A Critical Thinking Model

[Music] critical thinking is an important life skill and an essential part of university studies central to critical thinking is asking meaningful questions in this video you'll be introduced to a three-stage module that will help you generate questions to understand analyze and evaluate something such as an information source starting with the description stage you ask questions such as what where why and who these help you establish the background in context for example if you are reading a journal article you might ask questions such as who wrote this what is it about when was it written what

is the aim of the article if you're thinking through a problem you might ask what is this problem about who does it involve or effect when and where is this happening these types of questions lead to descriptive answers although the ability to describe something is important to really develop your understanding and critically engage we need to move beyond these types of questions this moves you into the analysis stage here you will ask questions such as how why and what if these help you to examine methods and processes reasons and causes and the alternative options for

example if you are reading a journal article you might ask how was the research conducted why are these theories discussed what are the alternative methods and theories if you are thinking through a problem you might ask what are the contributing factors to the problem how might one factor impact another what if one factor is removed or altered asking these questions helps you to break something in two parts and consider the relationship between each part and each part to the whole this process will help you develop more analytical answers and deeper thinking finally you come to

the evaluation stage where you will ask so what and what next questions to make judgment and consider the relevance implications significance and value of something you may ask questions such as what do I think about this how is this relevant to my assignments how does this compare to other research I have read making such judgments will lead you to reasonable conclusions solutions or recommendations the way we think is complex this model is not intended to be used in a strictly linear way or as a prescriptive set of instructions you may move back and forth between

different segments for example you may ask what is this about and then move straight to is it relevant to me the model is intended to encourage a critically questioning approach and can be applied to many learning scenarios at university such as interpreting assignment briefs developing arguments evaluating sources analyzing data or formulating your own questions to research an answer you