Critical Thinking: What It Is And Why It Counts - UWA

Now, consider the example of theteam of people trying to solve a problem.The team members, unlike the courtroom’sadversarial situation, try to collaborate. Themembers of an effective team do notcompete against each other. They work inconcert, like colleagues, for the commongoal. Unless they solve the problem, noneof them has won. When they find the wayto solve the problem, they all have won. So,from analyzing just two examples we cangeneralize something very important: criticalthinking is thinking that has a purpose(proving a point, interpreting whatsomething means, solving a problem), butcritical thinking can be a collaborative,noncompetitive endeavor. And, by the way,even lawyers collaborate. They can worktogether on a common defense or a jointprosecution, and they can also cooperatewith each other to get at the truth so thatjustice is done.We will come to a more precisedefinition of critical thinking soon enough.But first, there is something else we canlearn from paradigm examples. When youwere thinking about “offensive violence” didyou come up with any examples that weretough to classify? Borderline cases, as itwere — an example that one person mightconsider offensive but another mightreasonably regard as non-offensive. Yes,well, so did we. This is going to happenwith all abstract concepts. It happens withthe concept of critical thinking as well.There are people of whom we would say, oncertain occasions this person is a goodthinker, clear, logical, thoughtful, attentive tothe facts, open to alternatives, but, wow, atother times, look out! When you get thisperson on such-and-such a topic, well it isall over then. You have pushed some kindof button and the person does not want tohear what anybody else has to say. Theperson’s mind is made up ahead of time.New facts are pushed aside. No other pointof view is tolerated.Do you know any people that mightfit that general description?Facione, PA, “Critical Thinking: What It is and Why it Counts”Good. What can we learn aboutcritical thinking from such a case? Maybemore than we can learn from just looking atthe easy cases. For when a case is on theborderline, it forces us to make importantdistinctions. It confronts us and demands adecision: In or Out! And not just that, butwhy? So, our friend who is fair-mindedabout some things, but close-minded aboutothers, what to do? Let’s take the parts weapprove of because they seem to us tocontribute to acting rationally and logicallyand include those in the concept of criticalthinking, and let’s take the parts that workagainst reason, that close the mind to thepossibility of new and relevant information,that blindly deny even the possibility that theother side might have merit, and call thosepoor, counterproductive, or uncriticalthinking.2Now, formulate a list of cases —people that are clearly strong criticalthinkers and clearly weak critical thinkersand some who are on the borderline.Considering all those cases, what is it aboutthem that led you to decide which werewhich? Suggestion: What can the strongcritical thinkers do (what mental abilities dothey have), that the weak critical thinkershave trouble doing?What skills orapproaches do the strong critical thinkers2Spoken by the Vampire Marius in Ann Rice’s book TheVampire Lestat Ballantine Books. New York, NY. 1985.2011 updatePage 4

