Affective Dispositions of Critical Thinking Flashcards
APPROACHES TO LIFE AND LIVING IN GENERAL:
inquisitiveness with regard to a ?
wide range of issues
APPROACHES TO LIFE AND LIVING IN GENERAL:
concern to become and remain generally ?
well-informed
APPROACHES TO LIFE AND LIVING IN GENERAL:
alertness to ? to use Critical Thinking
opportunities
APPROACHES TO LIFE AND LIVING IN GENERAL:
trust in the processes of ?
reasoned inquiry
APPROACHES TO LIFE AND LIVING IN GENERAL:
self-confidence in one’s own ?
ability to reason
APPROACHES TO LIFE AND LIVING IN GENERAL:
open-mindedness regarding ? world views
divergent
APPROACHES TO LIFE AND LIVING IN GENERAL:
flexibility in considering ? and opinions
alternatives
APPROACHES TO LIFE AND LIVING IN GENERAL:
understanding of the ? of other people
opinions
APPROACHES TO LIFE AND LIVING IN GENERAL:
? in appraising reasoning
fair-mindedness
APPROACHES TO LIFE AND LIVING IN GENERAL:
honesty in facing one’s own biases, ??? or sociocentric tendencies
prejudices, stereotypes, egocentric
APPROACHES TO LIFE AND LIVING IN GENERAL:
? in suspending, making or altering judgments
prudence
APPROACHES TO LIFE AND LIVING IN GENERAL:
willingness to reconsider and revise views where honest reflection suggests that ?
change is warranted
Approaches to Specific Questions or Problems:
? in stating the question or concern
clarity
Approaches to Specific Questions or Problems:
? in working with complexity
orderliness
Approaches to Specific Questions or Problems:
diligence in seeking ?
relevant information
Approaches to Specific Questions or Problems:
? in selecting and applying criteria
reasonableness
Approaches to Specific Questions or Problems:
care in focusing attention on the ?
concern at hand
Approaches to Specific Questions or Problems:
persistence though ?
difficulties are encountered
Approaches to Specific Questions or Problems:
precision to the degree permitted by the ?
subject and the circumstance
The majority (?) regard the dispositions listed as part of the conceptualization of Critical Thinking.
61%
The consensus (?) is that good critical thinkers can be characterized as exhibiting these dispositions.
83%
Dispositions of the Good Critical Thinker
To the experts, a good critical thinker, the paradigm case, is habitually disposed to engage in, and to encourage others to engage in, critical judgment.
He is able to make such judgments in a wide range of contexts and for a wide variety of purposes.
Dispositions of the Good Critical Thinker
The rational justification for cultivating those affective dispositions which characterize the paradigm critical thinker are soundly grounded in Critical Thinker’s personal and civic value.
Critical Thinking is known to contribute to the fair-minded analysis and resolution of questions. Critical Thinking is a powerful tool in the search for knowledge.
Dispositions of the Good Critical Thinker
CT can help people overcome the blind, sophistic, or irrational defense of intellectually defective or biased opinions.
CT promotes rational autonomy, intellectual freedom and the objective, reasoned and evidence based investigation of a very wide range of personal and social issues and concerns.
One would find the panelists to be in general accord with the view that there is a critical spirit, a probing inquisitiveness, a keenness of mind, a zealous dedication to reason, and a hunger or eagerness for reliable information which good critical thinkers possess but weak critical thinkers do not seem to have.
As water strengthens a thirsty plant, the affective dispositions are necessary for the CT skills identified to take root and to flourish in students.
INTERPRETATION
To comprehend and express the meaning or significance of a wide variety of experiences, situations, data, events, judgments, conventions, beliefs, rules,
procedures or criteria.
CATEGORIZATION
To apprehend or appropriately formulate categories, distinctions, or frameworks for understanding, describing or characterizing information
to describe experiences, situations, beliefs, events, etc. so that they take on comprehensible meanings in terms of appropriate categorizations, distinctions, or frameworks
CATEGORIZATION
Example
To recognize a problem and define its character without prejudice to inquiry; to determine a useful way of sorting and sub-classifying information; to make an understandable report of what one experienced in a given situation; to classify data, findings or opinions using a given classification schema.
