RESOURCES AT JOHN JAY
ACADEMIC PLANNING
Success Strategies
Critical Reasoning
Critical reasoning refers to a way of thinking that requires you to evaluate ideas and engage in a process of discovery.
What do the elements of critical reasoning have in common? They are active and purposeful, not passive or aimless. They involve "thinking about how to think." Critical reasoning requires an engaged mind.
For success in college, you are expected to approach academic subjects with critical reasoning. If you are in a scientific field, learning to analyze and evaluate data using these higher order thinking skills is fundamental. Scientific thinking does not assume or accept an explanation just because someone famous proposed it. Thinking like a scientist requires an openness, a bias-free way of looking at data. It involves questioning, observing, gathering evidence, looking for connections, making predictions, and testing before drawing well substantiated conclusions.
Critical reasoning is: |
Critical reasoning is not: |
| • Exploring/questioning | • Seeking yes/no, black/white answers |
| • Drawing your own conclusions based on evidence | • Being told what to think |
| • Delving into deeper layers of a problem | • Shallow thinking; staying on the surface of a problem |
| • Looking at a situation from all angles | • Looking at only one aspect of a problem |
| • Analyzing data, categorizing, comparing/contrasting, determining cause and effect, predicting | • Passively observing; being satisfied with first impressions |
| • Considering all evidence before proposing and explanation | • Jumping to conclusions based on scant evidence |
| • Recognizing that problem-solving is not a one-step process; rather, it involves multiple steps and cycling though the process more than once | • Linear thinking – following a straight line of logic rather than incorporating a variety of thinking patterns. Although this type of thinking can be logical and orderly, it tends to lack abstractness. |
What do the elements of critical reasoning have in common? They are active and purposeful, not passive or aimless. They involve "thinking about how to think." Critical reasoning requires an engaged mind.
For success in college, you are expected to approach academic subjects with critical reasoning. If you are in a scientific field, learning to analyze and evaluate data using these higher order thinking skills is fundamental. Scientific thinking does not assume or accept an explanation just because someone famous proposed it. Thinking like a scientist requires an openness, a bias-free way of looking at data. It involves questioning, observing, gathering evidence, looking for connections, making predictions, and testing before drawing well substantiated conclusions.