Improving critical thinking and critical writing through negotiation and reflection

Abstract

It is necessary for students to develop their critical thinking, and critical writing skills as these abilities help them to solve their real-world problems. But achieving the goal of developing such skills is very challenging. This paper deals with identifying the learning modes of the students that assist the students to discuss and also to develop their critical thinking and writing skills. The field of critical thinking and writing encloses information on literacy and management, skills to solve the problem, creativity skills, and sensitivity. So, the students should develop their critical thinking skills for their good learning outcomes (Page and Mukherjee 2014).

In-Brief:

• Critical thinking is an essential skill that students should possess in education.
• The main goal of the study is to improve the critical thinking skills of students in all disciplines. Developing critical thinking and writing skills of the students is considered as the basis for all educational activities.
• Critical thinking and writing skill are described as the potential of performing things creatively and innovatively by searching and collecting information from the data available on the internet.
• Critical thinking is considered as the main objective in many educational courses. Almost in all educational institutions, they encourage their students to develop their critical thinking skills.
• Critical thinking is not merely acquiring knowledge of the subject but to improve their analytical skills (Sharadgah 2014).

Critical Thinking

Critical thinking should be based on standards like accuracy, precision, clarity, relevance, logic, importance, and intensity. It also involves understanding the elements of thoughts that are hidden in all reasoning. Critical thinking involves thinking on all aspects of life such as moral, historical, scientific, economical, mathematical, and philosophical thinking. The most important qualities of critical thinking are objectivity and logically unassuming nature. These characters are important for students to develop their critical thinking skills. The critical writing ability improves the critical thinking and reasoning skills of the students. For creating valuable content, students must grasp and understand the concepts clearly.

Reflective writing is a method used in educational institutions that allow students to apply their thoughts and their experience with educational material to gain knowledge about the material., Reflective writing was a task that was assigned to the students based on their activities like classroom readings, or team works, and the writing highlights the experiences that students gain from the activity.

The Framework of Critical Thinking

There are three aspects of thinking in this model: essentials for good reasoning, academic standards used to test the quality of the thinking skills of the students, and qualities for the good thinker. The essential elements needed for reasoning are the reason for thinking, the question or an issue that is to be solved, details such as information and interpretation; implications, analysis, or solutions.

Problems faced by the students can be examined at any stage in this wheel. The reasoning is done to achieve some goal or accomplish some needs. The goal should be reasonable, and it should not disagree with other goals. Students must be able to find a solution to the problem or find an answer to the question. They must identify the information available to them that can be used for solving the problem. Students must interpret the available information to make the necessary conclusions.  They must be able to make reasoning in steps. If a student can make reasoning, they develop the skill of critical thinking. When students make assumptions, they should be able to use their assumptions constantly. Students should be able to explain and use their assumptions clearly and consistently.

The crucial thing needed in critical thinking skills is clarity. Students must be able to find answers that must be precise, understandable, accurate, and clear. They must be able to prove the truth of the statements and should not fail in proving the statement. Additionally, the statements should be accurate with enough details to understand.

The answers found by the students must be relevant to their questions. Additionally, the answers should be depth in explanation, explaining all issues related to the question. Moreover, the answers must be explained from all points of view, and it should be complete. The answers must be reliable, reasonable, and make sense.

The essentials of thinking facilitate students to analyze their thinking skills. The intellectual traits are used to examine and evaluate the creative thinking skills. These traits represent the nature of a critical thinker. For a student to develop critical thinking skills, they must follow and control these traits. The critical thinker has the ability to apply these traits in their real-life problems.

The intellectual standards must be followed by students to develop their reflective thinking. For example, in order to have a clear question and to get the purpose of the question, a student must apply intellectual standards to the statements to get accurate, clear, and precise results. Thus, the intellectual qualities can be developed, if they apply these elements (Naber 2011).

Implementation

1. Executing the reflective thinking and encouraging for reflection improves creative thinking and critical writing skills of the students. The load of the course contents should be reduced and innovative way of teaching should be implemented to increase the reflective thinking. Theoretical information based on developing reflective thinking should be taught to students.
2. Exploring activities based on reflective thinking. Students should be motivated to get involved in more discussions about the subject, so they get to know more information and that could stimulate their reflective thinking skills (Unver and Yurdakul 2020).

Conclusion

Creative thinking is a primary entity in the process of research and innovation. Students are motivated to create new questions based on their field, improve their reasoning skills and gathering data that are unrelated. These activities improve the reflective thinking power of the students. When students are allowed to reproduce on their learning method, they tend to improve their learning ability.

Future Work

 In future research, the different methods of reflective thinking and the effects of these methods are studied in a mutual learning environment, and the advantages and disadvantages of these methods can be discussed. The creative thinking skills of the students can be reviewed by qualitative methods. ⁵ Further, it would be useful to involve more students to assist in getting an exact, consistent and more generalized result. These results can be achieved through the use of Internet-based programs which help in improving the critical thinking skills of the students. Additionally, it is also necessary to study many useful internet applications like Facebook, Wikipedia, blogs, and Twitter that help in improving the reflective thinking skills of the students. More research is needed as this field is new (Erdogan 2019).

References

1. Erdogan, Fatma. 2019. “Effect of Cooperative Learning Supported by Reflective Thinking Activities on Students Critical Thinking Skills.” Eurasian journal of educational research 19(80): 89–112. https://dergipark.org.tr/en/pub/ejer/issue/43338/548907.
2. Naber, Jessica L. 2011. The Effect of Reflective Writing Interventions on Critical Thinking Skills. . JOUR. https://trace.tennessee.edu/utk_graddiss/1104/.
3. Page, Diana, and Arup Mukherjee. 2014. “Using Negotiation Exercises to Promote Critical Thinking Skills.” In Developments in Business Simulation and Experiential Learning: Proceedings of the Annual ABSEL Conference, . CONF. https://absel-ojs-ttu.tdl.org/absel/index.php/absel/article/view/500.
4. Sharadgah, Talha. 2014. “Developing Critical Thinking Skills through Writing in an Internet-Based Environment.” In Society for Information Technology & Teacher Education International Conference, Association for the Advancement of Computing in Education (AACE). CONF, 2178–85. https://www.learntechlib.org/p/131110/.
5. Unver, Gulsen, and Bunyamin Yurdakul. 2020. “Developing Reflective Thinking through Theory-Practice Connection.” Pegem E itim Ve Og retim Dergisiretim Dergisi 10(1): 77–102. http://www.pegegog.net/index.php/pegegog/article/view/pegegog.2020.004.