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TopIntroduction
In this era of information overload, and due to internet access, people are immersed in a sea of online content wherever they live. In this environment, critical thinking is vital for successful personal and career development. Experts have proposed different definitions of critical thinking. Critical thinking has a history of over 2500 years, although its modern development emerged from the writing of United States’ philosopher, educator, and psychologist John Dewey, who proposed this definition: “Active, persistent, and careful consideration of a belief or supposed form of knowledge in the light of the grounds which support it and the further conclusion to which it tends” (Dewey, 1933). Dewey’s work marked an educational shift from students as passive learners to active thinkers. Over many years, terms such as development, dispositions, decision-making, and meta-cognition have been added to the definition of critical thinking (Anderson et al., 2001; Dwyer, 2023; Ennis, 1987; Facione, 1990; Halpern and Dunn, 2021; Paul and Elder, 2020).
In general, critical thinking has been divided into two components: cognitive skills, and affective disposition. Cognitive skills has included analyzing, inferencing, identifying, explaining, evaluating, questioning, communicating, and generalizing. Affective dispositions have included open-mindedness, skepticism, thoughtfulness, clarity, accuracy, precision, relevance, adequacy, coherence, depth, and the tendency to take a reflective, rational–analytic approach to problem-solving. These components work together in the stages of both “process” and “product.” Driven by affective dispositions, individuals initiate information processing according to criteria such as clarity and relevance. This process culminates in tentative decisions regarding what to believe or how to act. When reviewing a situation or problem, people take the total situation into account before making or implementing a decision (Figure 1).
Figure 1. The Working Cycle of Critical Thinking
Information processing should draw upon different skills at varying levels, with methods and content aligned to meet both qualitative and quantitative requirements. Regarding affective dispositions—being open-minded and inquisitive—and cognitive skills like analyzing, referencing, and synthesizing, people can deepen their understanding of events and be more creative problem-solvers. This, in turn, can stimulate the development of critical thinking, thereby initiating a continuous cycle of improvement.
TopSignificance Of Critical Thinking In Education
Personal Development
Paul and Elder (2020) pointed out that humans’ perception of the world was unrealistic, making humanity overconfident regarding problem-solving; human judgment, therefore, was often based on unjustified beliefs. Bensley (2023) points out that unfortunately, people’s beliefs are too often based on acceptance of unsubstantiated claims. According to this, we argue this would result in the inaccuracy or one-sided perception or biased judgments. In general, much of our thinking, left to itself, is biased, distorted, partial, uninformed or down-right prejudiced. Therefore, critical thinking has become a necessary tool for our clear understanding of the world and for personal development.
Contemporary society is rapidly changing—everybody is immersed in a knowledge economy where the internet has become the main source of information. With a cell phone at hand, there is immediate, constant access to a sea of information. Some internet content is accurate, while other information is biased, distorted or even completely untrue. Media reports on current events show different perspectives to cater for public taste—or even to mislead or influence public opinion. Critical thinking, therefore, is essential for analyzing, identifying or judging information to receive a clear, comprehensive understanding of events. Critical thinking enables exploration of unsubstantiated beliefs in a rational and analytical way; in addition, it helps to investigate an event or issue—its cause, results and solution—and making it possible to avoid one-sided judgments.