BLUF

Lee Carroll and Terry Heick have developed eight science based critical thinking strategies.

Summary

 

The following strategies should help you to become a better and more effective critical thinker:

  1. Challenge all assumptions. Even the belief that critical thinking is useful.

  2. Suspending judgment. Resist reaching a conclusion until you have seen some supporting evidence.

  3. Revising conclusions based on new evidence. Try to avoid closing your mind to new evidence.

  4. Emphasizing data over beliefs. Belief does not necessarily make something true. Data can.

  5. The neverending testing of ideas. Try to think up new tests that might prove your idea incorrect.

  6. The perspective that mistakes are data. Getting things wrong is part of the learning process. 

  7. The earnest consideration of possibilities and ideas without (always) accepting them. Trying to understand another person's perspective.

  8. Looking for what others have missed. Reframe a problem e.g., instead of looking at how to produce more water for plants, try to develop plants that need less water.

Gain an understanding of eight science based critical thinking strategies

References