Critical Reading and Critical Thinking - Essay Example

Reflective Essay In academics, the value of critical reading and critical thinking is impossible to undermine. Critical reading implies a careful and analytical approach, with attention to minute details lest anything be overlooked. In order to establish an epistemic proportion about one’s own manner of rationalization at the time of reading, it is imperative that one should be able to clearly analyze what is written. It is the mind that makes and at the same time, it is only human to make errors. The apparent contradiction of this statement calls for special attention while reading. Ideally, it is to be done in full consciousness to avert the possibility of inadvertent omissions or misinterpretations. Similarly, critical thinking involves the technique by which we assess information available to us. The very system of human belief and judgment is grounded on our ability to observe and evaluate what we see around us everyday, and to deduct from thereon. However, for most students it is quite an ominous task to think analytically. The academic initiatives undertaken by Mike Wallace and Alison Wray have gone a long way in expanding the scope of further researches on the cognitive processes of critical reading and thinking. Likewise, Stella Cottrell has ventured beyond the pragmatics of thinking theories to present her unique viewpoints on aspects such as lateral thinking, reflection, logical reasoning and so on. Their works have long-term implications in sectors that involve not just formal education, but also resource planning and allocation. Academic contexts in particular have been extrapolated far too often for the liking of the academicians who want specialization of norms and practices for the study of cognition and reasoning. This essay is going to deal with an academic experience of mine at the renowned Cardiff Business School where I pursued a 3-year degree program. As a matter of fact, I was having difficulties with thinking and reading aptitudes. Eventually I was able to train myself with a lot more assured and confident approach to my field of work. For making the necessary adjustments, I had to consult three books: Critical Thinking Skills: Developing Effective Analysis and Argument and The Study Skills Handbook by Stella Cottrell, and Critical Reading and Writing for Postgraduates by Mike Wallace and Alison Wray. First of all, let me introduce the nature of my field of work so that it becomes easier to identify the components that are integral to the study skill subjects. My area of expertise was Human Resource Management. Since this discipline is a direct offshoot of management studies, it was important for me to take notes and follow classroom lectures with rapt attention, for I never studied management as a special paper prior to that. As argued by Cottrell (2005), many students even at higher academic levels lack the critical skill of comprehension and assimilation. The lack of reasoning and sieving skills are generally reflected at the time of taking down running notes in the classroom. Most students falter to incorporate clarity of language with valid illustrations which they themselves are supposed to make out while reading the notes later on. The academic activities related to Human Resource Management focus so rigorously on how the content is presented that students tend to lose sight of the logical relevance of what is presented (Cox 2009: 197). In other words, it is the absence of critical thinking on students’ part that time and again impedes the progress of study. This critical thinking phenomenon has made its way into the jargon of management studies in several forms, and is widely regarded to be a prescriptive way of appending qualitative values to the core of managerial education (Fournier and Grey 2000). However, one of the commonest instances involving the lack of evaluative thinking is the misuse of words or phrases. Words matter in all walks of life, but they matter even more in critical thinking. Since words are the only means to establish a clear argumentative ground from which further lines of reasoning can be drawn on, using them loosely may weaken the base of the argument per se (You Can Never Tell n. d.). Gaining a command over critical thinking skills is just as important as developing a noetic consciousness about one’s own abilities. Once an individual develops such awareness, it becomes easier for him/her to differentiate between logically sound arguments and meaningless verbose (Hughes and Lavery 2004: 25). What I initially encountered at the Cardiff Business School was similar to the aforementioned issues. Even though I was following my instructors and taking regular notes, there was something deficient in the final papers. But before I strive to discuss the missing ingredients, let me highlight the fact that the literature on management education has typically been associated with a few key formulations such as review of study materials or learning modules, inclusion of well-written abstracts to provide a panoptic view of the entire material, and the ability to make the required shift from just a very good writer to a professionally responsible academic writer. All these constructs are embedded in our proposed area of study skills and exemplified thoroughly (Barnes & Noble 2009). As I was enrolled in a group of aspiring HRD professionals, it was essential for me to regard my role as a learner within an imaginary corporate framework where my