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Designing Effective Projects: Analysis
Critical Thinking
Searching for the Truth
When educators discuss helping students develop their thinking skills, they often refer to critical thinking as their goal. This term which is used frequently in educational circles generally means forming opinions by seeking out relevant information, thoughtfully and objectively evaluating the quality of the information, and changing our minds when new credible information comes to our attention. 

Critical thinkers are always asking “Why?” or “How?” and are always on the lookout for relevant information. In addition to the ability to analyze and evaluate what they find out, critical thinkers also exhibit an inquisitive open-mindedness that drives them to seek the truth and the flexibility to change their minds when confronted with good reasons to do so.

The most persuasive argument for the teaching of critical thinking, however, is a picture of what the world looks like when people do not think critically. A non-critical way of looking at the world around us consists of blind acceptance of advertising, political statements, textbooks, print resources, and the positions of organizations and institutions (Messina and Messina 2005). Although critical thinking is often thought of as negative, as in the refusal to believe what is false, it also refers to the acceptance of what is true. Refusing to believe anything is no better than believing everything.

Cognitive Skills
In 1990, a group of experts on critical thinking put together the Delphi Report which examined the concept of critical thinking and made recommendations for teaching it. Read more about their conclusions in the Executive Summary*. (PDF; 20 pages)

The report lists the following skills and sub-skills involved in critical thinking:

Interpretation
  • Categorization
  • Decoding Significance
  • Clarifying Meaning
Analysis
  • Examining Ideas
  • Identifying Arguments
  • Analyzing Arguments
Evaluation
  • Assessing Claims
  • Assessing Arguments
Inference
  • Querying Evidence
  • Conjecturing Alternatives
  • Drawing Conclusions
Explanation
  • Stating Results
  • Justifying Procedures
  • Presenting Arguments
Self-Regulation
  • Self-examination
  • Self-correction
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