Critical thinking is about keeping an open mind when reading, listening or writing about something. It is about carefully examining a piece of knowledge by questioning the surface appearance of material, identifying assumptions, assessing the evidence and coming to conclusions using a variety of sources.
When being critical in an academic sense, we question whether there are other ways of interpreting evidence and identifying the validity or flaws in a line of argument.
In order to critically evaluate a piece, you need to identify the argument. What are the statements used to justify a position in the writing?
If you are writing a piece, outline in draft form a summary of the key statements you plan on using to argue your point, including the conclusion. Think about whether your argument is logical and valid. Ensure the person reading your final piece can easily identify the line of argument.
Read your piece again and identify each piece of evidence presented to support the conclusion. Here are some questions to ask of your evidence
These questions can be applied to the work of others, or our own writing. Depending on your discipline, some questions will have more or less relevance. Read around the topic in your discipline to see how others have approached the area.
When reading, you need to identify which parts are opinions and which parts are facts. You must spot any assumptions, assertions or statements that might not be correct.
When writing, review your draft and do the same. Identify what is opinion and what is fact, supported by evidence from academic or other reliable sources. Read around your subject at this stage to help identify opinion from fact.
Look again at the piece you are reading. Who is the author? Is it possible she or he may have a reason for thinking the way they do? Is the author sponsored by a company. Does she or he have some other personal characteristic that may compromise the research?
When writing about something, it can be hard to identify your own biases. Reading widely will help this. Ensure your piece evaluates the evidence for and against your point of view. Does your argument make sense, or is there research you are overlooking? If there is an area of uncertainty in the literature, acknowledge this. Ask another person to review your work to help see a different point of view or check for bias.
Consider whether the conclusion follows logically from the premises and evidence outlined. Ask yourself
These questions apply to both the work of others and any work you are creating yourself.
Five simple strategies to sharpen your critical thinking by BBC Ideas
A critical thinking model by the University of Leeds Library
This three-stage model, adapted from LearnHigher, will help you generate questions to understand, analyse, and evaluate something, such as an information source.
Starting with the description stage, you ask questions such as: What? Where? Why? and Who? These help you establish the background and context.
For example, if you are reading a journal article, you might ask questions such as:
If you are thinking through a problem, you might ask:
These types of questions lead to descriptive answers. Although the ability to describe something is important, to really develop your understanding and critically engage, we need to move beyond these types of questions.
This moves you into the analysis stage.
Here you will ask questions such as: How? Why? and What if? These help you to examine methods and processes, reasons and causes, and alternative options. For example, if you are reading a journal article, you might ask:
If you are thinking through a problem, you might ask:
Asking these questions helps you to break something into parts and consider the relationship between each part, and each part to the whole. This process will help you develop more analytical answers and deeper thinking.
Finally, you come to the evaluation stage, where you will ask 'so what?' and 'what next?' questions to make judgments and consider the relevance; implications; significance and value of something.
You may ask questions such as:
Making such judgments will lead you to reasonable conclusions, solutions, or recommendations.
The way we think is complex. This model is not intended to be used in a strictly linear way or as a prescriptive set of instructions. You may move back and forth between different segments. For example, you may ask, 'What is this about?' and then move straight to, 'Is this relevant to me?'
The model is intended to encourage a critical questioning approach and can be applied to many learning scenarios at university, such as interpreting assignment briefs, developing arguments, evaluating sources, analysing data or formulating your own questions to research an answer.
A premise is a statement used to support an argument, line of reasoning, theory or position.
An argument is made up of a set of statements used to justify a position, point of view or theory. It generally includes at least one statement and a conclusion.
An assumption is presenting a statement as fact or truth in order to build an argument.
A conclusion is the final point or summary set out by an author to prove his or her argument. It should follow logically from all previous premises and evidence.
Critical Thinking Skills by 
21st Century Communication 3: Listening, Speaking and Critical Thinking by 
The Study Skills Handbook by 
This page is based on the work by UCD Library and is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License
The critical thinking model has been adapted from LearnHigher under a Creative Commons BY-NC-SA 3.0 (via University of Leeds Library).
