How To Use Critical Thinking

How To Use Critical Thinking

By Christine Ferch

As our pandemic continues, there have been mass amounts of information from various sources such as News, social media, radio, and various people, politicians, government officials, academics, and researchers. How are we supposed to interpret all this information and know whom to guide us during these times?  None of these avenues are harmful, nor are the people, but with all the pieces of our pandemic pie, how do we guide our thinking, how we behave, and how we feel.

Critical thinking is a metacognitive process with many different skills and dispositions such as self-regulatory reflective judgment, which increases the chances of creating a logical conclusion to an argument or solution to a problem.

Metacognition: the ability to think about thinking

Reflective judgement is the understanding of nature, limits and certainty of knowing and how this can affect our judgement. Taking a step back and thinking about the problem for just those few moments longer and ask yourself the probing or the “W” questions: Who, What, When, Where, and Why or How.

Self-regulatory: checking in with yourself to determine how alert, attentive, emotions and thoughts you are currently experiencing

Using critical thinking skills allows us to remain within our values and morals as we can question what is being stated to us by another whose virtues or beliefs do not align with our own. We can stay true to what we believe as we can question positively and be curious about the information we are being given. When we receive information from social media, we demonstrate critical thinking when asking where someone retrieved their information from, meaning, was it “The Onion” or  “CTV,” an article from a newspaper or someone said on Facebook. When we are curious about where our information is coming from, we recognize persuasion techniques, illogical argumentation, and misleading reasoning. This is an essential skill because, as demonstrated, some sources are more credible than others.

For example, if someone told you the sky is green, would you believe them? Why or why not? What questions would you ask them? What you say to challenge their claim?

Critical thinking Skills

The best part of developing critical thinking skills; it does not take post-secondary education. Anyone can develop their critical thinking skills. When practiced, these are skills that refine over time and become a habit instead of something you need to think about engaging in.

1. Identification: look at the situation and all the factors that influence that situation, such as the environment, the people, or groups. When we see the big picture, it is easier to solve the problem.
   1. When faced with this situation, stop, and take a mental note of the environment and ask yourself these questions:
      1. Who is doing what?
      1. What is the reason it is happening?
      1. What are the results?
      1. How could they change?

Example: You walk into a classroom: the teacher is writing on the chalkboard (1) to teach the students (2) the students will learn science (3) the teacher could do a hands-on experiment instead of writing on the chalkboard (4).

• Research: Using Google scholar or library data banks for scholarly articles or peer-reviewed articles are credible sources. This is very helpful to know for independent research and providing facts to your argument.
  • Develop an eye for unsourced claims: does the individual provide references to other research articles that provide similar findings, does the article have an author or publication date?
• Identify the Biases: this is a difficult skill to learn and one that takes time. We often fail to see when information is swayed in favour of one direction than another. We need to read information objectively. In other words, ignore all the information you currently know and read information with a clean slate.  Think of yourself as a judge. It would help if you heard the preferences of both sides before concluding.
  • Challenge yourself to identify evidence that forms your beliefs and ask yourself if the sources you obtained your information from are credible. When evaluating information in an argument, ask yourself:
    • Whom does it benefit?
    • Does the source appear to have an agenda?
    • Is the source overlooking, ignoring, or leaving out information that does not support beliefs or claims?
    • Is the source using unnecessary language to sway an audience’s perception of fact?
• Inference: Unfortunately, when we are given information, we are not given an instruction booklet on interpreting or what to do with the information. We often need to infer or think about the information and make our best guess about the conclusion when we can infer many paths or outcomes to a scenario but understand that not all of what we infer is correct or real.
  • We get better at making inferences or inferring by making education guesses based on all the information we have gained. So, the accuracy of best guesses depends on how much you engage in independent research of any given topic from credible resources.
• Determine Relevance: This is challenging the scenario and figuring out what information is the most important for us to consider. Some information is not as important as others, and with time, we begin to learn to put some information on the shelf, use it, or toss it out.
  • When we have a clear direction, we can determine if the information is relevant or not. Me talking about cheeseburgers and their delishness is an opinion of many, as cited in Reddit, is irrelevant to a point. What is relevant is the cited source of the idea many people enjoy cheeseburgers.
• Be Curious!!: When we ask the “W” questions, we are curious, and there is nothing wrong with being curious unless you are a monkey. When we ask open-ended questions, which is what “W” questions are, it forces the individual or source to provide a more detailed answer that is not just “yes” or “no.”

 Again, critical thinking is something everyone can engage in, and it takes time to practice. When we can take the information presented to us and question it against other credible resources, we can calm our thoughts and guide our behaviours to what we are comfortable with as they align with our values. Additionally, when we think critically, we can assess what others are doing and demonstrate curiosity, leading to compassion.

If you would like more information or want to develop critical thinking skills, contact us at admin@ovcs.ca. Feel free to check out our other blogs on various mental health topics.

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