individual skills and potentials were supposed to contribute to the collective benefit of the organization. To put it differently, I needed to envision my functionality in the same way as a group of critical practitioners would do to propel the culture of critical and strategic learning (Watson 2001 cited in Elliott and Turnbull 2005: 26). The teamwork ethics of management, especially in corporate setups, hold true for academia as well, where the person who oversees organization affairs must be ready to actively listen to his/her subordinates and make them feel important contributors to the overall organizational operations (Bender 1994: 22). So it was expected of me to learn critically and learn fast. Then after I read Wallace and Wray, I could sense that the notes I was taking down in the class and also the scholarly references I was consulting in the libraries had some ‘hidden layers’ (Wallace and Wray 2006: 4) of meaning which I needed to understand in order to successfully prepare the final papers. Academic assignments and papers sound erudite and convincing because they contain not just theoretical conjectures, buts also ample demonstrations to turn those conjectures into credible and verifiable assertions. In the beginning of my session at the Cardiff Business School, I was merely writing down points in a disjointed manner, which seemed more like an incoherent narrative than a well-knit management paper. Apart from the paucity of empirical evidences, my papers also lacked in argumentative calibers in that they did not always collate different sources which were being referred to. Moreover, the three inviolable parameters of critical thinking, e. g., reason, persuasion and inference were either totally missing or poorly interlinked with each other. Now in management studies, defective thinking amounts to irrational or faulty reasoning which, in turn, leads to catastrophic results for the organization. (You Can Never Tell n. d.). More than the righteousness, it is the firmness of one’s judgment and decision that ultimately saves a tough day at the office for many management professionals and with an inherently limited vision of thought, it is nearly impossible to look into the pitfalls of an otherwise favorable scenario. The thesis question involving study skills is also relevant to the previously mentioned premise, as Cottrell addresses numerous pertinent points on garnering leadership qualities and building core skills as part of a comprehensive development methodology that would foster an analytical approach to academics. It might be noted in the context of student study skills that these skills come to the fore when a student goes a step higher up the ladder by venturing into the internationally competitive world of management practices. Hence the cornerstones of decisive reasoning and analysis, however hefty they may sound, are rooted in routine practices such as maintaining register sheets and performing checklists (Cottrell 2006). In an academic paper, it is never tedious to have the author exhibiting some ingenuity of thinking and an apt representation of the same. Wallace and Wray suggest that one can mentally connect with the author’s agenda by getting one’s own analytical self ask relevant questions regarding the purpose of reading. The self-questionnaire includes: A. Why am I reading this? B. What are the authors trying to do in writing this? C. What are the authors saying that is relevant to what I want to find out? D. How convincing is what the authors are saying? E. In conclusion, what use can I make of this? (Wallace and Wray 2006: 31-32) This questionnaire played a steering role in resolving the problems I was facing. I put myself in the position of the author to map my own mind as another entity. This practice assisted me in a twofold manner. On one hand, I was motivated to critically review my papers as an external examiner who is not familiar with the author’s (in this case, it was me) lines of reasoning and the subsequent backings. This approach led to the second one which asked of me to take an appositional stance in relation to the former method, thus helping me find out the logical flaws and their corrective means. Mind mapping can be seen as an engaging and originative technique that helps relieving the drudgeries of education and encourages critical thinking (Higgs and Jones 2000: 214, and Hiebert and Klatt 2001: 193). Higgs and Jones conceptualize critical thinking in linkage with metacognition, an analogous theory which has widespread application in nursing (2000: 214). But as far as management studies are concerned, this theory does have some indirect significance too in that nursing involves clinical skills of judgment (Tanner and Chesla 1998), an attribute that can also be extended to management education. This is empirically underpinned by the California Critical Thinking Skills Test (CCTST) which was a bona fide testimonial to the relation between analytical thinking abilities and objective skills of judgment (Roussel et al. 2005: 60). In relation to the study skills subject and the thesis question of this paper, an interesting approach is suggested by Eysenck. The reading comprehension skills can be categorized into five interconnected phases that collaboratively build up the rationales for practical reading. These phases include Survey, Question, Read, Recite, and Review. To begin with, the student takes up a book chapter and illustrates how the chapter can be read according to this normative procedure. The