habitually seem to exhibit which the weakcritical thinkers seem not to possess?Core Critical Thinking SkillsAbove we suggested you look for alist of mental skills and habits of mind, theexperts, when faced with the same problemyou are working on, refer to their lists asincluding cognitive skills and dispositions.As to the cognitive skills here is whatthe experts include as being at the very coreof critical thinking: interpretation, analysis,evaluation, inference, explanation, and selfregulation. (We will get to the dispositionsin just a second.) Did any of these words orideas come up when you tried tocharacterize the cognitive skills — mentalabilities — involved in critical thinking?Quotingfromtheconsensusstatement of the national panel of experts:interpretation is “to comprehend andexpress the meaning or significance of awide variety of experiences, situations, data,events, judgments, conventions, beliefs,rules, procedures, or criteria.”3 Interpretation3The findings of expert consensus cited or reportedin this essay are published in Critical Thinking: AStatement of Expert Consensus for Purposes ofEducational Assessment and Instruction. Peter A.Facione, principle investigator, The CaliforniaAcademic Press, Millbrae, CA, 1990. (ERIC ED 315423). In 1993/94 the Center for the Study of HigherFacione, PA, “Critical Thinking: What It is and Why it Counts”includes the sub-skills of categorization,decoding significance, and clarifyingmeaning. Can you think of examples ofinterpretation? How about recognizing aproblem and describing it without bias?How about reading a person’s intentions inthe expression on her face; distinguishing amain idea from subordinate ideas in a text;constructing a tentative categorization orway of organizing something you arestudying; paraphrasing someone’s ideas inyour own words; or, clarifying what a sign,chart or graph means?What aboutidentifying an author’s purpose, theme, orpoint of view? How about what you didabove when you clarified what “offensiveviolence” meant?Again from the experts: analysis is“to identify the intended and actualinferential relationships among statements,questions, concepts, descriptions, or otherforms of representation intended to expressbelief, judgment, experiences, reasons,information, or opinions.”The expertsincludeexaminingideas,detectingarguments, and analyzing arguments assub-skills of analysis. Again, can you comeup with some examples of analysis? Whatabout identifying the similarities anddifferences between two approaches to thesolution of a given problem? What aboutpicking out the main claim made in anewspaper editorial and tracing back thevarious reasons the editor offers in supportof that claim? Or, what about identifyingunstated assumptions; constructing a wayto represent a main conclusion and thevarious reasons given to support or criticizeit; sketching the relationship of sentences orparagraphs to each other and to the mainEducation at The Pennsylvania State Universityundertook a study of 200 policy-makers, employers,and faculty members from two-year and four-yearcolleges to determine what this group took to be thecore critical thinking skills and habits of mind. ThePennsylvania State University Study, under thedirection of Dr. Elizabeth Jones, was funded by theUS Department of Education Office of EducationalResearch and Instruction. The Penn State studyfindings, published in 1994, confirmed the expertconsensus described in this paper.2011 updatePage 5

purpose of the passage?What aboutgraphically organizing this essay, in yourown way, knowing that its purpose is to givea preliminary idea about what criticalthinking means?The experts define evaluation asmeaning “to assess the credibility ofstatements or other representations whichare accounts or descriptions of a person’sperception, experience, situation, judgment,belief, or opinion; and to assess the logicalstrength of the actual or intended ns, questions or other forms ofrepresentation.” Your examples? Howabout judging an author’s or speaker’scredibility, comparing the strengths andweaknesses of alternative interpretations,determining the credibility of a source ofinformation, judging if two statementscontradict each other, or judging if theevidence at hand supports the conclusionbeing drawn?Among the examples theexperts propose are these: “recognizing thefactors which make a person a crediblewitness regarding a given event or acredible authority with regard to a giventopic,” “judging if an argument’s conclusionfollows either with certainty or with a highlevel of confidence from its premises,”“judging the logical strength of argumentsbased on hypothetical situations,” “judging ifa given argument is relevant or applicableor has implications for the situation at hand.”Do the people you regard as strongcritical thinkers have the three cognitiveskills described so far? Are they good atinterpretation, analysis, and evaluation?What about the next three? And yourexamples of weak critical thinkers, are theylacking in these cognitive skills? All, or justsome?To the experts inference means “toidentify and secure elements needed todraw reasonable conclusions; to formconjectures and hypotheses; to considerrelevant information and to educe theconsequencesflowingfromdata,Facione, PA, “Critical Thinking: What It is and Why it Counts”statements,principles,evidence,judgments, beliefs, opinions, concepts,descriptions, questions, or other forms ofrepresentation.” As sub-skills of inferencethe experts list querying evidence,conjecturing alternatives, and drawingconclusions.Can you think of someexamples of inference? You might suggestthings like seeing the implications of theposition someone is advocating, or drawingout or constructing meaning from theelements in a reading. You may suggestthat predicting what will happen next basedwhat is known about the forces at work in agiven situation, or formulating a synthesis ofrelated ideas into a coherent perspective.How about this: after judging that it wouldbe useful to you to resolve a givenuncertainty, developing a workable plan togather that information? Or, when facedwith a problem, developing a set of optionsfor addressing it. What about, conducting acontrolled experiment scientifically andapplying the proper statistical methods toattempt to confirm or disconfirm anempirical hypothesis?Beyond being able to interpret,analyze, evaluate and infer, strong criticalthinkers can do two more things. They canexplain what they think and how theyarrived at that judgment. And, they canapply their powers of critical thinking tothemselves and improve on their previousopinions.These two skills are called“explanation” and “self-regulation.”The experts define explanation asbeing able to present in a cogent andcoherent way the results of one’s reasoning.This means to be able to give someone afull look at the big picture: both “to state andto justify that reasoning in terms of gical, and contextual considerationsupon which one’s results were based; andto present one’s reasoning in the form ofcogent arguments.” The sub-skills underexplanation are describing methods andresults, justifying procedures, proposing anddefending with good reasons one’s causal2011 updatePage 6

