Critical Thinking

Critical Thinking: Skills and Dispositions

With the numerous and variable descriptions of critical thinking, scholars have urged that we must clearly and specifically define critically thinking if we are to systematically assess and promote this construct in educational contexts. In 1990, a leading researcher on critical thinking, Peter Facione, led a panel of expert philosophers in defining critical thinking using the Delphi method. The experts submitted individual definitions of critical thinking, which they analyzed and fine-tuned until they reached a consensus definition. They concluded critical thinking consists of two aptitudes: skills and dispositions on the theory that it is insufficient to expect that a person who has critical thinking skills will simply use them; the critical thinker must also be inclined to practice the skills.

The Delphi consensus definition included six critical thinking skills and seven critical thinking dispositions. The skills are interpretation, analysis, evaluation, inference, explanation, and self-regulation. A critical thinker will interpret, analyze, evaluate, and draw inferences from information to form an evidence-based judgment. Moreover, the critical thinker can explain evidence, theories, concepts, methods, criteria, or contexts that support the judgment. By gathering and evaluating the judgment, the critical thinker can decide what to believe or how to proceed in a given situation. Some scholars call this process analytic reasoning. This type of reasoning involves breaking a concept down into different parts and studying how each part relates to the others. Therefore, analytic reasoning is a cognitive process of coming to an understanding of something believed, through a reasoned process of examining the parts of that belief. If a person is using analytic reasoning, the person is using critical thinking skills.

Critical thinking disposition is categorized as a personality characteristic; disposition indicates how one would approach a problem and use reasoning to solve it. A person with strong critical thinking disposition has high internal motivation to make decisions, solve problems, or evaluate ideas by thinking critically. The Delphi experts identified seven dispositions of critical thinking: inquisitiveness, systemactiy, truth-seeking, open-mindedness, self-confidence, analyticity, and maturity.

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