survey phase investigates into the systematic arrangement of information in the chapter. As a reader, it is of primal consideration to skim the most relevant information from the entire chapter, including key topics and how they correlate to each other. The next phase in this methodology involves asking questions. To do this, one needs to single out a relatively lengthy (within 3000 words) portion of the chapter and prepare a set of questions that would critically put the relevancy of the chosen section in contention. In other words, asking questions helps one understand the text better and at the same time, this approach acts as a tack in that the questioner knows how to write something to the point, pertinent to the topic(s) being addressed to. The Read phase has two primary objectives. First of all, the reader must make an attempt to find answers to the questions that have been contemplated in the earlier phase, but not actually asked. Secondly, since the reader is expected to have some degree of prior knowledge about the chapter, he/she should endeavor to commingle the available information on the topic to his/her prior understanding. Once the reader is well familiar with the topics and the possible questions, he/she should proceed to the next level which is Recite. This is a very important stage because it explicitly involves the human retentive capabilities. Unless adequate attention is given on critical reading, it is nearly impossible to setup a restore point in the brain, from where processed information (principle ideas on the given topic) can be retrieved. Once the reader is able to recollect the principle ideas, it is time to shift onto the last phase known as Review. Here it is expected of the student “to combine information from different sections into a coherent structure” (2004: 20). What is apparent from the model presented above is that critical reading and critical thinking can be used as a collaborative tool to facilitate study skills. The arguments of Cottrell, Wallace and Wray on the undeniable primacy of analysis, explanations, illustrations, and practice are graphically clarified in Figure 1: Figure 1. Pyramid of Thinking Skills (Mulcrone and McGraw-Hill 2001: 211) This diagram goes to show the vertical exponents of core study skills. Precisely speaking, it encapsulates the contentions propounded by the three authors I initially referred to and the others whom I gradually consulted. Subsequently, I could finally develop an individualistic reading and thinking pattern and after sustained and systematic research works on not just the study skill authors, but also the other ones mentioned in this paper. The staffs, faculties, and my fellow classmates at the Cardiff Business School also did their bit to help me with their valuable suggestions and guidance. In truth, it is not just an isolated problem that occurred only to me. Lack of analytical approach to studies has been plaguing the world of academia for many years now. My eventual success in gaining a masterful and confident approach toward basic and higher study skills owes a lot to the endeavors of hundreds of research scholars who are inexhaustibly devoting their precious time and lending their unique insights to the immensely potent matrix of reflective education. I thank them earnestly. List of References Barnes & Noble (2009) Editorial Reviews [online] available from [6 September 2009] Bender, E. T. (1994) Quick hits: successful strategies by award winning teachers. Bloomington: Indiana University Press Cottrell, S. (2006a) The Study Skills Handbook. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan ---. (2005b) Critical Thinking Skills: Developing Effective Analysis and Argument. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan Cox, J. W. (2009) Critical management studies at work: Negotiating tension between theory and practice. Cheltenham: Edward Elgar Publishing Eysenck, M. W. (2004) Psychology: An International Perspective. London: Taylor & Francis Fournier, V., and Grey, C. (2000) ‘At the critical moment: Conditions and prospects for critical management studies.’ Human Relations 53, (1) 7-32 Hiebert, M., and Klatt, B. (2001) The encyclopedia of leadership: a practical guide to popular leadership theories and techniques. Berkshire: McGraw-Hill Professional Higgs, J., and Jones, M. A. (2000) Clinical reasoning in the health professions. Oxford: Elsevier Health Sciences Hughes, W., and Lavery, J. (2004) Critical thinking: an introduction to the basic skills. Peterborough: Broadview Press Mulcrone, P., and McGraw-Hill. (2001) McGraw-Hill’s GED: the most complete and reliable study program for the GED tests. Ontario: McGraw-Hill Professional Roussel, L., Swansburg, R. J., and Swansburg, R. C. (2005) Management and leadership for nurse administrators. Sudbury, Massachusetts: Jones & Bartlett Publishers Tanner, C. A., and Chesla, C. A. (1998) Expertise in nursing practice: caring, clinical judgment, and ethics. New York: Springer Publishing Company Wallace, M., and Wray, A. (2006) Critical reading and writing for postgraduates. California: SAGE Watson, T. J. (2001) ‘Beyond managism: negotiated narratives and critical management education in practice.’ British Journal of Management 12, (4) 385-96. Cited in Elliott, C., and Turnbull, S. (2005) Critical thinking in human resource development. New York: Routledge: 26 You Can Never Tell (n. d.) Critical Thinking for business and human resource development [online] available from [7 September 2009] Read More