Train the Trainers Critical Thinking

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Train the Trainers Critical Thinking

• James J. Messina, Ph.D.

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What is Critical Thinking?

• Critical thinking is thinking that is clear,
  precise, accurate, relevant, consistent fair
• Critical Thinking is how people approach
• Problems
• Questions
• Issues
• The best way to get to the truth

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Descriptors of Critical Thinking

• Critical thinking is self-directed,
  self-disciplined, self-monitored
  self-corrective thinking that entails effective
  communication problem-solving abilities
• Critical Thinking is a pervasive, purposeful
  human phenomenon
• Ideal critical thinkers are characterized by how
  they approach life living in general

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Approaches to life of good Critical Thinkers

• Inquisitiveness about wide range of issues
• Concern to become stay well-informed
• Alertness to opportunities to use Critical
  Thinking
• Self confidence in their abilities to reason
• Open-mindedness about divergent world views
• Flexibility in considering alternatives opinions

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Approaches to life of good Critical Thinkers

• Understanding the opinions of other people
• Fair-mindedness in appraising reasoning
• Honesty in facing ones own biases, prejudices,
  stereotypes, egocentric ethnocentric tendencies
• Prudence in suspending, making, altering
  judgments
• Willingness to reconsider revise views
• Clarity in stating question or concern

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Critical Thinking approaches

• Orderliness in working with complexity
• Diligence in seeking relevant information
• Reasonableness in selecting applying criteria
• Care in focusing attention on the concern at hand
• Persistence through difficulties
• Precision to the degree permitted by subject
  circumstances

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Critical Thinking Requires

• Six Cognitive Skills
• Interpretation
• Analysis
• Evaluation
• Inference
• Explanation
• Self-regulation

• Affective Dispositions a critical spirit

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Interpretation

• Comprehend express meaning or significance of
  wide variety of experiences, situations, data,
  events, judgments, conventions, beliefs, rules,
  procedures, or criteria

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Analysis

• Identify the intended actual inferential
  relationships among statements, questions,
  concepts, descriptions, or other forms of
  representation intended to express belief,
  judgment, experiences, reasons, information, or
  opinion

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Evaluation

• Assess the credibility of statements or other
  representations which are accounts or
  descriptions of a persons perception,
  experience, situation, judgment, belief, or
  opinion to assess the logical strength of the
  actual or intended inferential relationships
  among statements, descriptions, questions, or
  other forms of representation

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Inference

• Identify secure elements needed to draw
  reasonable conclusions to form conjectures and
  hypotheses to consider relevant information to
  educe the consequences flowing from data,
  statements, principles, evidence, judgments,
  beliefs, opinions, concepts, descriptions,
  questions, or other forms of representation

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Explanation

• State the results of ones reasoning justify
  that reasoning in terms of evidential,
  conceptual, methodological contextual
  considerations upon which ones results were
  based to present ones reasoning in the form of
  cogent arguments.

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Self-regulation

• Self consciously to monitor ones cognitive
  activities, the elements used in those activities
  the results educed, particularly by applying
  skills in analysis evaluation to ones own
  inferential judgments with a view toward
  questions, confirming, validation, or correcting
  either ones reasoning or results.

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Something else is needed

• More to Critical Thinking than just cognitive
  skills
• Human beings are more than just thinking machines

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The Critical Spirit(affective dispositions)

• A probing inquisitiveness
• A keenness of mind
• A zealous dedication to reason
• A hunger or eagerness for reliable information

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Why is Critical Thinking of Value?

• You can answerwhy value to you?
• Whats value of cognitive skills?
• Whats value of the critical spirit?
• Would these mean more success at what you do?
• Would it mean better grades for students?

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Critical Thinking Achievement

• In a study of 1,100 college students
• Significant correlation between Critical Thinking
  scores college GPA
• Critical Thinking skills can be learned
• Significant correlation between Critical Thinking
  reading comprehension

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Main Purpose of College Experience

• Achievement of liberal (liberated) education.
  Its about
• Learning to learn
• Learning to think for ones self
• Leads away from naïve acceptance of authority
• Leads above self-defeating relativism
• Beyond ambiguous contextualism
• Culminates in principled, reflective judgment

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What else?

