In the beginning, the focus of critical thinking skills is to determining that arguments should have true premises and logical strength. However, according to Hughes and Lavery (2004) depending on this theory is not a simple case. Thus, the critical thinking skills can be effectively used after undergoing through three types of skills.
Firstly, interpretive skills are skills that needed to assess an argument in order to make it logical as possible. Hence, there is importance of understanding and interpreting the statement before using the verification skills.
The second skills which are used to determine the truth and falsity of the statement are verification skills. Since, the interpretive skills only assist to understand the statement but there is a need of knowing if the statement is a genuine or false one. This is where verification skills use the method determining the status of the statement.
The final complex part is reasoning skills, whereby they involve individual personal beliefs. The recent research done by Russell and Brockman (2009), "Reasoning skills are utilized in the decision-making process and refer to specific cognitive abilities, some of which include assessing probability and thinking systematically or abstractly". Hence, the reasoning skills can be effective when evaluating ones' own belief and others then constructing a better conclusion through various evaluated evidence.
Developing critical thinking skills
Since critical thinking skills need to be effectively and efficiently utilised in daily basis such as involving in reasoning, decision making and problem solving. For that reason, the need to develop and master the skills effectively is very crucial. According to Cottrell (2005), there are various steps need to capture whilst developing critical thinking skills such as finding and evaluating the strength of the evidence along with the supporting materials, drawing a conclusion and providing the best examples which are relating to that particular argument.
However, there are quite a number of factors that hinder developing or using critical thinking skills effectively. Many people believe being critical with other people's work or argument is being obnoxious and negative towards their colleagues or opponents. For instance, students expected to develop the ability to critically analyse and evaluate the work of other students but mostly fail to do so because of the misinterpretation of the task.
The other reason is self esteem. Lacking of self esteem can also hinder the ability to develop critical thinking skills. For instance, an employee can feel intimidated to use his own critical thinking capacity to resolve a problem at his work place. The problem can be either from his work place where employees do not feel their opinions are valued or lack of confidence.
The other potential reason which could affect critical thinking skills is "students' natural resistance to learning to think critically" Keeley, Shemberg, Cowell and Zinnbauer (1995). The researchers attempt to implement students to improve their critical thinking skills in order to develop students' mental muscles. According to Edwards and Smith "The perception of a problem of literacy might be resulting in producing a Problem of literacy". Since students who were swamped with reading materials and spoon fed with answers in order to pass their exams, this might diminish the ability to think critically with what they have learnt.
Conclusion
According to various researches, there are different methods of implementing and improving people's critical thinking skills. People can benefit when mastering these skills as they can change other people's way of thinking. However, there is no control or restriction of how you use these powerful skills. Each person has a different intellectual capacity and morals. For that reason these skills can be used to benefit people from resolving problem or manipulate the weak ones. In this particular example, there are several occurrences such as extremist religious group uses their skills effectively to indoctrinate their followers to pursue something maybe harmful for society. These followers act upon their leaders' request without reasoning their intellectual instincts or their moral values. Generally, people are yearning to master the critical thinking skills for different reasons and since, there is no control of how to implement these skills then the weaker ones can be easy target as they are more vulnerable and at risk to be manipulated and betrayed.
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