Critical Thinking

Critical or analytical thinking is not just thinking passively and accepting everything you see and hear. It involves thinking actively, asking questions about what you see and hear, evaluating, categorising, and finding relationships.

A critical thinker:

  • Asks questions about and investigates problems within a topic
  • Collects and evaluates information about a topic: is the information relevant, up-to-date?
  • Comes to well-reasoned conclusions and solutions, testing them against relevant criteria and standards
  • Thinks openmindedly within alternative systems of thought, recognizing and assessing, as needs be, their assumptions, implications, and practical consequences
    (The Critical Thinking Community, 2015, para. 5)