Approaches to Critical Thinking

Question: Describe critical thinking as the mental processes of discernment, analysis, and evaluation applied to information in order to achieve a logical final understanding and/or judgment? Answer: Approaches to critical thinking: Mulnix, (2012) opined that critical thinking is a combination of some inter-related tasks- knowing a concept, understanding it, applying the knowledge, analyzing ,synthesizing and evaluating it. To analyse any statement at first I try to identify the key idea behind a concept.eed to identify whether the concept is supported by any practical evidence or not. Padget, (2012) stated that purpose of a statement influences its nature. However, I always try to understand the reason behind a statement. Next phase of my critical thinking is relating different parts of a concept. It helps me to identify the actual scenario. I always try to compare among different things to understand them properly. Outlining thoughts to develop understanding: Synthesizing a thought requires to two acquire information from two or more sources and thus the process becomes more effective. Outlining thoughts helps us to combine different parts of any concept and it also helps to relate it with real world (Padget, 2012). Gaining knowledge from one or more sources leads to better understanding of relationships among different parts of a concept. It is not only effective to understand deeply any concept, but it is also important for modifying it. Outlining of a concept often leads to comparing it in different real-life scenarios. Thinking beyond past experiences: Relating a newly learnt thing with past experiences is important to understand a new concept (Lup.lub.lu.se, 2015). But it may happen that a new concept is being learned and I fail to relate it with previous experiences. In such cases, I realize the need of getting information from other sources. References Lup.lub.lu.se,. (2015) Retrieved 24 February 2015, from https://lup.lub.lu.se/luur/download?func=downloadFilerecordOId=27011fileOId=27012 Mulnix, J. (2012). Thinking Critically about Critical Thinking. Educational Philosophy And Theory, 44(5), 464-479. Padget, S. (2012). Creativity and Critical Thinking. Hoboken: Taylor and Francis.