Instructions
In the Activity titled “Using Your Critical Thinking Skills,” what does the text mention as a strategy to help build intellectual humility? Describe one other strategy to increase intellectual humility and when you would use it. Next, share a personal or professional experience where you did not practice intellectual humility as described in the Activity. What did you learn from this experience? What steps have you taken to incorporate this concept in your life since then?
Using Your Critical Thinking Skills
As you go through this competency, you will be asked to think critically about the topics presented. The following text describes critical thinking skills and traits and encourages you to actively develop that type of thinking.
As you go through this competency, it is important to use critical thinking skills. You are going to be asked to reflect on how different theories and systems impact your strengths and weaknesses, and how they provide you with opportunities and challenges in meeting goals. You will be asked to develop a personal mission statement, write goals, identify your values, discuss your strengths and weaknesses, and identify things in the different systems of your life that may provide you with opportunities to meet these goals, or are threats to you achieving your goals. You will be asked to identify two specific theories or concepts discussed in the competency that you can apply to your life to help you understand your past, analyze your present, or predict your future.
According to Linda Elder and Richard Paul (2009), there are three types of thinkers: (1) naïve, (2) selfish, and (3) fair minded. Naïve thinkers do not believe they need to think deeply. They trust sources of information, whether it is friends, family, the Internet, or the news. Naïve thinkers may believe that thinking is too hard, too time-consuming, or not worth the effort. The danger in being a naïve thinker is that we become followers, and we may actually end up in trouble for not having thought through the consequences and following blindly. The selfish thinkers use thinking to get what they want. They are actually very good at thinking, but instead of avoiding thinking like the naïve thinkers, they think a lot, mostly about themselves. They do not worry about how decisions will impact others. These types of thinkers can be very manipulative. Fair-minded thinkers are good at thinking and are considerate of others in the process. They want to help make the world better for everyone. It is important to point out that they may not always have the right answers, but they strive to improve their thinking.
Critical thinkers have specific traits and skills. However, these are not innate; they can be developed and nurtured through hard work and practice. Paul and Elder (2002) name several intellectual traits that lead us to be fair-minded thinkers: integrity, humility, confidence in reason, perseverance, fair-mindedness, courage, empathy, and independence. Peter Facione (2010) discusses these critical thinking skills: interpret, analyze, evaluate, infer, explain, and self-monitor. The traits and skills of Paul and Elder and Facione overlap, interconnecting to build critical thinking skills (Table 1.1).
Table 1.1 The Basis for Critical Thinking Skills
Critical Thinking Skills (Facione)
Intellectual Traits (Paul and Elder)
Interpret – understanding the meaning of data, events, and beliefs
Intellectual humility – knowing what we know and don’t know
Intellectual perseverance – not giving up when pursuing knowledge
Analyze – identifying relationships among ideas
Intellectual empathy – being able to see the other side and explain it
Evaluate – assessing the logic and credibility of an idea
Intellectual integrity – applying and holding people to the same standards
Infer – identifying information needed to draw reasonable conclusions
Intellectual courage – being able to challenge beliefs based on conclusions that have been drawn
Explain – justifying and communicating thought process
Confidence in reason – being able to justify thought processes
Self-Monitor – questioning, validating, and correcting one’s own reasoning
Intellectual autonomy – being able to work through problems independently to create new solutions
Adapted from Facione, P. (2010). Critical thinking: What it is and why it counts. California Academic Press, 1– 16. Retrieved from http://www.insightassessment.com/CT-Resources/Independent-Critical-Thinking-Research/pdf-file/Critical-Thinking-What-It-Is-and-Why-It-Counts-PDF; and Paul, R., & Elder, L. (2002). Critical thinking: Tools for taking charge of your professional and personal life. Dillon Beach, CA: Foundation for Critical Thinking.
Mazur and Ringenbach (2014) discussed how we can improve and strengthen these traits and skills through application. It is important that thinking be seen as active. It is not passive, and it does not just happen to the individual thinker.
