A500.5.1.RB_VoreDan

Critical Thinking – How Am I Doing?

The questions posed were as follows: Take some time to reflect on the current state of your critical thinking competencies. Consider your thinking processes when you started the course. Have they changed at all? Have you been able to internalize any of the techniques and concepts you have learned? What will it take to make lasting, positive changes in the way you think?

My answers follow: When Critical Thinking was introduced through the reading of Learning to Think Things Through, by Gerald Nosich (Pearson, 4^th edition, 2012), it became almost immediately obvious that the ideas and methods presented constituted necessary practice on the part of any aspiring or actual leader.  We also reflected on the notion of Intellectual Perseverance early on in this course and so learned that this quality is an “intellectual virtue”.  By extension, I would say that Critical Thinking ranks among Leadership Virtues.

What I discovered as I began reading Nosich was new territory for me intellectually.  I had always fancied myself as a competent, logical thinker and problem solver, but I had never received training in critical thinking nor had I been introduced to it as a discipline in and of itself.  As a scientist and engineer by training, I had learned the scientific method, to question assumptions, experimental or actual conditions that might affect outcome, to avoid overgeneralization, etc.  In my first MS degree program, I had learned about research questions, methods, data gathering, statistical analysis, and the like.  But I had never before read an explicit treatment of critical thinking, so if anyone had asked me what critical thinking was, I would have been hard pressed to say anything with much validity.

After reading Nosich, my awareness has certainly shifted and I now recognize the criticality of this Leadership Virtue.  I also at least now have a good source to consult regarding the finer points of the practice and the techniques employed.  What I lack is enough familiarity and practice to have the elements and the standards (for example) ingrained in both memory and practice.  What I do know is that I now at least slow down and recognize the need to apply critical thinking to both the continued assignments of this course and also to challenges encountered at work.

I am working on internalizing the concepts of critical thinking; but I still must consult Nosich on a regular basis to properly conduct the complete analysis of my thinking that is required to qualify as critical thinking.  I firmly believe that the knowledge of the requirement for critical thinking is ingrained in my mind.  I also have a good, and growing, general sense of the elements.  And I have internalized the concept of point of view, context, and alternatives.  But, further practice of the application of the techniques described by Nosich is yet required to make the complete practice “second nature” as it were.