Critical Thinking

Critical thinking helps us to evaluate out thoughts, refine our thought processes, think and assess information for comprehensively. This allows us to better identify and reject false ideas. 'We must want to be better at thinking to pinpoint and minimize biasing influence from culture and upbringing.'

As an instructor you want to encourage critical thinking in the classroom and incorporate it into exercises for your students. Mindmaps are one tool that can help with this by having students link similar ideas and concepts, but also have them expand on why they chose to make those links. To make it a partner exercise you could have students challenge the ideas of others to see if they can come up with a better link or more in depth explanation. Instructors could also propose conflicting ideas and have students defend both sides before making their decision on which side they stand. Have them report on the reasoning, assumptions, and biases.

You are your own worst enemy and instructors need to look out for this among their students to identify whose emotions or beliefs are sabotaging their ability to learn and think critically, such as those who have intolerance for ambiguity and see the world as only black or white. It is important for students to use critical thinking so that they can clearly express their ideas in the classroom and practice intellectual discipline.

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