Critical Thinking
...to what extent the decisions that we make, the actions that we take, and the explanations that we give are based on facts? Can we defend our points of view, or provide a wise opinion in a social conversation with our friends or in a meeting with our co-workers?. All these questions are associated to what critical thinking is. Our intention is to describe what skills an individual has to learn and practice, and the stages or process that the person needs to go through, to become a critical thinker. The skills that the individual obtains during the development process shall be transferred to our lifestyles in order to be effective in our society.
According to Richard Paul and Michael Scriven (2004) "critical thinking is the intellectually disciplined process of actively and skillfully conceptualizing, applying, analyzing, synthesizing, and/or evaluating information gathered from, or generated by, observation, experience, reflection, reasoning, or communication, as a guide to belief and action". Critical thinking (CT) is a cognitive process in which we take nothing for granted, but instead we reflect on the information we receive and establish our own judgment. We are the ones who decide what to and what not to believe or do.
Critical Thinking Skills
Every person is capable of being a critical thinker, but CT is a process that we need to learn, develop and put into practice. As part of this process, experts agree on a number of skills that are the foundation and are part of the definition of CT: (a) listening (gather the information), (b) interpretation, (c) analysis, (d) evaluation, (e) inference, (f) explanation and (g) self-regulation.
A critical thinker needs to learn how to listen in order to get all the possible information. In this listening exercise, the individual is observing the gestures, mood, tone of voice and so forth, of the person...
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