improve critical thinking and problem solving

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How to build critical thinking skills for better decision-making

It’s simple in theory, but tougher in practice – here are five tips to get you started.

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Have you heard the riddle about two coins that equal thirty cents, but one of them is not a nickel? What about the one where a surgeon says they can’t operate on their own son?

Those brain teasers tap into your critical thinking skills. But your ability to think critically isn’t just helpful for solving those random puzzles – it plays a big role in your career. 

An impressive 81% of employers say critical thinking carries a lot of weight when they’re evaluating job candidates. It ranks as the top competency companies consider when hiring recent graduates (even ahead of communication ). Plus, once you’re hired, several studies show that critical thinking skills are highly correlated with better job performance.

So what exactly are critical thinking skills? And even more importantly, how do you build and improve them? 

What is critical thinking?

Critical thinking is the ability to evaluate facts and information, remain objective, and make a sound decision about how to move forward.

Does that sound like how you approach every decision or problem? Not so fast. Critical thinking seems simple in theory but is much tougher in practice, which helps explain why 65% of employers say their organization has a need for more critical thinking. 

In reality, critical thinking doesn’t come naturally to a lot of us. In order to do it well, you need to:

• Remain open-minded and inquisitive, rather than relying on assumptions or jumping to conclusions
• Ask questions and dig deep, rather than accepting information at face value
• Keep your own biases and perceptions in check to stay as objective as possible
• Rely on your emotional intelligence to fill in the blanks and gain a more well-rounded understanding of a situation

So, critical thinking isn’t just being intelligent or analytical. In many ways, it requires you to step outside of yourself, let go of your own preconceived notions, and approach a problem or situation with curiosity and fairness.

It’s a challenge, but it’s well worth it. Critical thinking skills will help you connect ideas, make reasonable decisions, and solve complex problems.

7 critical thinking skills to help you dig deeper

Critical thinking is often labeled as a skill itself (you’ll see it bulleted as a desired trait in a variety of job descriptions). But it’s better to think of critical thinking less as a distinct skill and more as a collection or category of skills. 

To think critically, you’ll need to tap into a bunch of your other soft skills. Here are seven of the most important. 

Open-mindedness

It’s important to kick off the critical thinking process with the idea that anything is possible. The more you’re able to set aside your own suspicions, beliefs, and agenda, the better prepared you are to approach the situation with the level of inquisitiveness you need. 

That means not closing yourself off to any possibilities and allowing yourself the space to pull on every thread – yes, even the ones that seem totally implausible.

As Christopher Dwyer, Ph.D. writes in a piece for Psychology Today , “Even if an idea appears foolish, sometimes its consideration can lead to an intelligent, critically considered conclusion.” He goes on to compare the critical thinking process to brainstorming . Sometimes the “bad” ideas are what lay the foundation for the good ones. 

Open-mindedness is challenging because it requires more effort and mental bandwidth than sticking with your own perceptions. Approaching problems or situations with true impartiality often means:

• Practicing self-regulation : Giving yourself a pause between when you feel something and when you actually react or take action.
• Challenging your own biases: Acknowledging your biases and seeking feedback are two powerful ways to get a broader understanding. 

Critical thinking example

In a team meeting, your boss mentioned that your company newsletter signups have been decreasing and she wants to figure out why.

At first, you feel offended and defensive – it feels like she’s blaming you for the dip in subscribers. You recognize and rationalize that emotion before thinking about potential causes. You have a hunch about what’s happening, but you will explore all possibilities and contributions from your team members.

Observation

Observation is, of course, your ability to notice and process the details all around you (even the subtle or seemingly inconsequential ones). Critical thinking demands that you’re flexible and willing to go beyond surface-level information, and solid observation skills help you do that.

Your observations help you pick up on clues from a variety of sources and experiences, all of which help you draw a final conclusion. After all, sometimes it’s the most minuscule realization that leads you to the strongest conclusion.

Over the next week or so, you keep a close eye on your company’s website and newsletter analytics to see if numbers are in fact declining or if your boss’s concerns were just a fluke. 