• Critical Thinking is fundamental, if not
  essential for, a rational democratic society
• Electorate
• Judiciary
• International commerce
• Business civic leaders maybe more interested in
  Critical Thinking than even educators
• Necessary condition for the success of democratic
  institutions free market society

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A Critical Thinking Problem Solving Model
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Problem Solving Content Issues

• Description of Problem
• Factors Constructive vs Limiting
• Ownership
• Scope of Problem
• Consequence of Problem
• Alternative Solutions
• Rank Ordered Solutions

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Process Issues in Problem Solving

• Self-awareness of the problem solver
• Motivation of the problem solver
• Decision making involved in selecting solution by
  solver
• Execution of the solution decided upon

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Problem Solving Model
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Components of Problem
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Visceral Components of the Problem

• Size of Problem - costs, risks, losses
• Sensory Input
• Hows it look?
• Hows it sound?
• Hows it taste?
• Hows its smell?
• Hows it feel?

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Personal Components of the Problem

• If on Team other members as problem solvers
  their perspective

• Inside perspective of problem solver of the
  problem

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What is Needed to Improve Problem Solving Process

• Unconditional acceptance non-judgmental
  attitude of fellow problem solvers
• Respect for each participants input
• Freedom to openly express emotional response to
  the problem solutions
• Defined limits boundaries on problem solving
  process

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Encouraging Creativity in Problem Solving

• Create the desire to be creative-a person must
  want it
• Expand Knowledge Skills of language by reading
  more to be creative thinker
• It takes effort to create-genius is 1
  inspiration 99 perspiration-Edison
• Ferment creativity - give it time
• Evaluate validate creative ideas

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Brainstorming

• Set a time frame to be completed
• Be clear what problem you are trying to solve
• All ideas should be heard
• No idea is too wild to be expressed
• Quantity is wanted each idea coming to mind
  should be expressed
• Combining ideas for improvement is highly
  desirable
• Criticism or negative discussion regarding ideas
  is absolutely forbidden

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Starbursting

• Focuses on a topic radiates outward with
  questions
• Here anything goes
• Any questions are legitimate
• More the questions the better
• Begin by asking What are the Questions?

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Problem Solving through Intimate Engagement

• Engagers have a history of success with similar
  problems
• Dismissers had history of failure with similar
  problems-captive of the past
• Rather than dismiss, engage the problem
  intimately by getting into it
• Be willing to take the time to deal with the
  problem

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Problem Solving through Intimate Engagement

• Engagement takes
• Effort to deal with it
• Time to mull it over
• Looking at not averting or looking away

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Rules of Engagement with Problems

• Become sensitive to your own confusion with a
  problem
• Do not permit yourself to be confused-do not
  tolerate confusion
• Use visual imagery to remember facts
• Relate the information to people, animals or
  situations
• Make your visualization vivid, dynamic,
  interactive, unusual

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Reality Testing of Possible Solutions to Problem

• Critical Path Analysis
• Decision Trees
• Force Field Analysis
• PMI Plus Minus Interesting
• SWOT Analysis Strengths, Weaknesses,
  Opportunities, Threats

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Critical Path Analysis

• Calculate length of time to complete project
• List all activities in plan by start date,
  duration, if parallel or sequential
• If dependent on what do they depend
• Graph it out, Plot tasks on graph
• Schedule Activities
• Critical path-longest sequence of dependent
  activities that lead to completion of plan

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Decision Trees

• Start with the decision which needs to be made
  draw a box
• Draw to right possible solutions on lines
• At End of each line if result is uncertain draw
  circle if other decision draw box
• From the other decisions draw lines for options
  which can be taken
• Calculate decision which has greatest worth to
  you and give it a value
• Estimate probability of each uncertainty

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Force Field Analysis

• List all forces for change in one column
• List all forces against change in other
• Assign a score to each force 1(weak)-5(strong)
• Draw diagram showing forces for against and
  size of forces
• Helps weigh importance of factors as to if pursue
  or not the plan

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PMI- Plus/Minus/Interesting

• Plus Column all positive points of taking the
  action
• Negative Column all negative effects
• Interesting Column extended implications of
  taking action, whether positive or negative
• Assign positive or negative scores

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SWOT Analysis

• Strengths advantages, what you do well
• Weaknesses could be improved, done badly, should
  be avoided
• Opportunities good chances, interesting trends
• Threats obstacles, competition, are required
  specifications changing

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Critical Thinking Concepts
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What is Thinking?

