We’re all critical thinkers in our everyday lives; anyone who has ever considered which mobile phone to buy has probably thought critically about the decision. But what does it mean to be critical in an academic sense? It’s too big a question to answer in brief, but we can think of some of the characteristics required to be critical:
The Study Skills team are happy to talk to you about what it means to think critically in an academic sense and to help you develop your critical writing. We also offer a workshop on the topic called Critical Thinking: Writing Critically. Tutors can invite us in to a module or course group to deliver this workshop, so if you feel this might be useful ask them to get in touch with us. You can also make an appointment to discuss your own approach to critical thinking and analysis or show us a piece of work and get some advice on whether you are meeting the requirements of critical analysis at whatever academic level you are studying.
Bloomsbury Skills for Study is a multi-media collection of self-paced, self-guided modules to help develop your academic study skills. Work through the Critical Thinking module if you need help in this area. The first time you log in, you will be asked to set up a personal account using your University of Gloucestershire email address.
We use the Model to Generate Critical Thinking to illustrate the elements of a critical thinking process and the kind of questions a critical thinker might apply to a problem or issue. The model shows that critical thinking (and therefore critical writing) needs to move from description, (where the thinker asks and answers contextual questions like who? where? when?) on to analysis, which considers why things happen or exist and how they work, to evaluation, the crucial part of critical thinking where comparisons are made, relevance is explained and the implications of the thinker’s understanding are considered.
As study skills advisors we often use this model to help students understand the critical thinking process and how it can lead to effective academic writing, and how useful it is as a research tool, to help you filter out the research you don’t need to read and focus on the material that will really contribute to your work.
View the Model to Generate Critical Thinking on the document below, it might help you start to thinking critically about your academic work.