Critical Thinking And Application In Management: A reflective journal.

At first I thought today's class would be more about getting to know the lecturer and the subject. The usual stuffs like course profile and the lecturer consultation hour. Since we have some time left the lecturer filled us in with chapter one. I’m actually a bit relieved because this means we don't waste time and there will be no hassle or trouble of replacement classes trying to catch up what we should have learnt the week before all the while cramping it with the things that we have learned during that week.


But I digress, so chapter one was mostly about the basics of critical thinking. Necessity stuff like what is actually critical thinking and all the way to how to know whether we have the qualities of a critical thinker. When we were asked about what we know about thinking, our mind will straight thought about opinions or something that have to do with our brain. It is somehow true but not quite right. According to the lecturer, thinking can be defined as a purposeful organize cognitive process and this is what makes us different than animals .It is the organized feature that disparate us from animals, the complexity level of thinking.


There are actually two types of thinking, critical and creative. Both help us in problem solving and decision making and both have works in their own ways. Critical thinking mainly covered by the left side of our brain which helps us to think by incorporating these three processes: analyzing, evaluate and reasoning. Creative thinking on the other hand is handled by the right side of our brain that generates new ideas by thinking outside the box or by giving us a new perspective.


By trying to include critical thinking in our daily problem solving and decision making, we train our brain to avoid flawed reasoning and not to mention cultivating our brain into doing cognitive activity, which is learning to think critically by using mental processes such as attention, categorization, selection, and judgement. "Practice makes perfect" and the same goes to this situation, by associating critical thinking in our daily lives not only do we strengthening our mind power and brain, we also are opening new doors of possibility when faced with challenges.


Like every other thing in our life critical thinking has standards too. Standards that will help us convey and interpret information effectively. There are total of eight standards in critical thinking and each of them helps us think better. All of these standards complement each other and together they will make a good critical thinker. Below are the list of the standards and why they are the most significant intellectual thinking standards.

1. Clarity (the gateway standard, with clarity we can avoid getting vague facts or giving obscure ideas.)
2. Accuracy (a statement can be clear but not accurate)
3. Precision (a statement can be clear and accurate but not precise)
4. Relevance (a statement can be clear, accurate and precise but not relevant to the question at issue)
5. Depth (a statement can be clear, accurate, precise, and relevant but superficial)
6. Breadth ( a statement can be clear, accurate, precise, relevant and deep but lack breadth)
7. Logic (when the combination of thoughts are mutually supporting and make sense in combination, the thinking is "logical")
8. Fair ( a very essential attribute of critical thinker without it, we are easily snared to be bias)

Most of people tend to have problems when asked to think critically due to the barriers to critical thinking. We need to overcome these barriers and be aware of it. Barriers like misunderstanding, overestimating, lack of methods, reluctance, affective reason, insufficient focus and mistaking information for understanding are the main obstacle that prevents us from critical thinking.


By overcoming this hurdles and having a good grasp of the in critical thinking, one may reap a lot of benefit. Advantages like improved attention and observation skills, more focused reading, having a good knowledge in how to convey your idea easily, better identification in finding key notes in a message, and last but not least augmenting your ability in responding to the appropriate points in a message.


In a nutshell, today classes give me an insight of critical thinking. I've learned that critical thinking is not only applicable in management but in everyday life problem solving and decision making. I've understood what critical thinking do as a process and what are the standards in critical thinking that help me become a good thinker. Last but not least I've detected the main problem that confines me from being a good critical thinker and how to overcome it. Also, I've also known the perks of being a critical thinker and how to sharpen the skills of critical thinking. Over all the class today opened up my mind and make me change my perspective of my normal way of thinking.