Developing Critical Thinking Through Web Research Skills

Traditionally, critical thinking has been variously defined as follows: Contemporary critical thinking scholars have expanded these traditional definitions to include qualities, concepts, and processes such as creativity, imagination, discovery, reflection, empathy, connecting knowing, feminist theory, subjectivity, ambiguity, and inconclusiveness.Some definitions of critical thinking exclude these subjective practices.

This model of thinking has become so entrenched in conventional academic wisdom that many educators accept it as canon".

The adoption of these principals parallels themselves with the increasing reliance on a quantitative understanding of the world.

rationality, rational thinking, reasoning, knowledge, intelligence and also a moral component such as reflective thinking.

Critical thinkers therefore need to have reached a level of maturity in their development, possess a certain attitude as well as a set of taught skills. Glaser proposed that the ability to think critically involves three elements: Educational programs aimed at developing critical thinking in children and adult learners, individually or in group problem solving and decision making contexts, continue to address these same three central elements.

He established the importance of asking deep questions that probe profoundly into thinking before we accept ideas as worthy of belief.

He established the importance of seeking evidence, closely examining reasoning and assumptions, analyzing basic concepts, and tracing out implications not only of what is said but of what is done as well.Critical thinking employs not only logic but broad intellectual criteria such as clarity, credibility, accuracy, precision, relevance, depth, breadth, significance, and fairness.The habits of mind that characterize a person strongly disposed toward critical thinking include a desire to follow reason and evidence wherever they may lead, a systematic approach to problem solving, inquisitiveness, even-handedness, and confidence in reasoning.Socrates established the fact that one cannot depend upon those in "authority" to have sound knowledge and insight.He demonstrated that persons may have power and high position and yet be deeply confused and irrational.It followed a philosophy where the thinker was removed from the train of thought and the connections and the analysis of the connect was devoid of any bias of the thinker.Kerry Walters describes this ideology in his essay Beyond Logicism in Critical Thinking, "A logistic approach to critical thinking conveys the message to students that thinking is legitimate only when it conforms to the procedures of informal (and, to a lesser extent, formal) logic and that the good thinker necessarily aims for styles of examination and appraisal that are analytical, abstract, universal, and objective.κριτικός = kritikos = "critic") derives from the word critic and implies a critique; it identifies the intellectual capacity and the means "of judging", "of judgement", "for judging", and of being "able to discern".2,500 years ago who discovered by a method of probing questioning that people could not rationally justify their confident claims to knowledge.The subject is complex, and several different definitions exist, which generally include the rational, skeptical, unbiased analysis, or evaluation of factual evidence.Critical thinking is self-directed, self-disciplined, self-monitored, and self-corrective thinking.