The Art of Thinking Critically

Thinking is not powered by the answers we're given, but by the questions we ask

inherent skill needed for critical thinking—asking questions. We need to be able to ask questions, sometimes very difficult ones that cause the personal evaluation of values

Questions lead us to make crucial developments in a variety of fields. They're at the heart of all human knowledge, because if we never asked questions, we would never find the answers

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Avoiding herd mentality

Avoiding herd mentality,

Skills to Teach Yourself Anything

We need to be able to ask questions, sometimes very difficult ones that cause the personal evaluation of values, and we need to know where to look and how to determine sets of facts over strictly intuitive thought or emotion. Emotional or thoughtless responses can have a lot of unintended consequences, though those can be positive or negative.

Evaluate Learning – Now that you’ve engaged in all of this learning, how do you know if you really learned anything or not? Can you present information comfortably on what you’ve learned? Can you converse with other peers on the subject knowledgably and accept positive and critical feedback? What have you achieved in learning this information? Can I publish a journal article in a peer-reviewed journal about my findings, is the world better for my research, or does my research further inspire additional learning? These are all questions to consider when evaluating what you’ve learned independently, and it requires objective consideration.

Engagement in the Learning Process – In this step, students need to know who they are as a learner and what kind of approach they are taking to learning this new material. Is the student learning just for the sake of knowledge? If so, you would refer to this as the deep approach, learning for the sake of the knowledge.