Critical Thinking and Ethics

Critical Thinking and Ethics

Critical Thinking is a learned skill that gives your ability to open your mind to many different viewpoints, and it also helps us to become better decision makers. Critical thinking gives us the capacity to question everything we learn, read or hear. When you learn to think critically it can help you become a better student, helps you to solve complex problems, and allows you make better decisions in the future.

There are six levels of critical thinking as described by Benjamin Bloom. Level 1 is Remember – Can I recall the key terms, facts or events? Level 2 is Understanding – Can I explain this idea in my own words? Level 3 Applying – Can I use this idea to produce the desired result? Level 4 Analyzing – Can I divide this idea into parts or steps? Level 5 Evaluating – Can I rate the truth, usefulness or quality of this idea? Level 6 Creating – Can I invent something new based on this idea?

You can use critical thinking in all forms of your life. One way is in the workplace. When you start a new job, you begin to learn and understand all the tasks that need to be done, meaning reports and certain ways of doing things. Once you have learned how to complete the assigned tasks that you need to do using the last three levels of thinking you can come up with a more efficient way of doing these reports and in turn making the job a lot easier.

When it comes to critical thinking ethics or core values will come into play when making decisions. Our personal ethics are based on what we learned when we grew up in our communities and from our family. Having critical thinking skills allows us to be open minded as adults when faced with viewpoints of different ethics or ideas of what others believe to be ethical. We know more about our ethics we can use critical thinking skills to better improve ourselves in the areas that are needed. I took the Ethical Lens