DECODING SIGNIFICANCE
to detect, attend to, and describe the informational content, affective purport, directive functions, intentions, motives, purposes, social significance, values, views, rules, procedures, criteria, or inferential relationships expressed in convention-based communication systems, such as in language, social behaviors, drawings, numbers, graphs, tables, charts, signs and symbols
DECODING SIGNIFICANCE
Example
To detect and describe a person’s purposes in asking a given question; to appreciate the significance of a particular facial expression or gesture used in a given social situation; to discern the use of irony or rhetorical questions in debate; to interpret the data displayed or presented using a particular form of instrumentation
CLARIFYING MEANING
- to paraphrase or make explicit, through stipulation, description, analogy or figurative expression, the contextual, conventional or intended meanings of words, ideas, concepts, statements, behaviors, drawings, numbers, signs, charts, graphs, symbols, rules,
events or ceremonies. - to use stipulation, description, analogy or figurative expression to remove confusing, unintended vagueness or ambiguity, or to design a reasonable procedure for so
doing.
CLARIFYING MEANING
Example
to restate what a person said using different words or expressions while preserving that person’s intended meanings; to find an example which helps explain
something to someone; to develop a distinction which makes clear a conceptual difference or removes a troublesome ambiguity
ANALYSIS
To identify the intended and actual inferential relationships among statements, questions, concepts, descriptions or other forms of representation intended to
express beliefs, judgments, experiences, reasons, information, or opinions
ANALYSIS
EXAMINING IDEAS:
- to determine the role various expressions play or are intended to play in the context of argument, reasoning or persuasion.
- to define terms.
- to compare or contrast ideas, concepts, or statements.
- to identify issues or problems and determine their component parts, and also to identify the conceptual relationships of those parts to each other and to the whole.
ANALYSIS
Example
to identify a phrase intended to trigger a sympathetic emotional response which might induce an audience to agree with an opinion; to examine closely related
proposals regarding a given problem and to determine their points of similarity and divergence; given a complicated assignment, to determine how it might be broken up into smaller, more manageable tasks; to define an abstract concept
DETECTING ARGUMENTS
- given a set of statements, descriptions, questions or graphic representations, to determine whether or not the set expresses, or is intended to express, a reason or reasons in support of or contesting some claim, opinion or point of view
EVALUATION
To assess the credibility of statements or other representations which are accounts or descriptions of a person’s perception, experience, situation, judgment, belief, or opinion; and to assess the logical strength of the actual or intend inferential relationships among statements, descriptions, questions or other forms of representation
ASSESSING CLAIMS
- to recognize the factors relevant to assessing the degree of credibility to ascribe to a source of information or opinion.
- to assess the contextual relevance of questions, information, principles, rules or procedural directions.
- to assess the acceptability, the level of confidence to place in the probability or truth of any given representation of an experience, situation, judgment, belief or opinion.
ASSESSING CLAIMS
Example
to determine if a given principle of conduct is applicable to deciding what to do in a given situation; to determine if a given claim is likely to be true or false based on what one knows or can reasonably find out.
ASSESSING ARGUMENTS
- to judge whether the assumed acceptability of the premises of a given argument justify one’s accepting as true (deductively certain), or very probably true (inductively justified), the expressed conclusion of that argument.
- to anticipate or to raise questions or objections, and to assess whether these point to significant weakness in the argument being evaluated.
- to determine whether an argument relies on false or doubtful assumptions or presuppositions and then to determine how crucially these affect its strength.
- to judge between reasonable and fallacious inferences;
- to judge the probative strength of an argument’s premises and assumptions with a view toward determining the acceptability of the argument.
- to determine and judge the probative strength of an argument’s intended or unintended consequences with a view toward judging the acceptability of the argument; * to determine the extent to which possible additional information might strengthen or weaken an argument
ASSESSING ARGUMENTS
Example
given an argument to judge if its conclusion follows either with certainty or with a high level of confidence from its premises; to check for identifiable formal and
informal fallacies; given an objection to an argument to evaluate the logical force of that objection; to evaluate the quality and applicability of analogical arguments; to judge the logical strength of arguments based on hypothetical situations or causal reasoning; to judge
if a given argument is relevant or applicable or has implications for the situation at hand; to determine how possible new data might lead logically to the further confirmation or disconfirmation of a given opinion.