• Lets look at the
• Biological
• Psychological
• Communications
• Cognitive
• Descriptions of Thinking What do you Think?

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Biology of Thinking
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Stages of Development of the Thinking Process
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Stages of Cognitive Development - Jean Piaget

• 1. Sensorimotor Stage Birth to 2 years old - no
  thinking structures
• 2. Preoperational Stage 2-7 years old - develop
  language skills cognitive structures prelogical

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Stages of Cognitive Development - Jean Piaget

• 3. Concrete Operational Stage 7 years to
  Adolescence - Begins to question life. Solves
  problems but haphazardly
• 4. Formal Operations Stage  Adolescence and
  onward - capable of sophisticated logical
  thought. Can think both abstract hypothetically
  and solve problems using the logic of
  combinations

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Later Theorists have added Fifth Stage

• Dialectical Reasoning - stage beyond logic where
  critical thinking lies. Ability to perceive the
  frequent paradoxes in life and question and
  analyze the assumptions that underlie logic. 
• Being able to look at two sides of an argument or
  problem to get a broader, deeper, more
  reasonable perspective on the issues being
  addressed

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What is Critical Thinking?

• Becoming aware that assumptions exist
• Making assumptions explicit
• Assessing their accuracy of assumptions
• Do these assumptions make sense?
• Do these assumptions fit reality as we understand
  and live it?
• Under what conditions do these assumptions seem
  to hold true? Under what conditions do they seem
  false?

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Misconceptions about critical thinking

• rather positive process to put things in more
  realistic perspective
• rather commitments are informed ones
• rather Some beliefs stay the same-simply more
  informed
• rather highly emotive liberating to be free of
  past assumptions anxiety of self-scrutiny

• Negative process- tears down ideas puts nothing
  in their place
• Leads to relativistic freeze-inability to make
  commitments
• Involves traumatic change-one is expected to
  abandon old assumptions continually
• It is dispassionate cold

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Why is critical thinking important?

• All actions, decisions judgments spring from
  assumptions - if unchecked make poor decisions
  wrong judgments
• In personal relationships learn to keep lines of
  communications open avoid uncritically
  reproducing patterns of modeled interactions
  learned from parental interaction
• In workplace avoid stagnation atrophy - willing
  to challenge current paradigms uncritically
  accepted from time thinking no longer relevant
  to current reality

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Personal barriers to critical thinking

• Enculturation
• Self-concept
• Ego defenses
• Self-serving biases
• Expectation
• Emotional influences
• Cognitive consistency
• Stress

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What does not thinking critically look like?

• Blindly reproducing damaging old learned
  reactions
• Blindly accepting face value of all
  justifications of organizations political
  leaders
• Blindly believe TV commercials
• Blindly trust political commercials
• Blindly accept say that if the textbook says
  it it must be so
• Blindly accept say that if the organization
  does it it must be right

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What does Critical Thinking Look Like?

• Contextual sensitivity - being sensitive to
  stereotypes about people of particular group
  accept others at face value unconditionally
• Perspective thinking - trying to get into other
  person's head, or walk in others shoes to see
  the world way that person sees it
• Tolerance for ambiguity - ability to accept
  multiple interpretations of same situation
• Alert to premature ultimatums not invoke
  powerful concept inspires no further debate is
  forestalled. e.g. a politician invokes "democracy"

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What are the Major Concepts in Critical Thinking?

• Perception
• Assumptions
• Emotion
• Language
• Argument
• Fallacy
• Logic
• Problem Solving

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Perception

• The way we receive translate our experience
• Also a significant filtering system
• How we perceive defines how we think

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Assumptions

• Central to Critical Thinking
• Implied, not conscious of them
• Not always bad
• Rest on notion some ideas are obvious
• Make us comfortable with present beliefs shut
  out alternatives
• Jack Beanstalk what makes a hero?

