If critical thinking is so important, how do we do it? 

The Critical Thinking Stairway below, highlights several skills or processes involved in thinking critically and it is arranged in such a way as to show their increasing complexity from engaging with new information to crafting an argument. 

To do any of these, we need to have a healthy scepticism when we consider information and take a questioning approach. 

A link to the book with details of The Critical Thinking Stairway is linked below (Williams, 2014).

Why not watch the video below, encouraging you to explore critical questioning in more detail. 

The Plymouth Model of Critical Thinking is one tool to help us question and make connections between ideas and to not take information for granted. 

Each paragraph of an assignment should focus on one main point, ensure that you do not just describe throughout the paragraph. It is important to give some background details but to move on to comparing, contrasting and analysing sources. 

Many students do not evaluate throughout their assignment, choosing to leave it to the conclusion at the end. By evaluating in each paragraph you can demonstrate that you understand how the texts apply to your context, or whether information was biased, and as a result you can recommend that studies are conducted differently in the future. It is difficult to make recommendations if you have not analysed the evidence to justify your argument. 

See the Plymouth Model and questions it suggests for each section below. For further information see the link below for further detail.

Read the following descriptive paragraph. Identify ways to make it more critical by asking questions from the Plymouth Model above and explore the Thinglink for suggestions.