researching and note taking to writing assignments.
Developing critical thinking skills
The ability to think critically about the information and ideas available is the key to effective academic study. Critical thinking is concerned with finding, examining, making sense of and evaluating information to make a judgement or decision. Before you can use your own ideas in a verbal or written form, you obviously need to think about the significance of this material and the ways in which it can be applied to meet the requirements of the task set. Critical thinking should involve:
- a sense of your objectives
- an understanding of all the issues
- consideration of all the evidence and different perspectives
- a distinction between fact and opinion
- an awareness of motives/hidden agendas
- an awareness of generalisations.
A broad approach to critical thinking
Define the problem
A successful solution often depends on knowing what the problem is and when to stop. It is always worth spending time examining the problem to get a thorough understanding of all the issues involved and to identify what restrictions and resources may already exist before drawing any conclusions or outlining any possible solutions.
Discover relevant materials
Your assignment will need to show that you have an informed opinion. You should be able to describe how the issues involved relate to one another and be aware of how the relevant theories relate to the problem at hand. If this is a practical example, you may need to show what other people have done previously and what the results of their interventions were.
Examine the evidence
Once you have assembled the evidence, you need to assess what credence should be given to it by examining its quality and what it might be describing. In particular, you should pay attention to:
- identifying what is not available/stated and why
- assessing the quality of the available evidence
- assess the quality of the source
- constructing possible links and relationships.
Examine your interpretation of the evidence
Very often the most obvious solution isn’t the most appropriate option. For this reason, it’s worth checking yourself for faulty thinking. There are many reasons for faulty thinking:
- superficial/lack of knowledge
- failure to recognise the real issue(s) and arguments
- lack of understanding of the significance of the information
- failure to see the overall picture
- failure to distinguish opinion from evidence
- drawing faulty conclusions from false premises.
Examine your conclusions
The best way to examine your conclusions is to open them up to discussion, for example in the online discussions. Discussion allows you to:
- self-test knowledge
- apply your knowledge
- test your ability to think and rethink
- encounter alternative ideas and insights
- access other ways of thinking
- reorganise ideas and arguments
- test your ability to react to contrary arguments
- justify your argument with evidence
- develop relevance and clarity
- practise expressing ideas and argument
- practise using technical language and jargon
- develop ability to construct and evaluate arguments.
Remember - thinking cannot take place in a vacuum. Regular contributions to tutorials, seminars, discussions (on and off line) and group work are crucial to successful study because it is through these situations that you develop your critical thinking skills.
Reading
As previously discussed there are times when you need to read something in critical detail. However you also need to develop reading techniques to help you to cope with a wide range of texts. Throughout the course of your study you will find that it becomes necessary to search out and examine both additional and alternative sources of information on your subject. In order to help with this, you have been provided with a reading list of suitable texts. In addition, reference sections and bibliographies are also a good source of further leads. Try to share information about good sources with fellow students.
There are a number of ways in which you can make this reading more efficient and effective. A well used strategy for successful reading is known as SQ3R (Beard 1987). This acronym stands for:
SURVEY – QUESTION – READ – RECALL – REVIEW.
Let us look at each of these stages in turn:
Survey
Survey techniques of rapid reading allow you to identify quickly and focus upon the key texts, and the key issues within the texts. If you want to establish the relevance of a book you should skim through the contents page, the index, and the preface or introduction. Once you are dealing with a specific chapter/article you can skim through the headings, summaries and the first sentence of paragraphs.
Question
Always approach your reading actively. Set yourself some questions:
- what are the main ideas?
- what are the author’s questions?
- why are they posed in this way?
- what questions would I pose to someone else on the meaning of this text?
Read
With your questions in mind, actively read and engage with the text:
- identify the main ideas/argument
- pick out important detail, e.g. proof, examples
- use the author’s signposts to understand the direction of the argument
- react to the text, look for contrary views
- evaluate the contribution of this text to the debate.
Recall
Periodically stop your reading and record the main points, argument, examples, criticisms, etc. This forces you to use your ideas and will highlight any lack of understanding. It also aids concentration and encourages active reading in the first place.
Review
At this stage you should review the whole process. Survey the text and think again about the questions and issues you want to address. It might be that you now identify new or different ideas. Reread the text and test this against your recall. In this way you are monitoring your strategy as well as reinforcing the learning process.
You should not expect to understand everything the first time you read a new text. The SQ3R approach encourages you to reread for better understanding and if you are still unsure, then read again.
Applying critical thinking to your reading
There will be times in your course when you are asked to ‘critically evaluate’ a particular text. It can help to follow a structure for doing this:
- identifying the author’s line of reasoning
- critically evaluating the line of reasoning
- questioning surface appearances and assumptions
- identifying evidence in the text
- evaluating the evidence
- identifying the writer’s conclusions
- deciding whether the evidence supports the conclusions
Exercises and activities
Your learning materials will include exercises and activities, try to complete these as they are a valuable resource for your studies. Once you are satisfied with your answers, you may like to word-process them and save them for future reference. Be sure to develop your argument in a logical manner and provide references and other evidence in support of your answers. This both develops your skills of writing in an academic style and gives you material and background information that you may be able to use at a later stage and possibly incorporate in your assignments. You may like to use the ring-binder format of these modules to keep your thoughts and solutions to these exercises alongside your notes.
