Critical Thinking
Critical Thinking is essential in the 21st Century and beyond. What does it look like in the classroom? How can we promote it in our work?
“Critical Thinking”: Students who engage in critical thinking use logic and reasoning skills such as comparison, classification, sequencing, cause/effect, patterning, webbing, analogies, deductive and inductive reasoning, forecasting, planning, hypothesizing, and critiquing.
“Problem-solving”: Problem-solving requires the application of critical and creative thinking skills to provide a workable solution or distinct improvement.
Students who think creatively and critically to solve problems:
“Problem-solving”: Problem-solving requires the application of critical and creative thinking skills to provide a workable solution or distinct improvement.
Students who think creatively and critically to solve problems:
- Engage in problem-solving strategies and methods
- Evaluate solutions
- Make connections between content and the “real world”
- Make connections and describe relationships between concepts
- Use research methods and digital tools effectively
- View failure as an opportunity to learn; understand that creativity and innovation is a long-term, cyclical process of small successes and frequent mistakes
- Ask significant questions that clarify various points of view
- Contribute original ideas to a creative process
- Identify problems and potential solutions (original or well-researched)
- Challenge their existing knowledge base to expand
- Integrate knowledge and ideas to create and produce high-quality products
- Utilize and provide effective and critical feedback
- Analyze and evaluate alternative points of view
- Set and pursue goals; use metacognition and reflection
- Answer questions (test items) of significant complexity
- Solve problems in conventional and innovative ways