THINKING SKILLS

1. THINKING AND REASONING

The core activities of CT can be summarised under the following three headings:

1. Analysis means identifying the key parts of a text and reconstructing it in a

way that fully and fairly captures its meaning. This is particularly relevant
to arguments, especially complex ones.
2. Evaluation means judging how successful a text is: for example, how well
an argument supports its conclusion; or how strong some piece of
evidence is for a claim it is supposed to support.
3. Further argument is self-explanatory. It is the students opportunity to give
his or her own response to the text in question, by presenting a reasoned
case for or against the claims it makes.

1.1.Solutions not problems.

The origins of problem solving as part of a thinking skills examination lie in the
processes used by scientists to investigate and analyse.

These were originally defined by Robert J. Sternberg (Beyond IQ: A Triarchic

Theory of Human Intelligence, Cambridge University Press, 1985) and can be
summarised as:

relevant selection: the ability to identify what is important in a mass of data,

and thus to recognise what is important in solving the problem in hand

finding procedures: the ability to put together pieces of information in an

appropriate way and thus to discover the route to a solution of a problem

identifying similarity: the ability to recognise when new information is similar to

old information and thus to be able to understand it better and more quickly.

2. CRITICAL THINKING: THE BASICS

2.1.Claims, assertions, statements
A claim or assertion is an expression that is supposedly true. It may be spoken or
written, or sometimes just thought. We have to say supposedly true because
obviously not all claims and assertions are true.

Types of claims:
I. Facts and opinions: Another way to distinguish this claim from the other
two claims is to say that it is purely subjective. That means that its truth is
decided by each individual person or subject who thinks about it. This is
in contrast to the first two, which are objective. They are true or false
regardless of what anyone thinks or knows. The fact that the truth is
hidden does not mean that there is no fact to be discovered.
II. Value judgements: it remains a matter of opinion or belief; and people may
differ in their opinions. When someone says, therefore, that a value
judgement is true (or false), they are using the words in a broad sense to
mean something like true (or false) in my opinion, or true (or false) for
me.

III. Prediction and probabilities: A prediction is a claim that something may or

may not be true because it is still in the future,

IV. Hypotheses: Strictly speaking, many of the claims that scientists treat as
fact should be understood as probabilities of a very high order. The
hypothesis has been so well tested that the probability of such a claim
ever being wrong is practically non-existent. We call it a hypothesis,
rather than an absolute certainty, because conceivably the laws of physics
may not be the same in the far, unknowable future, or in all possible
worlds.

V. Recommendations or suggestions: a claim about how things ought to be,

or what the author thinks should be done in response to the situation.
Recommendations, like value judgements, are not straightforwardly true or
false.