The Process of Thinking Critically

  The Process of Thinking Critically

1. suggestions, in which the mind leaps forward to a possible solution;
2. an intellectualization of the difficulty or perplexity into a problem to be solved, a question for which the answer must be sought;
3. 
   
4. the use of one suggestion after another as a leading idea, or hypothesis, to initiate and guide observation and other operations in collection of factual material;
5. the mental elaboration of the idea or supposition as an idea or supposition (reasoning, in the sense on which reasoning is a part, not the whole, of inference); and
6. testing the hypothesis by overt or imaginative action. (Dewey 1933: 106–107; italics in original)
7. Checklist conceptions of the process of critical thinking are open to the objection that they are too mechanical and procedural to fit the multi-dimensional and emotionally charged issues for which critical thinking is urgently needed (Paul 1984). For such issues, a more dialectical process is advocated, in which competing relevant world views are identified, their implications explored, and some sort of creative synthesis attempted