and conceptual explanations of events orpoints of view, and presenting full and wellreasoned, arguments in the context ofseeking the best understandings possible.Your examples first, please. Here aresome more: to construct a chart whichorganizes one’s findings, to write down forfuture reference your current thinking onsome important and complex matter, to citethe standards and contextual factors usedto judge the quality of an interpretation of atext, to state research results and describethe methods and criteria used to achievethose results, to appeal to establishedcriteria as a way of showing thereasonableness of a given judgment, todesign a graphic display which accuratelyrepresents the subordinate and superordinate relationship among concepts orideas, to cite the evidence that led you toaccept or reject an author’s position on anissue, to list the factors that wereconsidered in assigning a final coursegrade.Maybethemostremarkablecognitive skill of all, however, is this nextone. This one is remarkable because itallows strong critical thinkers to improvetheir own thinking. In a sense this is criticalthinking applied to itself. Because of thatsome people want to call this “metacognition,” meaning it raises thinking toanother level. But “another level” reallydoes not fully capture it, because at thatnext level up what self-regulation does islook back at all the dimensions of criticalthinking and double check itself.Selfregulation is like a recursive function inmathematical terms, which means it canapply to everything, including itself. Youcan monitor and correct an interpretationyou offered. You can examine and correctan inference you have drawn. You canreview and reformulate one of your ownexplanations. You can even examine andcorrect your ability to examine and correctyourself! How? It is as simple as steppingback and saying to yourself, “How am Idoing? Have I missed anything important?Let me double check before I go further.”Facione, PA, “Critical Thinking: What It is and Why it Counts”The experts define self-regulationto mean “self-consciously to monitor one’scognitive activities, the elements used inthose activities, and the results educed,particularly by applying skills in analysis,and evaluation to one’s own inferentialjudgments with a view toward questioning,confirming, validating, or correcting eitherone’s reasoning or one’s results.” The twosub-skills here are self-examination andself-correction. Examples? Easy — toexamine your views on a controversial issuewith sensitivity to the possible influences ofyour personal biases or self-interest, tocheck yourself when listening to a speakerin order to be sure you are understandingwhat the person is really saying withoutintroducing your own ideas, to monitor howwell you seem to be understanding orcomprehending what you are reading orexperiencing, to remind yourself to separateyour personal opinions and assumptionsfrom those of the author of a passage ortext, to double check yourself byrecalculating the figures, to vary yourreading speed and method mindful of thetype of material and your purpose forreading, to reconsider your interpretation orjudgment in view of further analysis of thefacts of the case, to revise your answers inview of the errors you discovered in yourwork, to change your conclusion in view ofthe realization that you had misjudged theimportance of certain factors when comingto your earlier decision. 44The California Critical Thinking Skills Test, and theTest of Everyday Reasoning, the Health ScienceReasoning Test, the Military and Defense ReasoningProfile, The Business Critical Thinking Skills Test,and the Legal Studies Reasoning Profile along withother testing instruments authored by Dr. Facione andhis research team for people in K-12, college, andgraduate / professional work target the core criticalthinking skills identified here. These instruments arepublished in English and several authorizedtranslations exclusively by Insight Assessment.2011 updatePage 7

The Delphi Research MethodThe panel of experts we keepreferring to included forty-six men andwomen from throughout the United Statesand Canada.They represented manydifferent scholarly disciplines in thehumanities, sciences, social sciences, andeducation. They participated in a researchproject that lasted two years and wasconducted on behalf of the AmericanPhilosophical Association. Their work wasFacione, PA, “Critical Thinking: What It is and Why it Counts”published under the title Critical Thinking: AStatement of Expert Consensus forPurposes of Educational Assessment andInstruction.(The California AcademicPress, Millbrae, CA, 1990). You maydownload the executive summary of thatreport free. Visithttp://www.insightassessment.comYou might be wondering how such alarge group of people could collaborate on2011 updatePage 8