Critical thinking hinges on objectivity. And, to be objective, you need to base your judgments on the facts – which you collect through research. You’ll lean on your research skills to gather as much information as possible that’s relevant to your problem or situation. 

Keep in mind that this isn’t just about the quantity of information – quality matters too. You want to find data and details from a variety of trusted sources to drill past the surface and build a deeper understanding of what’s happening. 

You dig into your email and website analytics to identify trends in bounce rates, time on page, conversions, and more. You also review recent newsletters and email promotions to understand what customers have received, look through current customer feedback, and connect with your customer support team to learn what they’re hearing in their conversations with customers.

The critical thinking process is sort of like a treasure hunt – you’ll find some nuggets that are fundamental for your final conclusion and some that might be interesting but aren’t pertinent to the problem at hand.

That’s why you need analytical skills. They’re what help you separate the wheat from the chaff, prioritize information, identify trends or themes, and draw conclusions based on the most relevant and influential facts. 

It’s easy to confuse analytical thinking with critical thinking itself, and it’s true there is a lot of overlap between the two. But analytical thinking is just a piece of critical thinking. It focuses strictly on the facts and data, while critical thinking incorporates other factors like emotions, opinions, and experiences. 

As you analyze your research, you notice that one specific webpage has contributed to a significant decline in newsletter signups. While all of the other sources have stayed fairly steady with regard to conversions, that one has sharply decreased.

You decide to move on from your other hypotheses about newsletter quality and dig deeper into the analytics. 

One of the traps of critical thinking is that it’s easy to feel like you’re never done. There’s always more information you could collect and more rabbit holes you could fall down.

But at some point, you need to accept that you’ve done your due diligence and make a decision about how to move forward. That’s where inference comes in. It’s your ability to look at the evidence and facts available to you and draw an informed conclusion based on those. 

When you’re so focused on staying objective and pursuing all possibilities, inference can feel like the antithesis of critical thinking. But ultimately, it’s your inference skills that allow you to move out of the thinking process and onto the action steps. 

You dig deeper into the analytics for the page that hasn’t been converting and notice that the sharp drop-off happened around the same time you switched email providers.

After looking more into the backend, you realize that the signup form on that page isn’t correctly connected to your newsletter platform. It seems like anybody who has signed up on that page hasn’t been fed to your email list. 

Communication

3 ways to improve your communication skills at work

If and when you identify a solution or answer, you can’t keep it close to the vest. You’ll need to use your communication skills to share your findings with the relevant stakeholders – like your boss, team members, or anybody who needs to be involved in the next steps.

Your analysis skills will come in handy here too, as they’ll help you determine what information other people need to know so you can avoid bogging them down with unnecessary details. 

In your next team meeting, you pull up the analytics and show your team the sharp drop-off as well as the missing connection between that page and your email platform. You ask the web team to reinstall and double-check that connection and you also ask a member of the marketing team to draft an apology email to the subscribers who were missed. 

Problem-solving

Critical thinking and problem-solving are two more terms that are frequently confused. After all, when you think critically, you’re often doing so with the objective of solving a problem.

The best way to understand how problem-solving and critical thinking differ is to think of problem-solving as much more narrow. You’re focused on finding a solution.

In contrast, you can use critical thinking for a variety of use cases beyond solving a problem – like answering questions or identifying opportunities for improvement. Even so, within the critical thinking process, you’ll flex your problem-solving skills when it comes time to take action. 

Once the fix is implemented, you monitor the analytics to see if subscribers continue to increase. If not (or if they increase at a slower rate than you anticipated), you’ll roll out some other tests like changing the CTA language or the placement of the subscribe form on the page.

