Critical Thinking and Decision-Making
Critical thinking involves much more than random thoughts, daydreaming, and making hasty decisions. This type of thinking gears more toward analyzing every detail that is a part of the initial problem or situation. People make decisions every day that may have an effect on them or the company they work for. Researching the issues and exhausting all possible alternatives to the conclusion is the role of a critical thinker.
What is Critical Thinking
Differences in thinking and critical thinking can make for an interesting discussion. Paul and Elder (2006) state, “Critical thinking is that mode of thinking—about any subject, content, or problem—in which the thinker improves the quality of his or her thinking by skillfully analyzing, assessing, and reconstructing it” (p. xxiii). Improving the quality of thinking to make it critical includes skills such as forecasting, planning, critiquing, sequencing, cause and effect, and deductive and inductive reasoning. These skills make the critical thinker analyze more in-depth than the normal thinker. A task that a critical thinker would do involves gathering information from multiple resources so a well-informed decision is made.
Syed (2009) states, “Critical thinking is the ability to engage in reasoned discourse with intellectual standards such as clarity, accuracy, precision, and logic, and to use analytic skills with a fundamental value orientation that emphasizes intellectual humility, intellectual integrity, and fair-mindedness” (para. 2). This type of thinking involves researching by gathering information from various resources. A satisfied conclusion is the result a critical thinker has when evidence comes from different resources instead of just one resource. The critical thinker should analyze and assess thinking. To analyze thinking, one should first identify its purpose, question, information, conclusion(s), assumptions, implications, main concept(s), and point of view... [continues]

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