What is critically thinking?
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Executive summary
Critical thinking is an active, disciplined process of analyzing, evaluating, and applying information to guide belief and action, combining intellectual skills with metacognitive self-awareness and fair-mindedness [1][2]. Definitions vary across dictionaries, universities, and specialist organizations, but converge on questioning assumptions, weighing evidence, and arriving at reasoned judgments rather than reflexive opinions [3][4].
1. What critical thinking is, in plain terms
Critical thinking is the practice of deliberately examining ideas and evidence—breaking problems into parts, identifying assumptions, assessing reasoning and sources, and drawing justified conclusions—so thinking becomes a guided process toward better decisions rather than an automatic reaction [4][5][6].
2. The standard academic definition and its components
Leading academic formulations describe critical thinking as an “intellectually disciplined process” that conceptualizes, analyzes, synthesizes, and evaluates information gathered through observation, experience, reflection, or communication, using universal intellectual values like clarity, accuracy, and relevance to guide belief and action [1][5].
3. Skills, dispositions, and metacognition: the operational side
Critical thinking combines higher-order cognitive skills—analysis, inference, evaluation, problem recognition, and synthesis—with dispositions such as open-mindedness, inquisitiveness, and fair-mindedness, plus metacognitive habits of monitoring and correcting one’s own thinking [7][2][8].
4. What critical thinking is not, and common misunderstandings
It is not merely being negative, contrarian, or argumentative; nor does it automatically exclude creativity—many authorities argue critical thinking supports creative, “out-of-the-box” solutions by providing disciplined ways to test novel ideas [4][9]. Some critics caution that over-standardization can stifle imaginative problem-solving, a tension reflected in educational debates about how to teach these skills [10].
5. Practical aims and domains of application
In practice critical thinking is used across domains—from scientific reasoning and nursing decision-making to civic judgment and academic writing—where the goals include distinguishing facts from opinions, judging source credibility, considering alternative viewpoints, and anticipating implications and consequences before acting [11][6][5].
6. Competing framings, implicit agendas, and limits of the reporting
Sources emphasize slightly different aspects depending on mission: dictionaries stress concise process definitions [3][10], pedagogical organizations foreground teachable skills and dispositions [12][8], and professional fields highlight domain-specific application and assessment [11][7]; these emphases can reflect institutional agendas—public-facing glosses favor clarity, academic frameworks favor comprehensiveness, and vendors of pedagogy can oversell teachability. The reporting collated here covers definitional and pedagogical viewpoints well, but does not provide empirical consensus on how best to measure critical thinking gains in classrooms or whether current teaching methods reliably transfer to real-world decision-making; that limitation is acknowledged because the supplied sources do not settle those empirical questions [1][11].
7. A working, evidence-aligned takeaway
Thinking critically means intentionally taking charge of one’s reasoning by applying standards—clarity, accuracy, relevance, depth, breadth, fairness—while using skills of analysis and evaluation and the disposition to revise beliefs when warranted; it’s a cultivated habit, not an innate trait, which educational and professional frameworks treat as both teachable and improvable though debates about assessment and transfer persist [5][8][13].