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On Critical Thinking

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You cannot have critical thinking without the need and awareness to ask questions. Essentially, critical thinking is our ability to take information, know when to question it and how to use those questions to learn and gather more information (Browne, & Keeley, 2013). As individuals we all learn in different ways, some individuals are visual learners where others are capable of reading something and retaining that knowledge. Although these methods of learning are good, without our ability to think critically and ask questions we can be missing a deeper level of learning. Regardless of how we are attaining information we are presented with a theory or idea and hopefully the data to back up that theory. However, just because there is supporting data for a position additional questions should be asked. We should want to know what the agenda of the author is for the position they took, what elements are missing, is the research misleading, who is the author writing to, and why do I care (Browne, & Keeley, 2013). By using critical thinking we are taking our opinions on a topic to the next level of understanding. When all aspects of a topic have been questioned we become more confident in our position on a topic.

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On Critical Thinking

According to Lau and Chan (2015), "Critical thinking is the ability to think clearly and rationally about what to do or what to believe. It includes the ability to engage in reflective and independent thinking.... Critical thinking is not a matter of accumulating information. A person with a good memory and who knows a lot of facts is not necessarily good at critical thinking. A critical thinker is able to deduce consequences from what he knows, and he knows how to make use of information to solve problems, and to seek relevant sources of information to inform himself." Critical thinking - the use of reason to arrest the problems and challenges that we face is actually seen as a key triumph to modern thought. It is by utilising logic and reason that the Greeks began what is seen as the foundation of modern thought. Socrates (Chapman, n.d.) famously declared to his students, "Do ...

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