Critical Thinking

What: you must first understand what the main point of the piece of information that you are evaluating is. Once you have understood what the purpose of the work is—or its argument—you will be in a better position to, for example, agree or disagree with the work. You can also extend the question slightly and ask so what does this mean for me and for my research, essay, or beliefs? In other words, you are asking yourself what benefit the information source under investigation can bring to your work. 

Example: Let’s imagine that you are writing about tourism in Scotland and its impact upon local communities. You have found several journal articles that appear to be what you want, but you are struggling to process the information. Reading the abstract, introduction, and conclusion of journal articles can be an extremely effective way of understanding what the purpose of the source is (Subramanyam, 2013). White et al. (2024), for example, have recently written about a new coastal driving route in Scotland. Their abstract reveals their argument to be about how tourism shapes the nature of communities in terms of the environment and housing and how long-term tourism policies must engage with the views of local communities. So, what does this mean for you? Well, if you are writing about the impact of tourism on communities, then you may decide to use this paper to back up your own ideas. You may even decide to concede to some of White et al.’s (2024) findings but provide evidence from your own data to propose a new idea or a new interpretation of their work. 

Watch out for bias: when summarising the work of another, it is important not to employ the confirmation bias. This is when we actively look for opinions that agree with our own viewpoints. To demonstrate critical thinking, you must explore alternative viewpoints that seek to explain the same topic that you are currently exploring and for which you may already hold strong opinions (Hanscomb, 2023, p. 31).  

Where: the place where information you want to use appears is of great importance. Often your academics will request that you draw from specific types of publications, for example, journal articles or academic texts. These will appear on publishers’ websites and, as we have already seen, will be available from resources like Library Search and Google Scholar. Depending on the context and type of research you undertake, though, you may sometimes want to include information from other sources: for example, websites, blog posts, online archives, or video archives. Much of this information will be available on the internet, and you must always question the source of that information (Grix and Watkins, 2010, p. 53). Domain names like .ac.uk and .edu are generally well regarded as these denote educational institutions. Domains like .gov and .org.uk also indicate that you are looking at a government website or a non-profit organization like a Royal College. But where you look will often come down to your information needs. 

Example: Where information appears will often mean different things for different students. Let’s use the example of a political speech by Keir Starmer. If I were a politics student, I might use the official record of parliamentary debates called Hansard as a reference. I would be ill advised to reference Starmer’s speech that is included in the Instagram feed of a celebrity influencer. However, if I were a student interested in the transmission of Starmer’s speech into popular culture, then the Instagram feed would interest me. 

Watch out for bias: be careful not to rule out academic sources just because they are not from ‘top’ institutions or journals with the highest impact. Research cannot be categorised like this for many different reasons, and organisations like DORA have responded to this type of thinking. 

When: the publication date of a piece of information may matter to different students for different reasons. Your assignment briefs may even specify that your assessors want you to use research that is no more than, for example, five years old. A strict date condition like this is common for healthcare students because they most likely want the latest medical evidence for patient care. Students of the Arts and Humanities, though, may well seek out historical information to inform their own historical studies. Remember that these students may still want to use the latest research to reflect the current state of thinking about a topic and its critical approaches. Critical thinking requires you to make these kinds of decisions for yourself in the work you do. There is no absolute method; it is all about the context of your need (McMillan and Weyers, 2013, p. 127). 

Example: Let’s take a book about the planet Mars that was published in 1920. A student who is interested in an up-to-date account of the Martian atmosphere should not use this book because the scientific knowledge it contains will no longer be accurate. But a student who is interested in the history of scientific knowledge about Mars will most likely want to read this book.  

Who: knowing who the creator/researcher of the content you are working with can matter a great deal. It is crucial that you use credible academic sources in your work. These sources will often be the works of scholars and professionals in a particular field. However, just because an author of, for example, a journal article is an academic or scholar does not mean that you must take at face value everything they write: you do have the right to think critically about everyone’s work and to reach your own conclusions (McMillan and Weyers, 2013, p. 124). The peer-review process does a good job in maintaining high academic standards, but the research and publication process can be messy. It is still possible for factual inaccuracies, flawed methodologies, or misinterpreted sources to appear in published works (Bartley and Liesegang, 2015). The nature of digital information, too, means that you will come across information sources whose authors’ credentials are less easy to identify.  

Example: Let’s use an extreme example to make a point. You find a journal article that provides evidence for the effectiveness of a particular type of solar panel. The paper reaches sound scientific conclusions, but you realise that the author also owns part of the company that they are discussing. Does this change the scientific content? Probably not, but it does invite you to ask questions about potential biases of the author and of the overall intention of the research article. Here is another example, you read a newspaper article in which the author Dr. Richard Kant explains that eating garlic is an excellent treatment for the common cold. Upon investigation, you discover that Dr. Richard Kant got his PhD in English Literature. Now, garlic may well be useful for the common cold, but knowing that Richard Kant is not a medical doctor should raise questions. 

Watch out for bias: be careful not to fall into the trap of discounting someone else’s work because of internalised bias about the professional or academic status of another. Always try to assess the argument and not the person presenting the argument (Hanscomb, 2023, p. 43). 

Why: is a question that you might want to ask when thinking critically about the work of another. Why requires you to think about the existence and purpose of information sources and why the author may have created them—the author’s motivations and aims. True, it is impossible to get inside someone’s head to understand their thought processes, but you can at least look for clues in the work that they have produced (Price, 2023, p. 34). For example, is the author trying to sell you something or persuade you to adopt their viewpoint or a particular way of looking at a problem, a situation, or a theory; is the language formal or informal: does the ‘tone’ of the resource provide a clue? 

Example: Cartoonists have long used their artwork to comment upon the political realities of their generations; in recent memory Boris Johnson has proven particularly fruitful for them (Hendin, 2022).1 It is perhaps easy to see why visual artists like cartoonist create the works they do, but it is less easy when thinking critically about resources like journal articles and newspaper stories. A useful way to try to understand the purpose of a resource is to ask each of the questions about which you have just learned: what is the work about, where was it written, when was it written, and who wrote it.        

Watch out for bias: The first thing to watch out for is the author’s biases. A cartoonist of a particular political viewpoint will likely reflect that in their art, and the same is true of research. In this context, bias is not a bad thing: it is a natural reflection of how someone feels about something. However, if the creator of the content’s purpose was to argue for a particular viewpoint or present one side of the argument, then does the content—no matter how accomplished—reflect the entire research context? When thinking critically, you must be aware of biases when considering the purpose of a resource. You must also be conscious of your own bias in your own interpretative processes that may prevent you from thinking critically about ‘the why’ of a resource’s existence (see the next section Logical Reasoning).