INFERENCE
To identify and secure elements needed to draw reasonable conclusions; to form conjectures and hypotheses; to consider relevant information and to educe the consequences flowing from data, statements, principles, evidence, judgments, beliefs, opinions, concepts, descriptions, questions, or other forms of representation
QUERYING EVIDENCE
- in particular, to recognize premises which require support and to formulate a strategy for seeking and gathering information which might supply that support.
- in general, to judge that information relevant to deciding the acceptability, plausibility or relative merits of a given alternative, question, issue, theory, hypothesis, or statement is required, and to determine plausible investigatory strategies for acquiring that information
INFERENCE
when attempting to develop a persuasive argument in support of one’s opinion, to judge what background information it would be useful to have and to develop a
plan which will yield a clear answer as to whether or not such information is available; after judging that certain missing information would be germane in determining if a given opinion is more or less reasonable than a competing opinion, to plan a search which will reveal if
that information is available.
CONJECTURING ALTERNATIVES
- to formulate multiple alternatives for resolving a problem, to postulate a series of suppositions regarding a question, to project alternative hypotheses regarding an event, to develop a variety of different plans to achieve some goal.
- to draw out presuppositions and project the range of possible consequences of decisions, positions, policies, theories, or beliefs
CONJECTURING ALTERNATIVES
Example
given a problem with technical, ethical or budgetary ramifications, to develop a set of options for addressing and resolving that problem; given a set of priorities with
which one may or may not agree, to project the difficulties and the benefits which are likely to result if those priorities are adopted in decision making
DRAWING CONCLUSIONS
- to apply appropriate modes of inference in determining what position, opinion or point of view one should take on a given matter or issue.
- given a set of statements, descriptions, questions or other forms of representation, to educe, with the proper level of logical strength, their inferential relationships and the consequences or the presuppositions which they support, warrant, imply or entail.
- to employ successfully various sub-species of reasoning, as for example to reason analogically, arithmetically, dialectically, scientifically, etc.
- to determine which of several possible conclusions is most strongly warranted or supported by the evidence at hand, or which should be rejected or regarded as less plausible by the information given
DRAWING CONCLUSIONS
Example
to carry out experiments and to apply appropriate statistical inference techniques in order to confirm or disconfirm an empirical hypothesis; given a controversial issue to examine informed opinions, consider various opposing views and the reasons advanced for them, gather relevant information, and formulate one’s own considered opinion regarding that issue; to deduce a theorem from axioms using prescribed rules of inference
EXPLANATION
To state the results of one’s reasoning; to justify that reasoning in terms of the evidential, conceptual, methodological, criteriological and contextual considerations upon which one’s results were based; and to present one’s reasoning in the form of cogent arguments.
STATING RESULTS
- to produce accurate statements, descriptions or representations of the results of one’s reasoning activities so as to analyze, evaluate, infer from, or monitor those results
STATING RESULTS
Example
To state one’s reasons for holding a given view; to write down for one’s own future use one’s current thinking about an important or complex matter; to state one’s
research findings; to convey one’s analysis and judgment regarding a work of art; to state one’s considered opinion on a matter of practical urgency
JUSTIFYING PROCEDURES
- to present the evidential, conceptual, methodological, criteriological and contextual considerations which one used in forming one’s interpretations, analyses, evaluation or inferences, so that one might accurately record, evaluate, describe or justify those processes to one’s self or to others, or so as to remedy perceived deficiencies in the general way one executes those processes
JUSTIFYING PROCEDURES
Example
to keep a log of the steps followed in working through a long or difficult problem or scientific procedure; to explain one’s choice of a particular statistical test for
purposes of data analysis; to state the standards one used in evaluating a piece of literature; to explain how one understands a key concept when conceptual clarity is crucial for further progress on a given problem; to show that the prerequisites for the use of a given technical methodology have been satisfied; to report the strategy used in attempting to make a decision in a reasonable way; to design a graphic display which represents the quantitative or spatial information used as evidence
PRESENTING ARGUMENTS:
- to give reasons for accepting some claim.
