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PROFESSIONAL REFERENCE FOR TEACHERS

Critical Thinking
Critical thinking skills are essential for making sense of large amounts of
information. Too often, science lessons leave students with a set of facts and
little ability to integrate those facts into a comprehensible whole. Requiring
students to think critically as they learn improves their comprehension and
increases their motivation.
Loosely defined, critical thinking is the ability to make sense of new information
based on a set of criteria. Critical thinking skills draw on higher-order thinking
processes, especially synthesis and evaluation skills. Critical thinking takes a
number of different forms, a few of which are described below.

Validating Facts
This type of critical thinking involves judging the validity of information
presented as fact. Too often, people will accept as valid almost any statement, no
matter how outrageous, as long as it comes from a supposedly authoritative
source. It is important for scientists to treat all untested data with suspicion, no
matter how reasonable it may seem. Students may validate facts in a number of
ways: by observing, by testing, or by rigorously examining the logic of the socalled fact.

Making Generalizations
A scientist must often be able to identify similarities among disparate events.
Generalizations are drawn based on a limited set of observations that can be
applied to an entire class of phenomena. For example, one does not have to test
every known substance to make the generalization that solid substances melt
when heated. Generalizations allow scientists to make predictions. Once the rule
is known, future outcomes can be forecast with a high degree of confidence.
It is important that students base their generalizations on an adequate amount of
information. A generalization that is formed too quickly may be wrong or
incomplete or may lead the student down a dead-end path.

Making Decisions
Many students would not regard science as a field requiring decision-making
skills. But in fact, scientists must make decisions routinely in the course of their
work. Any time a scientist works through a problem or develops a model, a
whole series of decisions must be made. A single faulty decision can throw the
entire process into disarray. Making informed decisions requires knowledge,
experience, and good judgment.

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PROFESSIONAL REFERENCE FOR TEACHERS

Critical Thinking continued

Interpreting Information
Having all the information in the world is useless unless one also has the tools
to interpret that information. Scientists must know how to separate the
meaningful information from the noise. Information can come in any form
detectable by the five senses. It is important that scientists and students alike
interpret information to determine its meaning, validity, and usefulness.

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