Research Guides: Critical thinking and Information Literacy: Home

Musings About Critical Thinking (CT) In Particular When Writing Research Papers, Researching for Classroom Assignments, or Understanding Written Assignment Prompts.

Based on my experiences in teaching and learning:

Students often seek quick and easily accessible answers, which highlight the "Google Effect." See, Betsy Sparrow et al. Google Effects on Memory: Cognitive Consequences of Having Information at Our Fingertips.Science 333,776-778 (2011).
Read this excellent article: Dwyer, Christopher P., et al. “An Integrated Critical Thinking Framework for the 21st Century.” Thinking Skills and Creativity, vol. 12, 2014, pp. 43–52, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tsc.2013.12.004.
To effectively engage in the critical thinking tasks involved in writing a paper, students need sufficient background knowledge on the topic they are writing about. They need "general" reading about this topic, as basic as an encyclopedia article.
The 3 most important sets of skills to master critical thinking are: Analysis. evaluation and inference.
Critical thinking is not innate- It is taught developmentally and in diverse environments and with diverse experiences.
We cannot write about what we do not understand or lack knowledge of. It is essential to grasp the basic principles or concepts of a topic when addressing a research question. For instance, if you are writing about the effects of technology on privacy—can you define what privacy is?
Understanding a concept from multiple angles and perspectives is crucial.
Different academic disciplines approach and interpret critical thinking differently. Faculty should keep this in mind when introducing new concepts, assessing tasks, or providing explanations.
Faculty must assume that students may have no previous knowledge or understanding of the material.
Critical thought requires effort, and this effort is not always easy. A disposition to learn.
Reading is essential; students must read to enhance their understanding.
There is a specific structure and syntax to formulating a research question. This structure should be taught, broken down, and shared with students. Share with students your approach on how you would handle the project.
Text mining should be taught, focusing on how to extract information from a text to support a conclusion.

More thoughts to come.

Learning without thought is labor lost; thought without learning is perilous. Study without reflection is a waste of time; reflection without study is dangerous.

—Confucious

As professionals and academics, we all have a mental definition of what is involved in a critical thinking task. This guide will attempt to present some useful guidelines, definitions, and exercises for promoting the development of critical thinking.

Of imperative importance is to be aware that Critical Thinking is a process that must be taught and illustrated. Many times the processes of Critical Thinking are not natural cognitive manifestations for tasks such as writing a paper or a discipline-specific assessment-- Students need to be exposed directly to the diverse elements of many critical thinking tasks. Do not take for granted that a student knows how to do a task just because you assign it!

Note -Most Images Compiled from Google Image Search.

Critical Thinking by Christopher P. Dwyer
ISBN: 9781107142848
Publication Date: 2017-05-09
Dwyer's book is unique and distinctive as it presents and discusses a modern conceptualization of critical thinking - one that is commensurate with the exponential increase in the annual output of knowledge. The abilities of navigating new knowledge outputs, engaging in enquiry and constructively solving problems are not only important in academic contexts, but are also essential life skills. Speciﬁcally, the book provides a modern, detailed, accessible and integrative model of critical thinking that accounts for critical thinking sub-skills and real-world applications; and is commensurate with the standards of twenty-first-century knowledge. The book provides both opportunities to learn and apply these skills through a series of exercises, as well as guidelines on how critical thinking can be developed and practised, in light of existing psychological research, which can be used to enhance the experience of critical thinking training and facilitate gains in critical thinking ability.

The above book has been an invaluable source in my quest to understand and teach Critical Thinking. It informs lots of the content here!

Betsy Sparrow et al. Google Effects on Memory: Cognitive Consequences of Having Information at Our Fingertips.Science 333,776-778 (2011).
"The advent of the Internet, with sophisticated algorithmic search engines, has made accessing information as easy as lifting a finger. No longer do we have to make costly efforts to find thet hings we want. We can “Google” the old classmate, find articles online, or look up the actor who was on the tip of our tongue. The results of four studies suggest that when faced with difficult questions, people are primed to think about computers and that when people expect to have future access to information, they have lower rates of recall of the information itself and enhanced recall instead for where to access it. The Internet has become a primary form of externalor transactive memory, where information is stored collectively outside ourselves"

Welcome to the Critical thinking and Information Literacy LibGuide

What is Critical Thinking?
What are the foundations of critical thinking (CT), and why is CT important?
What do you expect from your students when you ask them to critically evaluate?
What does CT mean to you?

As professionals and academics we all have a mental definition of what is involved in a critical thinking task. This guide will attempt to present some useful guidelines, definitions, and exercises for promoting the development of critical thinking.

Most important is to be aware that Critical Thinking as a process must be taught and illustrated. Many times the processes of Critical Thinking are not manifested naturally for some tasks such as writing a paper.

What is Critical Thinking?

Critical Thinking is the meta cognitive structural framework upon which we make sense of the world. Critical Thinking outlines the mental processes that are engaged in understanding a particular task, and the processes on which we acquire and produce new knowledge. Its importance cannot be overstated. In many cases the process of thinking critically needs to be illustrated by the instructor.

MOST IMPORTANTLY--Critical Thinking operates surreptitiously, and it is often achieved and activated by the practice of three core skills: analysis; evaluation and inference.

Helping Students Decode Writing Assignments

Librarian

Jesus Sanabria