this project over that long a period of timeand at those distances and still come toconsensus. Good question. Rememberwe’re talking the days before e-mail.Not only did the group have to relyon snail mail during their two-yearcollaboration; they also relied on a methodof interaction, known as the Delphi Method,which was developed precisely to enableexperts to think effectively about somethingover large spans of distance and time. Inthe Delphi Method a central investigatororganizes the group and feeds them aninitial question. [In this case it had to dowith how college level critical thinkingshould be defined so that people teaching atthat level would know which skills anddispositions to cultivate in their students.]The central investigator receives allresponses, summarizes them, and transmitsthem back to all the panelists for reactions,replies,andadditionalquestions.Facione, PA, “Critical Thinking: What It is and Why it Counts”Wait a minute! These are all wellknown experts, so what do you do if peopledisagree? And what about the possibleinfluence of a big name person? Goodpoints. First, the central investigator takesprecautions to remove names so that thepanelists are not told who said what. Theyknow who is on the panel, of course. Butthat is as far as it goes. After that eachexperts’ argument has to stand on its ownmerits. Second, an expert is only as goodas the arguments she or he gives. So, thecentralinvestigatorsummarizesthearguments and lets the panelists decide ifthey accept them or not. When consensusappears to be at hand, the centralinvestigator proposes this and asks ifpeople agree.If not, then points ofdisagreement among the experts areregistered. We want to share with you oneimportant example of each of these. Firstwe will describe the expert consensus viewof the dispositions which are absolutely vitalto strong critical thinking. Then we will notea point of separation among the experts.2011 updatePage 9

The DispositionThinkingTowardCriticalWhat kind of a person would be aptto use their critical thinking skills? Theexperts poetically describe such a personas having “a critical spirit.” Having a criticalspirit does not mean that the person isalways negative and hypercritical ofeveryone and everything.The experts use the metaphoricalphrase critical spirit in a positive sense. Byit they mean “a probing inquisitiveness, akeenness of mind, a zealous dedicationto reason, and a hunger or eagerness forreliable information.”Almost sounds like Supreme CourtJustice Sandra Day O’Connor or SherlockHolmes The kind of person being describedhere is the kind that always wants to ask“Why?” or “How?” or “What happens if?”.The one key difference, however, is that infiction Sherlock always solves the mystery,while in the real world there is no guarantee.Critical thinking is about how you approachproblems, questions, issues. It is the bestway we know of to get to the truth. But!There still are no guarantees — no answersin the back of the book of real life. Doesthis characterization, that strong criticalthinkers possess a “critical spirit, a probinginquisitiveness, a keenness of mind.” fitwith your examples of people you would callstrong critical thinkers?But, you might say, I know peoplewho have skills but do not use them. Wecannot call someone a strong critical thinkerjust because she or he has these cognitiveskills, however important they might be,because what if they just do not bother toapply them?One response is to say that it is hardto imagine an accomplished dancer whonever dances. After working to developthose skills it seems such a shame to letFacione, PA, “Critical Thinking: What It is and Why it Counts”them grow weak with lack of practice. Butdancers get tired. And they surrender to thestiffness of age or the fear of injury. In thecase of critical thinking skills, we mightargue that not using them once you havethem is hard to imagine. It’s hard toimagine a person deciding not to think.Considered as a form of thoughtfuljudgment or reflective decision-making, in avery real sense critical thinking ispervasive. There is hardly a time or aplace where it would not seem to be ofpotential value. As long as people havepurposes in mind and wish to judge how toaccomplish them, as long as people wonderwhat is true and what is not, what to believeand what to reject, strong critical thinking isgoing to be necessary.And yet weird things happen, so it isprobably true that some people might lettheir thinking skills grow dull. It is easier toimagine times when people are just tootired, too lax, or too frightened. But imagineit you can, Young Skywalker, so there hasto be more to critical thinking than just thelist of cognitive skills. Human beings aremore than thinking machines. And thisbrings us back to those ositions.”The experts were persuaded thatcritical thinking is a pervasive andpurposeful human phenomenon. The idealcritical thinker can be characterized notmerely by her or his cognitive skills but alsoby how she

its critical thinking testing instruments. These tools assess the critical thinking skills and habits of mind described in this essay. To build critical thinking skills and habits of mind use Dr. Facione's newest book THINK_Critically, Pearson Education 2011. Critical Thinking: What It Is and Why It Counts Peter A. Facione