Developing your critical thinking skills develops your reluctance to accept information at face value.

Asking questions isn’t a bad thing – you’re not being a pain, it just means you’re thinking about the arguments put forward and engaging with the evidence, which is exactly what academic study is all about!

If you think about it in a professional sense:

• how do you learn if you don’t ask?
• how do you make a decision if you only rely on one source of information?
• how do you know if there’s a different/more effective way of doing something if you don’t ask?
• how can you come to a reasoned answer if you don’t have all the information?

In an academic sense being critical doesn’t mean being negative, it just means asking questions to find out if information and ideas presented are accurate, valid and relevant for what you need.

Questioning the information you’ve been given means you go beyond simply describing something – it means you're look for evidence, you're assessing the pros and cons or the strengths and weaknesses of an approach or an argument before you accept that it’s true.

Of course it’s important to expand your knowledge while you’re here at uni but it’s essential that you demonstrate that you understand the arguments and how they've developed.

You need to show more than ability to memorise material, you need to show that you’re learning and prove that you can make judgements about existing studies and research and use them in an effective way - that is critical thinking.

So, think about the key points, issues and debates and remember that you need to present all sides of the debate!

• what have different writers said?
• which points do they agree or disagree on?
• is one position stronger than the other - why?
• are there any gaps in the research - is that significant, why?

Critical thinking is a fundamental aspect of your everyday life - not just your studies.

Think about this situation for a moment. You and your other half/best friend decide to take a luxury Caribbean cruise and it's quite expensive. 

• Would you just go to the travel agent and buy it? Would you just take their word for how wonderful it was? No? Why not?

• What about if you were buying online? Would you just accept the write-up on the website? Would you accept the photographs at face value? No? Again, why not?

• Would you do any homework about the cruise before you decided? What kind of homework could/would you do - why?

• If another friend had been on the same type of cruise and they said it wasn't very good, would you ask them why? Again, why?

And essentially, that’s it! You didn’t simply accept what you’d been told by the sales team or saw on the website, you did some research. You questioned the information you were given and looked at different sources. You looked at all the information you’d collected and came to the best and most logical decision for you.

Approaching your studies in this way allows you to consider an issue, break it down, understand what's going on, evaluate the strengths and limitations of it and ultimately form a judgement about whether you think it's useful. And this skill is a big part of your assessments - just take a look at the generic assessment criteria and we can see how many times and ways critical thinking is required to achieve good grades!

Generic Assessment Criteria

Critical thinking (sometimes referred to as 'strategic thinking', 'analysis and decision-making' or 'collating and analysing information') is often one of the most sought after skills by graduate employers as they help you to succeed in your graduate career. See more here critical thinking and employability

Check out our Being Critical section here for more info and tips on how to make your work critical and test your knowledge about the importance of critical thinking by completing the quiz below.