Reference no: EM133740181

Question: Critical Thinking, Bias, & Biblical Integration Assignment Instructions

Overview

You will explore the art of critical thinking. According to Paul and Elder (2001) "Critical thinking is the mode of thinking - about any subject, content, or problem - in which the thinker improves the quality of their thinking by skillfully taking charge of the structures inherent in thinking and imposing intellectual standards upon them."

Critical thinking is:

Domain-general thinking,

Enhances language and presentation skills,

Promotes creativity, and

Fundamental to self-reflection.

Critical thinking is not:

Based on feelings or intuition,

Personal unsupported opinion or judgment,

or Opinions derived from what others say or have said.

Elder and Paul (2004), "Good thinkers routinely ask questions in order to understand and effectively deal with the world around them. They question the status quo. They know that things are often different from the way they are presented. Their questions penetrate images, masks, fronts, and propaganda."

Critical thinking is impeded by our biases, perceptions, and the patterns we impose to life and our environment to reduce ambiguity. Bias takes many forms in research and may cause error in research design elements including methodology, measures of observations, data collection, and interpretation of findings. Bias is a mental inclination to see things our way or the way we want to see them. Similarly, since our perceptions shape the way we see the world, they shape our reality as we experience it. Hence, they can mask the reality that exists beyond our perceptions.

The need to reduce the discomfort we experience in ambiguous situations, whether in relationships or completing a work task, means we tend to impose our own meaning and understanding of events based on past experience and heuristics (rules of thumb).

The scholar and critical thinker will recognize how their bias, perceptions and need to reduce ambiguity threaten open-minded fair thinking. It takes practice and academic discipline to develop new behaviors and attitudes that will consider with equal weight alternative perspectives to our own. This is fundamental to presenting a balanced doctoral level approach in producing a critical analysis of the existing literature on your topic of inquiry with minimal bias and error.