5 ways to improve your critical thinking skills

Beyond the buzzwords: Why interpersonal skills matter at work

Think critically about critical thinking and you’ll quickly realize that it’s not as instinctive as you’d like it to be. Fortunately, your critical thinking skills are learned competencies and not inherent gifts – and that means you can improve them. Here’s how:

• Practice active listening: Active listening helps you process and understand what other people share. That’s crucial as you aim to be open-minded and inquisitive.
• Ask open-ended questions: If your critical thinking process involves collecting feedback and opinions from others, ask open-ended questions (meaning, questions that can’t be answered with “yes” or “no”). Doing so will give you more valuable information and also prevent your own biases from influencing people’s input.
• Scrutinize your sources: Figuring out what to trust and prioritize is crucial for critical thinking. Boosting your media literacy and asking more questions will help you be more discerning about what to factor in. It’s hard to strike a balance between skepticism and open-mindedness, but approaching information with questions (rather than unquestioning trust) will help you draw better conclusions. 
• Play a game: Remember those riddles we mentioned at the beginning? As trivial as they might seem, games and exercises like those can help you boost your critical thinking skills. There are plenty of critical thinking exercises you can do individually or as a team . 
• Give yourself time: Research shows that rushed decisions are often regrettable ones. That’s likely because critical thinking takes time – you can’t do it under the wire. So, for big decisions or hairy problems, give yourself enough time and breathing room to work through the process. It’s hard enough to think critically without a countdown ticking in your brain. 

Critical thinking really is critical

The ability to think critically is important, but it doesn’t come naturally to most of us. It’s just easier to stick with biases, assumptions, and surface-level information. 

But that route often leads you to rash judgments, shaky conclusions, and disappointing decisions. So here’s a conclusion we can draw without any more noodling: Even if it is more demanding on your mental resources, critical thinking is well worth the effort.

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How to build your critical thinking skills in 7 steps (with examples)

Critical thinking is, well, critical. By building these skills, you improve your ability to analyze information and come to the best decision possible. In this article, we cover the basics of critical thinking, as well as the seven steps you can use to implement the full critical thinking process. 

Critical thinking comes from asking the right questions to come to the best conclusion possible. Strong critical thinkers analyze information from a variety of viewpoints in order to identify the best course of action.

Don’t worry if you don’t think you have strong critical thinking abilities. In this article, we’ll help you build a foundation for critical thinking so you can absorb, analyze, and make informed decisions. 

What is critical thinking? 

Critical thinking is the ability to collect and analyze information to come to a conclusion. Being able to think critically is important in virtually every industry and applicable across a wide range of positions. That’s because critical thinking isn’t subject-specific—rather, it’s your ability to parse through information, data, statistics, and other details in order to identify a satisfactory solution. 

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Top 8 critical thinking skills

Like most soft skills, critical thinking isn’t something you can take a class to learn. Rather, this skill consists of a variety of interpersonal and analytical skills. Developing critical thinking is more about learning to embrace open-mindedness and bringing analytical thinking to your problem framing process. 

In no particular order, the eight most important critical thinking skills are:

Analytical thinking: Part of critical thinking is evaluating data from multiple sources in order to come to the best conclusions. Analytical thinking allows people to reject bias and strive to gather and consume information to come to the best conclusion. 

Open-mindedness: This critical thinking skill helps you analyze and process information to come to an unbiased conclusion. Part of the critical thinking process is letting your personal biases go and coming to a conclusion based on all of the information. 

Problem solving : Because critical thinking emphasizes coming to the best conclusion based on all of the available information, it’s a key part of problem solving. When used correctly, critical thinking helps you solve any problem—from a workplace challenge to difficulties in everyday life. 

Self-regulation: Self-regulation refers to the ability to regulate your thoughts and set aside any personal biases to come to the best conclusion. In order to be an effective critical thinker, you need to question the information you have and the decisions you favor—only then can you come to the best conclusion. 

Observation: Observation skills help critical thinkers look for things beyond face value. To be a critical thinker you need to embrace multiple points of view, and you can use observation skills to identify potential problems.

Interpretation: Not all data is made equal—and critical thinkers know this. In addition to gathering information, it’s important to evaluate which information is important and relevant to your situation. That way, you can draw the best conclusions from the data you’ve collected. 