Note-taking skills
Notes are an aid to memory and a reconstruction of the arguments and evidence encountered. Brevity here is a virtue. The information you gather will be largely abstract, specialist and essentially in the form of an argument or debate. Therefore, you need to focus on the links, the concepts, the theories, the arguments and a few good examples. Long notes are often too unwieldy to be useful. Excessive note-taking can be a thoughtless and indiscriminate activity. It can distract from active engagement with the significant ideas of your subject and may diminish the quality of understanding derived from lectures and reading.
There is no single correct method for making notes and different people adopt different methods. You could:
- make notes in the margins of your texts or highlight key words and phrases
- write a short summary on each section of the text – this can help you express the topic in your own words
- use ‘mind-maps’, i.e. diagrammatic ways of representing a lot of information in a very concise way, as you show the links between different parts of the material
- make notes on paper and file these in a ring binder or folder.
Whatever you do, we suggest that you make this as active as possible. Break the text up into sections and make sure that you have thought about each before you continue. As you read, it is vital that you note down the full references of all the works and any quotations you wish to use, so that you can cite them in your text. We will deal with citation and references in Section 2.
It is vital that your notes reflect these priorities. Always create a clear structure for your notes, leaving space for future comment and indications of significance as your thinking progresses. Most importantly, make sure that your notes are relevant, selective, clearly labelled and legible. Used in this way, note-taking provides a powerful memory aid for thorough and long-term learning.
Avoid reading when you are tired because you will not take in what you read. Try and make sure that you have some ‘quality time’ for studying when your mind is fresh and when you have two or three hours at a stretch.
Remember, when making notes you should:
- listen/read actively
- record main arguments/ideas
- record interesting/significant examples or detail
- record connections and links within the material
- record connections and links with previous material
- identify questions/contrary views
- identify misunderstood areas.
- After completing your notes, you should:
- think about your notes
- test your understanding by attempting to reconstruct the main ideas
- identify any new insights you may have gained
- actively reorder and use material.
Online discussions/tutorials
Your WebCT discussions/tutorials provide a counterpart to reading. Reading introduces the territory of new ideas while the tutorials will help you to explore and use them. If you are to extract the maximum benefit from your online participation, it is important to prepare for them. Ask yourself:
- what is the topic?
- how does it relate to the rest of the programme?
- what do I know about this already?
- what reading should I be doing?
- what questions should I be looking to answer?
Participating in the WebCT discussions allows you to meet other class members and their ideas. Participating in a conference means that you will be required to initiate and respond to topic questions in the form of ‘conversations’.
In general, one person will start the conversation; another will respond and perhaps challenge the first person or in some way add something of value to the conversation; a third will do the same, perhaps trying to add a different perspective. You should try to add something of value each time you respond to a fellow student’s posting and not simply agree or disagree.
Be aware of and keep up with the module schedule. Log in to the module WebCT site on a regular basis (some people log on a couple of times a day - find the pattern that suits you best). Although these are distance learning modules, they are designed to provide you with a schedule to work to so that you can really benefit from the module materials and discussions. Regular attention to the module WebCT site allows you to be aware of module updates, progress in conference discussions and new information or messages from QMU requiring your immediate attention.
Remember - if you have questions about any aspects of your module, try posting them to your class conferences in WebCT. Your fellow class members may have similar questions or may have already discovered the answers.
When working in groups online, be sure to fulfil your responsibilities to the best of your ability. Remember, how well your group does – and how well you do – depends on all the group members working co-operatively. The questions below are also useful ones to keep in mind when participating in online tutorials and discussion:
- what is being said? What does it mean?
- how does it connect to the module?
- what are the main ideas?
- what are the main arguments?
- does it answer my questions?
- what do I not understand?
- how can I use this knowledge?
In addition, you should try to evaluate what is being said. Ask yourself:
- are the facts complete?
- is there evidence to support the claims?
- does this agree/conflict with other arguments/opinions?
- are there weaknesses?
- is this worth making notes on?
Finally, remember that the Internet is a public place. Speak and behave as you would in a classroom.
Other aids to understanding
There are other ways of aiding understanding:
- always use a dictionary to learn the meaning of new words
- continue to pose questions and ask why others should be interested in this
- read other complementary sources
- link what you read to past experience and to lectures and tutorials
- share your ideas and uncertainties with other students
- spend time reflecting on your learning at the end of each day, you may find it useful to jot down observations and questions in a diary, to follow up later.
You may also find it helpful to look at the study skills section of the Future Focus web site:
www.qmu.ac.uk/futurefocus/
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