- to meet objections to the method, conceptualizations, evidence, criteria or contextual appropriateness of inferential, analytical or evaluative judgments.
For example: to write a paper in which one argues for a given position or policy; to anticipate and to respond to reasonable criticisms one might expect to be raised against one’s political views; to identify and express evidence and counter-evidence intended as a dialectical contribution to one’s own or another person’s thinking on a matter of deep personal concern
SELF-REGULATION
Self-consciously to monitor one’s cognitive activities, the elements used in those activities, and the results educed, particularly by applying skills in analysis and
evaluation to one’s own inferential judgments with a view toward questioning, confirming, validating, or correcting either one’s reasoning or one’s results
SELF-EXAMINATION
- to reflect on one’s own reasoning and verify both the results produced and the correct application and execution of the cognitive skills involved.
- to make an objective and thoughtful meta-cognitive self-assessment of one’s opinions and reasons for holding them.
- to judge the extent to which one’s thinking is influenced by deficiencies in one’s knowledge, or by stereotypes, prejudices, emotions or any other factors which constrain one’s objectivity or rationality.
- to reflect on one’s motivations, values, attitudes and interests with a view toward determining that one has endeavored to be unbiased, fair-minded, thorough, objective, respectful of the truth, reasonable, and rational in coming to one’s analyses, interpretations,
evaluations, inferences, or expressions
SELF-EXAMINATION
Example
To examine one’s views on a controversial issue with sensitivity to the possible influences of one’s personal bias or self-interest; to review one’s methodology or calculations with a view to detecting mistaken applications or inadvertent errors; to reread sources to assure that one has not overlooked important information; to identify and review the acceptability of the facts, opinions or assumptions one relied on in coming to a given point of view; to identify and review one’s reasons and reasoning processes in coming to a given conclusion
SELF-CORRECTION
- where self-examination reveals errors or deficiencies, to design reasonable procedures to remedy or correct, if possible, those mistakes and their causes.
SELF-CORRECTION
Example
Given a methodological mistake or factual deficiency in one’s work, to revise that work so as to correct the problem and then to determine if the revisions warrant changes in any position, findings, or opinions based thereon.
There is consensus that one might improve one’s own CT in several ways. The experts agree that one could critically examine and evaluate one’s own reasoning processes. One could learn how to think more objectively and logically.
One could expand one’s repertoire of those more specialized procedures and criteria used in different areas of human thought and inquiry. One could increase one’s base of information and life experience.
the experts find good critical thinking to include both a skill dimension and a dispositional dimension
The experts find CT to include cognitive skills in (1) interpretation, (2) analysis, (3) evaluation, (4) inference, (5) explanation and (6) self-regulation.
CONSENSUS STATEMENT REGARDING CRITICAL THINKING AND THE IDEAL CRITICAL THINKER
We understand critical thinking to be purposeful, self-regulatory judgment which results in interpretation, analysis, evaluation, and inference, as well as explanation of the evidential, conceptual, methodological, criteriological, or contextual considerations upon which that judgment is based. CT is essential as a tool of inquiry. As such, CT is a liberating force in education and a powerful resource in one’s personal and civic life.
CONSENSUS STATEMENT REGARDING CRITICAL THINKING AND THE IDEAL CRITICAL THINKER
While not synonymous with good thinking, CT is a
pervasive and self-rectifying human phenomenon. The ideal critical thinker is habitually inquisitive, well-informed, trustful of reason, open-minded, flexible, fairminded in evaluation, honest in facing personal biases, prudent in making judgments, willing to reconsider, clear about issues, orderly in complex matters, diligent in seeking relevant information, reasonable in the selection of criteria, focused in inquiry, and persistent in seeking results which are as precise as the subject and the circumstances of inquiry permit.
CONSENSUS STATEMENT REGARDING CRITICAL THINKING AND THE IDEAL CRITICAL THINKER
Thus, educating good critical thinkers means working toward this ideal. It combines developing CT skills with
nurturing those dispositions which consistently yield useful insights and which are the basis of a rational and democratic society.
