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Hello and welcome to this StudySmarter screencast ‘How to apply Critical Thinking.’
Thinking critically is something you need to practise and develop while you are at UWA.
As a student at UWA you are expected to engage actively with ideas, to analyse data and findings
and to develop your own responses. These all require you to think critically.
By developing your critical thinking skills you are also developing your ability to create
new ideas, to apply what you know to new tasks and to solve complex problems.
Critical thinking is the process you use when you apply logic and reasoning to assess ideas,
arguments and information and make your own informed judgements.
Like a high level sport, thinking critically takes discipline and constant practice to
train and develop these skills.
At UWA, academics, scholars, visiting speakers and other students, as well as the texts you
study, are continually presenting findings, claims, theories, arguments and conclusions.
It’s important to evaluate them, forming your own conclusions.
Examining and evaluating ideas and arguments will enable you to make informed judgements
about important issues, as well as helping you to develop your own ideas.
Here are StudySmarter’s 3 Top Tips to develop your critical thinking skills.
First, Examine ideas Second, Be objective
and Third, Create your own ideas.
Our first Top Tip is to Examine ideas. This involves pulling them apart to see how they
work and how they’re put together.
A good way to examine ideas is to ask questions. By asking questions you are showing that you’re
thinking about the ideas being presented rather than just passively accepting them at face
value. There are many questions you could ask; a
good place to start is to ask What, How and Why. These questions will help to direct you
as well as making sure that you examine ideas closely.
Here are some What questions you could ask: what’s the topic? What do I already know
about this? What do I need to find out? Asking these questions at the start of a topic or
research project helps you to establish your scope and to focus on what you need to do.
How questions look at the ways in which ideas, data, findings, results and conclusions are
produced – they look at the methods and processes. Understanding how things work and
how they’re put together will enable you to assess their effectiveness.
Why questions look for reasons and explanations for things. These questions demonstrate your
ability to look below the surface rather than just accepting ideas without question.
Our second Top Tip is to be objective. This means taking a step back and looking at ideas
from a neutral perspective. You may have personal opinions and feelings about the ideas you
are considering but taking an objective stance will enable you to make informed judgements
and decisions.
Being objective will help you to assess the relevance and accuracy of ideas and to make
decisions about their importance or significance in relation to what you’re studying.
To analyse ideas you need to look closely at how they’re constructed. Looking at the
logic, how it’s organised and how they’re put together (for example, looking at the
methods or techniques used) will help you to see how they work.
When you analyse the meaning of something, for example data, a text, image or object
,what’s not mentioned or included is just as significant as what is included. It’s
important to ‘read between the lines’ so that your interpretation is based on the
full picture. For instance, if a study of UWA students’ study habits is based on a
survey of 100 students living in Halls of residence, you know the findings aren’t
based on a broad sample of students and you need to take this into account.
Evaluating ideas involves weighing up their strengths and weaknesses and forming your
own judgments. It’s important to remember that this doesn’t mean being over-critical
or judgmental; to evaluate well, you need to remain open-minded and objective. Your
evaluation should be more than an opinion; make sure you present reasons and evidence
for your decisions, judgments and conclusions.
Our third and final top tip is to create your own ideas.
Problem-solving, interpreting data and information, developing your own theories and investigating
are all examples of creating your own ideas. It’s important to create your own ideas
so that you contribute fresh perspectives and approaches to your area of study.
There are many ways you create and apply your own ideas. You might innovate, invent, construct
or design something original.
However, you don’t need to be an inventor or designer to apply critical thinking; using
your critical thinking skills will help you to develop your own approaches to any area
of study, so that you create solutions and reach your own conclusions.
Let’s look again at our three top tips for applying critical thinking: examine ideas,
be objective and create your own ideas. Follow these tips to practise your critical thinking
skills and make the most of your study here at UWA.
You can find out more about critical thinking at StudySmarter.uwa.edu.au. You’ll find
more tips and ideas at Critical Thinking Corner and you’ll also find the StudySmarter Survival
guide to Critical Thinking as well as many other resources.