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Emotion

• Leave emotion out of it! is Impossible
• Part of everything we do think
• Personal barriers are a given
• Critical thinkers dont ignore or deny emotions -
  they accept manage them

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Language

• Thinking cant be separated from language
• Three primary purposes of language
• Inform
• Persuade
• Explain
• Language denotes connotes
• Metaphors

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Persuasion

• Persuasion is manner by which we attempt to
  convince others to "our way of thinking" about a
  subject therefore
• logic
• fallacious reasoning
• problem solving all involve persuasion

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Language Forms

• Emotionally charged language-cognitive vs
  emotional meanings
• Manipulative language cons, doublespeak, jargon
  bureaucrats
• Emotional appeal-Advertising
• Rhetorical devices
• Slanting
• weasel words
• fine print disclaimers
• Obfuscation

 
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Argument

• Claim, used to persuade that something is (or
  not) true or should (or not) be done
• Contains three basic elements
• Issue
• One or more reasons (premises)
• One or more conclusions
• Can be valid or invalid based on structure
• Only premises conclusions true or false

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Argument

• Goal of Critical Thinking is sound Arguments
• Valid (proper structure)
• With true premises
• Sound argument has both so the conclusion must
  be true
• Therein the beauty and usefulness of logic

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Breaking down arguments to figure out if valid or
invalid
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Syllogisms used in Arguments
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Structure of Two Parts of Syllogism Arguments

• PART 1 If__________ then __________ Statement
• General Facts Statement with explicit or implicit
  If Then clause.
• The if Clause is the Antecedent
• The then Clause is the Consequent

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Structure of Two Parts of Syllogism Arguments

• Part 2 _________ therefore ________Statement
• Argument Statement with explicit or implicit
  therefore statement
• What appears before the therefore is the lead
  statement of the argument
• What follows the therefore is what is being
  argued
• If the antecedent is the lead it must be affirmed
  for argument to be valid
• If consequent is the lead it must be denied for
  argument to be valid

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Rules for Arguments

• If the argument leads with the Antecedent, it
  must be affirmed for the argument to be valid
• If the argument leads with the Consequent, it
  must be denied for the argument to be valid
• If the argument leads with the Antecedent which
  is denied the argument is invalid
• If the argument leads with the Consequent which
  is affirmed the argument is invalid

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Goal in restating Arguments

• Try to avoid absolute statements e.g. All,
  Always, Must, Should, Best, Highest
• Restate arguments with relative words and
  statements e.g. Most, Usually, could, might,
  very good, very high

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Logic

• Two methods of reasoning
• Deductive
• Facts, certainty, syllogisms, validity, truth of
  premises?sound arguments conclusions
• Inductive
• Diverse facts, probability, generalizations,
  hypotheses, analogies?inductive strength
• Logic problems

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Deduction vs Induction LogicScientific Method

• DEDUCTION
• Draw a conclusion that follows know facts stated
  in premises
• Relies on certainty based on connection of
  premises conclusion
• Valid Argument vs Sound Argument

• INDUCTION
• Derives probable conclusion from observation of
  diverse facts
• Learning from experience
• Argument by analogy
• Hypothetical Reasoning

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Problem Solving

• Logic problems like any problem
• Techniques
• Understand the problem. Read heed
• ID unknowns knowns
• Relationships between these (visual aids)
• Generate strategy from step above
• Apply and solve. Repeat if necessary

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Logic Problems

• The Premise establishes the setting of the
  problem, subjects, how subjects are related,
  number of subjects (4-10)
• The Conditions- rules which impose specific
  restrictions upon relationship among subjects
  (2-10 conditions)
• The Question-questions about relationship-require
  deductive analysis

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Fallacy

• Reasoning that doesnt meet criteria for sound
  argument is fallacious
• Valid
• True premises
• Complete (all relevant information)
• Fallacy is incorrect pattern of reasoning
• Does not always mean conclusion is false
• Ads editorials

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5 Most Common Fallacies

• Non Sequitur-irrelevant reason-premise no
  relationship to conclusion
• Ad hominum-persons character attacked to
  discredit arguer rather than argument
• Post hoc ergo propter hoc-generalization-one
  event which follows was caused by 1st
• Slippery slope-black white-no gray or middle
  ground-argues against 1st step since eventually
  follow through to the last one
• Appeal to Emotion-emotional appeals rather than
  logical reasons to persuade