College is a time when people learn "how to think" versus "what to think". Any society must have people that are able to think for themselves and come up with their own conclusions. The lessons we learn from critical thinking can apply to different aspects of people's lives in and after college. While as professors, we want to encourage people to move down healthy thinking patterns it is not our job to tell students what to think; that is up to the student. We must only give our students the tools they need to come to conclusions using critical thinking skills to solve problems.
In the business world it is the ability to overcome problems and implement new strategies that will make success. Some will always work for someone else, some will become executives, and some will start their own businesses. Each will have to make choices over lots of things in their field and they will need to use critical thinking to ensure they are being impactful.
Helping students to think critically is vitally important to our nation. We want healthy people that listen to different sides of arguments, explore possibilities, create new possibilities and then support their ideas with a level of credible data/sources. If your not critical thinking to solve problems your accepting the perspective of others without examination.....
Critical is “the intellectually disciplined process of actively and skillfully conceptualizing, applying, analyzing, synthesizing, and/or evaluating information gathered from, or generated by, observation, experience, reflection, reasoning, or communication, as a guide to belief and action” (Scriven & Paul, 2007, p. 1).
Such level of thinking encourages metacognition which is thinking about thinking. It is a fuller understanding of our thinking processes and how we draw conclusions. Not everyone will reach a level of metacognition in their lives and thus will be more prone to misunderstanding themselves and the information presented to them.
There is something students can use called IDEALS (Facione, 2007):
I Identify the Problem: What is the real question we are facing?
D Define the Context: What are the facts that frame this problem?
E Enumerate the Choices: What are plausible options?
A Analyze Options: What is the best course of action?
L List Reasons Explicitly: Why is this the best course of action?
S Self-Correct: Look at it again … What did we miss?
Notice that critical thinking is about exploring possibilities by defining problems in new ways and supporting ideas in evidence. It is also about looking broadly and widely among a number of different sources to find solutions that may have been previously skipped over. This is why one must review problems to find new angles and in turn go research the possibilities of such solutions. The better we are able to find and coordinate the pieces the better we are at thinking (requires a level of fluid intelligence).
For example, I'm going back to the calibrated tax plan that I'm working on (simply because it is in my radar of interests). The plan was generated from constant debate over taxes that attract and retain business while also ensuring companies pay their fair share. Having a calibrated tax rate for businesses who have their headquarters (intellectual capital) in the U.S. and a different one for those conducting commerce in the U.S. might be helpful in attracting business and converting them from system user to system builder (Attracting a business to move their HQ to the U.S. versus simply using the system to sell products.) It is a finished idea? No....but its a new way of looking at taxes in an increasingly digital global world that helps slow the race to the bottom because the rate is set based on the strength of a number of competitive factors such as infrastructure, labor availability, etc.... You can read more about it....See Hypothetical Delta County Calibrated Tax Model
In this tax example we can say there are many reasons why it might and might not be true (Just because its my idea doesn't mean its right and I should give equal weight to alternatives). We look at all of the different tax plans, we look at our history, the changing trends in society, the need for the U.S. to become the center of the supply chains and we ask ourselves, "How will we get there?" Chances are we will need to change a few things to do it. Critical thinking is about not accepting the previous answer (or the one's others offer) without some level of analysis and comparison. It is helpful when someone else looks at the same thing and comes up with differences based on evidence and logic.
You can agree or disagree but you need to know why before you call yourself a critical thinker. That can be any topic or issue. It could be politics and it could be the leading social conversation of the day (Not that you want to spend time examining everything you read in the news.) Once you know how to think you can apply that thinking strategy to other topics and find there may be lots of different ways to look and resolve issues. See Teaching Critical Thinking
Scriven, M., & Paul, R. (2007). Defining critical thinking. The Critical Thinking Community: Foundation for Critical Thinking. Retrieved January 2, 2008, from http://www.criticalthinking.org/aboutCT/define_critical_thinking.cfm
Facione, P. A. (2007). Critical thinking: What it is and why it counts. Retrieved January 2, 2008, from https://www.researchgate.net/publication/251303244_Critical_Thinking_What_It_Is_and_Why_It_Counts
Snyder, L. G., & Snyder, M. J. (2008). Teaching critical thinking and problem solving skills. The Journal of Research in Business Education, 50(2), 90. http://reforma.fen.uchile.cl/Papers/Teaching%20Critical%20Thinking%20Skills%20and%20problem%20solving%20skills%20-%20Gueldenzoph,%20Snyder.pdf
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