EPALE - Electronic Platform for Adult Learning in Europe

What is a critical thinking? 

Many people think that critical thinking is related to criticizing. In a sense of the word to express disapproval of someone or something but it’s rather something else. Word ‘critical’ is related to a greek word κριτικός ‎(kritikós, “of or for judging, able to discern”). Critical thinking is a skill of thinking and reasoning in which thoughts are assessed for its clarity, accuracy, relevance and logicalness. It doesn’t include accepting all arguments and conclusions which may occur. During this process is important to ask for more informations, to question the source and one’s own beliefs and be open to alternative possibilities and evidence that doesn’t support preferred opinions.

Although collocation ‘critical thinking’ has its roots in the mid-late 20th century, the concept and its idea can be traced to Ancient Greece about 2,500 years ago. Big personality for critical thinking is Socrates. Many know his method of questioning sometimes called as “Socratic Questioning” and is still valued as a one of the best critical thinking teaching strategy. Also he promoted the importance of seeking evidence, examining reasoning and assumptions. Analyzing not just what is said but also who said it and how it correspond with reality. 

So briefly critical thinking is self-guided rational thinking trying to reason at the highest level of quality. It involves checking one’s own thought and purificate it from egocentric tendencies. It is important try to avoid mistakes in reasoning, prejudices, biases, distortions and other fallacies caused by human irrationality. 

And what are the known fallacies? There is plenty of it and they are called as cognitive bias. Some are wide as confirmation bias what is a tendency to process and prefer informations consistent with one’s existing beliefs. Others are specific for instance forer effect that means accepting vague and very broad description of personality as unique and perfectly fitting. Also it is good to remember that exists argumentation fallacies which might seem logical, but they are not. 

Our Erasmus+ project CriThink 

In November in Portugal we had first meeting on our international Erasmus+ project CriThink (www.crithing.eu) where we will share our best practice and discuss other ways for teaching critical thinking to adult learners.This project attend people from five different countries all around Europe for two years. Education experts from countries in Czech Republic, Poland, Austria, Slovenia and Portugal will collaborate in investigating a new perspective on critical thinking.

We are looking forward to discuss and share our understanding of a critical thinking in our countries and the role of history, society etc. in forming this point of view. We will immerse in this topic to find new interesting informations and share our gained knowledge on our site crithink.eu so we invite you all to read the best we have found. 

The primary target group of the project are seniors 55+ , who are unable to adequately process large amounts of information comes from the Internet . The secondary target group are the families of seniors, especially grandchildren (young children), who are also a very vulnerable group due to the instant perception of the world.

And why is important to train critical thinking for adult learners?

Some people are already convicted they already know how to ‘think critically’ because they have common sense.  It could be said that common sense is a first step on imaginary staircase and it is important to be in touch with reality and continue further to develop critical thinking. We think that it is really important nowadays because we have access to an enormous amount of informations and we have to choose good sources.  

Author: Denisa Zábránská, Právě teď! o.p.s.