CRITICAL THINKING

Critical Thinking

Critical Thinking

Definition

Critical thinking has been defined as an activity that questions assumptions regarding subject, discipline or phenomenon that may occur in a defined setting on both personal and proficient level. These days, in today's modern era, of rapid development, and expansion, even schools and educational institutions have paved way for adopting crucial and critical methods for the purpose and objective of developing cogent and prompt critical thinking patterns, which benefit the youth (Fisher, Alec, et al, 2007).

Critical thinking can be described as having the skills of resolving problems, which have incomplete, description on a high degree, cannot be dealt with confidence and assurance, and which results in differences within experts about the best solution. Even though, critical thinking has several meanings and definitions, it can be said that it involves finding conclusions and developing methods of solutions through the analysis of information in hand, recognizing the alternatives, and combining facts, motives and ethics (Fisher, Alec, et al, 2007).

One of the fundamental approaches to critical thinking, broadened with ethical grounds, is to determine what one thinks and the reason behind the thought, look for more opinions, views, and more facts, verify if ones view or opinion is strategically feasible, find out if that view is morally and ethically correct, and last but not the least, alter that view if it is not supported (Fisher, Alec, et al, 2007). In the case of Enron, for example, when Jeffrey Skilling was hired as the president of the company, he formed executive management which misused the flaws in accounting, poor financial records, reports, and entities like the special purpose entity to indulge in financial frauds by concealing the records of billions of dollars under debt from unsuccessful business deals and ventures. It was also involved in having non transparent financial statements, unethical procedures, which led to, modifying balance sheets to portray a positive trend in its performance. All these unethical practices led to the downfall of the company. If the management had thought of it carefully with the steps mentioned in critical thinking, it could have been prevented as the management could have determined the outcomes much earlier (Fisher, Alec, et al, 2007).

Critical thinking is applied rationality. It is a way of thinking that is based on principles of rationality. Critical thinking has been conceptualized as a set of skills that people can learn and apply in their everyday or professional lives. In fact, critical thinking and rationality are terms that are sometimes used interchangeably (Paul, Richard, et al, 2002). Critical thinking has its conceptual roots in education, philosophy, and psychology, and its definition varies depending on disciplinary focus, but thematically, these definitions are very similar (Paul, Richard, et al, 2002). Following is a working definition from psychology that is instructive for our purposes:

“Critical thinking is the ability and willingness to assess claims and make objective judgments on the basis of well-supported reasons and evidence rather than emotion or anecdote. Critical thinkers are able to look for flaws in arguments and claims ...