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Critical thinking skills - Coggle Diagram
Critical thinking skills
Identification
It's important to critical thinkers because it helps them identify the existing problem and what factors impact that problem. Identification is also important because it helps students see the scope of the problem and start thinking about how to solve the issue .
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Identification helps students to come to an understanding of the problem's scope potential solutions.
Research
Research is important to critical thinkers when it comes to understanding claims, hearing a statement, understanding the statement, questioning it and verifying the statement using objective evidence discovered through research.
How much research is necessary depends on the the problem that has been identified and the scope of the problem.
Complex problems, such as addressing large social issues, still rely on the same process of understanding the scope of the issue and identifying what materials need to be referenced to address the problem.
Identifying biases
Identifying biases is important to students because they need to identify bias in the materials that they’re looking at that might impact what’s being written. Authors may write things that favor a certain points of view (they authors may be biased), which would impact how much a reader could trust the material.
Students should also be able to examine their own biases. It’s important not to write in favor of one’s own view (students needs to be objective).
It’s important for student to challenge their own perspectives but also to challenge the evidence that they read.
Making inferences
Making inferences is a critical skill students need as they learn how to analyze data and piece together information.
It’s always important to learn how to draw conclusions based on information that students are able to obtain during research.
Students need to be able to look at a body of evidence and make a determination of what that data might mean.
Students also need to be able to reassess their inferences as new data comes up or as existing evidence is reassessed.
Determining Relevance
Students need to be able to determine the relevance of the information that they receive (this is not an issue of examining bias so much as being able to identify the information that’s appropriate to solving a problem or making an argument).
As students start getting asked to write papers, they need to be able to search through primary and secondary documents that can support their argument
The more skilled a student becomes at being able to determine the relevance of information , the less time students will have to spend sorting through irrelevant documents that don’t support their research.
Curiosity
It’s also important for students to learn how to curb their curiosity (curiosity drives research and exploration of a topic).
However, consistent with the need to determine relevance is the need to identify where to end a line of inquiry.