Critical Thinking Skills

Question: Share your perspective of critical thinking as a set of skills, characteristics, or practices. Are there items in your list that are more or less beneficial or important than others? Explain. How do comparison, contrast, and synthesis integrate into your view of critical thinking? Answer: Critical thinking as a set of skills: Dondlinger, Wilson, (2012) opined that critical thinking ability is nothing but combination of some specific skills. These skills include analyzing ability, ability to apply, and skill to identify similarities among various scenarios. Analyzing ability enables one to find the influencing factors behind a scenario. On other hand skill to identify similarities helps in relating new knowledge with past experiences. Apart from these, critical thinking ability also depends on skill of information gathering, logical ordering and ability to modify existing conceptions. According to McMillan Weyers (2013) skill of predicting the conclusions of a concept is also significant for ones critical thinking ability. Importance of skills: For the critical thinker all the aforementioned skills are important. Dondlinger, Wilson (2012) stated that predicting future consequences is beneficial as it may prevent significant losses. However, effectiveness of predicting depends on accurate analysis of information. The ability to identify similarities among different information helps to utilize past experiences as source of knowledge and thus it leads to better prediction. Apart from this ability to synthesize a situation also influences predicting ability as it enables a person to apply a concept in practical field. Importance of integrating comparison, contrast and synthesis: Comparison among concepts and information results identification of particular patterns or difficulties among various situations (Dondlinger Wilson, 2012). On basis of these findings one can use knowledge gained from previous experiences to find solution of a particular problem. On other hand, using the similarities and differences one can relate various situations. Integration of all these skills leads to practical application of a newly learned concept and also prediction of conclusion. References Canberra.edu.au,. (2012). Critical Thinking : Academic Skills : University of Canberra. Retrieved 24 February 2015, from https://www.canberra.edu.au/studyskills/learning/critical Dondlinger, M., Wilson, D. (2012). Creating an alternate reality: Critical, creative, and empathic thinking generated in the Global Village Playground capstone experience. Thinking Skills And Creativity, 7(3), 153-164. doi:10.1016/j.tsc.2012.02.001 McMillan, K., Weyers, J. (2013). How to improve your critical thinking reflective skills. Harlow: Pearson Education Limited.