What is Critical Thinking?

We all understand that critical thinking is a complex process – but do we understand the skills of the critical thinking process? The ideas presented in a post on Elesapiens blog helped me better understand the process of critical thinking. Recently published in January of this year, the article entitled ” Critical Thinking: Education Competent Citizens” analyzes and discusses the 8 constitutive skills of the critical thinking process. These elements, as shown in the visual below, are:

Reflection
Analysis
Acquisition of information
Creativity
Structuring arguments
Decision making
Commitment
Debate

Although we see critical thinking happen in our classrooms, I never felt as though I had a deep enough understanding of each process to explain how it was happening. I encourage you to read Elesapiens post for more details on each of these elements. It’s a quick read and I learned something new – maybe you will too 🙂