Critical thinking

Critical thinking is your key to success at university.

Have you received feedback on an assessment that says "not enough analysis", "no clear argument" or "just descriptive"? This is likely because the assessment criteria included critical analysis.

At high school, most learning happens at the levels of knowledge, understanding and application, where your memory and comprehension skills are the most important. However, at university, your markers will expect more.

What is critical thinking?

Critical thinking requires a combination of analytical, logical and reflective thinking to evaluate information, form a well-reasoned judgment, think creatively and solve problems. Critical thinking includes skills like analysis, interpretation, and evaluation, as well as the ability to identify assumptions, question ideas and consider different perspectives.

Critical thinking can be defined as, "the art of analysing and evaluating thinking with a view to improving it" (Paul & Elder 2009).

What does a critical thinker do?

Critical thinkers analyse, evaluate and build on information to form well reasoned judgements and arguments. They reflect on their own thinking, identify problems, gather information, and ask and answer questions. At university, your assessments should show that you not only have researched and understood a topic, but that you have thought deeply about it and can express your own thinking.

A critical thinker is guided by a clear goal. They reflect on what they already know and identify what they still need to understand or discover. They also:

Apply relevant and well-focused questions to information and opinions

Is this fact or opinion?

Seek clarity, consistency, and accuracy

How do I know this?

Test conclusions and reasoning against clear, relevant criteria

What evidence do they have for their claims/ conclusions?

Explore causes, effects, and implications of events, systems and ideas

Why does that happen?

Strives to recognise bias including their own

What are the stated and unstated assumptions in this information?

Remain open to alternative ideas, perspectives, and information

What other ways can we think about/act on this?

Bloom's Taxonomy of Intellectual Behaviour: The thinking model you need to do in uni*

The top three intellectual behaviours – analysis, evaluation and creating – are the ones which demonstrate your critical thinking skills.

Analysis
Evaluation
Creating

Analysis refers to the process of examining the parts of a whole, the causes and results of events, and the differences between phenomena.

For example, an economics course may ask you to analyse the causes of the global financial crisis of 2008-2009. To get a high mark, you would have to do more than just describe what happened. You’d be expected to name the main factors, explain which of these were the most important, and consider how the crisis could have been avoided.

Evaluation can seem difficult because it involves expressing opinions about other people’s work or expressing a justification for choices and ideas. Evaluation must follow from the other types of thinking, because you need to understand the theories and ideas of a subject area to evaluate them successfully.

For example, an engineering course could require you to solve a design problem with many different possible solutions. You'd have to evaluate the best solution by identifying, comparing and testing the theories and ideas related to the design problem.

Creating is the process of joining or combining information and ideas from different sources to create something new. To create, you need to be familiar with existing knowledge and practices in your field and be able to combine parts of them in new ways.

For example, education courses might prompt you to design lesson plans based on educational theories. You’d likely have to combine techniques from different sources with their own ideas to create a unique mix that suits your own lesson plan.

_{*Adapted from Krathwohl D. (2002) A revision of Bloom's taxonomy: An overview. In Theory into Practice, Vol 41, No.4, College of Education; Ohio State University.}

Student essay example

Below is an example paragraph from the body of a student's essay (reproduced with permission). The assessment required the student to visit a museum exhibition and critically discuss it. Note how the paragraph uses all six levels of thinking to produce a strong argument.

Type of thinking	Example
Evaluation	Due to the extensive range of artistic mediums that the curators employed for The Barracks 'Convict Sydney' exhibit, when I visited the museum there was an initial sense of confusion rather than understanding.
Knowledge	The current debates circling public modes of history underlie the critique of the changing nature of Australian museum exhibitions.
Analysis	As Gregory reports, critics of the Barracks have argued that "material remnants of the past are not being interpreted but rather are being used as props in a larger artwork". These critics of Emmetts' use of artistic methods claimed that this approach had "sidelined the political implication of historical interpretation" because the issues surrounding colonisation and reconciliation have only been dealt with "obliquely".2 This is evident where "convict shadows" are displayed on the level three aside windows, and are accompanied by the sounds of voices.
Application	Interestingly only life-size male silhouettes were displayed in the exhibition despite the significant presence of female residents (convicts and infirmed) throughout the Barracks' history. Accompanying the convict shadows are lists of actual criminal justice documents, recording what crimes the convicts had committed.
Evaluation	It is clear that the Barracks Museum exhibition attempts to create empathy so that visitors might feel some kind of connection or understanding with past characters.
Creating	However the combination of contemporary art and historical evidence to create a new means of engaging with history assumes that anyone can empathise with the Barracks' "colourful past".