Interpret: When we are aware of what we know and what we don’t know, we have intellectual humility. We can work toward humility by analyzing what we read and by asking questions about a person’s purpose, conclusion, supporting evidence, and assumptions. Being arrogant in our own knowledge, and not accepting that we may not have all the answers, prevents us from learning. Without questioning (when we take things at face value), we cannot embrace the opportunity to learn what we know and what we don’t know. It also prevents us from knowing our strengths and weaknesses. One way individuals can develop intellectual humility and build interpretation skills is to write down questions while reading—considering what is most interesting and what needs to be researched in more depth.
Intellectual perseverance means that we do not give up, no matter how difficult things may become. Some of us struggle with writing. Some of us struggle with math. Critical thinking helps us to understand our learning process, so that we know the right kinds of questions to ask to overcome our weaknesses. Journaling about what we are learning helps us to reflect on challenging topics. A journal is a good place to write down confusing questions, goals, sticking points in thought processes, and how thoughts can become unstuck. It takes courage to challenge one’s thinking and learning, with the potential of failing the first time around.
Analyze: We have intellectual empathy when we take all views into account and when we are able to explain a differing viewpoint. People who are empathetic care about others. One tactic in developing empathy through analyzing information is to list the pros and cons, or strengths and weaknesses, of another person’s point of view. It is also a good idea to find someone who has the opposite point of view and engage in a debate. Growth happens when we are forced out of our box to understand and articulate the views of others. Being a fair-minded critical thinker does not mean that we have to change our point of view. It really is about learning all sides of the story and then coming up with articulate and rational reasons why we accept or discount varying viewpoints. This is very difficult to do when our emotions are activated.
Evaluate: Intellectual integrity means that we hold ourselves and others to the same standards. According to Paul and Elder (2007), critical thinkers should ask the following questions:
Do I act in ways that are consistent with my beliefs?
Do I expect the same things from myself as I do from others?
Where are there contradictions and inconsistencies in my life?
How do I eliminate self-deception in my own life?
After we have read something, we need to ask ourselves what insights we have gained, and if they are relevant or significant to us. We need to evaluate if we are automatically discounting any ideas or actions because they do not align with our own preconceived notions. Evaluation involves not only assessing the credibility of what we are reading, but also evaluating the credibility and validity of what we are thinking and how we are behaving.
Infer: Inference means that we are able to identify information that we need to use when we think critically. We often make inferences based on our upbringing, our emotions, our values, and our knowledge about a topic. It takes intellectual courage to admit that we do not know something, or that we are letting our own perceptions color our views. It takes courage to go against what we have been taught by parents, teachers, and other important people in our lives.
Explain: When we use our critical thinking skills, we should be able to justify why we think the way we do and show confidence in reason. We should be able to explain our process of thinking. One way that we can develop our confidence is to ask questions about what we want to learn. We can also hypothesize about what we think we are going to learn when we start reading something and then ask what information we already know about the topic. This is called front loading.
Self-Monitor: When we actively self-monitor, we question, validate, and then correct any problems we have in our thinking. Intellectual autonomy means we can work through problems independently and create new solutions. Think about how you think about information that is presented to you. Do you tend to go along with others, without questioning? When working in a team, do you take the easy path, following the group? It is easy to critically think through a problem when the solution aligns with what others believe. However, it is more difficult to challenge others with rational thoughts, especially in the face of irrational ones.
As you read information in this competency, think about how you interpret the information. What past knowledge, perceptions, and assumptions are you using as you read the information? Are you willing to take new information into account and look at more than one side of an argument? Are you assessing the credibility and logic of the ideas, dispassionately and without emotion? Are you identifying information that you need to draw your conclusions? Are you able to describe your thought process and justify your conclusions? Finally, are you willing to question, validate, and correct any problems in your own reasoning process?
Note. The material in this section was written by Kathleen Ringenbach. Copyright 2014 Flat World Knowledge, Inc