Evaluation: When you attempt to answer a hard question, there is rarely an obvious answer. Even though critical thinking emphasizes putting your biases aside, you need to be able to confidently make a decision based on the data you have available. 

Communication: Once a decision has been made, you also need to share this decision with other stakeholders. Effective workplace communication includes presenting evidence and supporting your conclusion—especially if there are a variety of different possible solutions. 

7 steps to critical thinking

Critical thinking is a skill that you can build by following these seven steps. The seven steps to critical thinking help you ensure you’re approaching a problem from the right angle, considering every alternative, and coming to an unbiased conclusion.

 First things first: When to use the 7 step critical thinking process

There’s a lot that goes into the full critical thinking process, and not every decision needs to be this thought out. Sometimes, it’s enough to put aside bias and approach a process logically. In other, more complex cases, the best way to identify the ideal outcome is to go through the entire critical thinking process. 

The seven-step critical thinking process is useful for complex decisions in areas you are less familiar with. Alternatively, the seven critical thinking steps can help you look at a problem you’re familiar with from a different angle, without any bias. 

If you need to make a less complex decision, consider another problem solving strategy instead. Decision matrices are a great way to identify the best option between different choices. Check out our article on 7 steps to creating a decision matrix .

1. Identify the problem

Before you put those critical thinking skills to work, you first need to identify the problem you’re solving. This step includes taking a look at the problem from a few different perspectives and asking questions like: 

What’s happening? 

Why is this happening? 

What assumptions am I making? 

At first glance, how do I think we can solve this problem? 

A big part of developing your critical thinking skills is learning how to come to unbiased conclusions. In order to do that, you first need to acknowledge the biases that you currently have. Does someone on your team think they know the answer? Are you making assumptions that aren’t necessarily true? Identifying these details helps you later on in the process. 

2. Research

At this point, you likely have a general idea of the problem—but in order to come up with the best solution, you need to dig deeper. 

During the research process, collect information relating to the problem, including data, statistics, historical project information, team input, and more. Make sure you gather information from a variety of sources, especially if those sources go against your personal ideas about what the problem is or how to solve it.

Gathering varied information is essential for your ability to apply the critical thinking process. If you don’t get enough information, your ability to make a final decision will be skewed. Remember that critical thinking is about helping you identify the objective best conclusion. You aren’t going with your gut—you’re doing research to find the best option

3. Determine data relevance

Just as it’s important to gather a variety of information, it is also important to determine how relevant the different information sources are. After all, just because there is data doesn’t mean it’s relevant. 

Once you’ve gathered all of the information, sift through the noise and identify what information is relevant and what information isn’t. Synthesizing all of this information and establishing significance helps you weigh different data sources and come to the best conclusion later on in the critical thinking process. 

To determine data relevance, ask yourself:

How reliable is this information? 

How significant is this information? 

Is this information outdated? Is it specialized in a specific field? 

4. Ask questions

One of the most useful parts of the critical thinking process is coming to a decision without bias. In order to do so, you need to take a step back from the process and challenge the assumptions you’re making. 

We all have bias—and that isn’t necessarily a bad thing. Unconscious biases (also known as cognitive biases) often serve as mental shortcuts to simplify problem solving and aid decision making. But even when biases aren’t inherently bad, you must be aware of your biases in order to put them aside when necessary. 

Before coming to a solution, ask yourself:

Am I making any assumptions about this information? 

Are there additional variables I haven’t considered? 

Have I evaluated the information from every perspective? 

Are there any viewpoints I missed? 

5. Identify the best solution

Finally, you’re ready to come to a conclusion. To identify the best solution, draw connections between causes and effects. Use the facts you’ve gathered to evaluate the most objective conclusion. 

Keep in mind that there may be more than one solution. Often, the problems you’re facing are complex and intricate. The critical thinking process doesn’t necessarily lead to a cut-and-dry solution—instead, the process helps you understand the different variables at play so you can make an informed decision. 

6. Present your solution

Communication is a key skill for critical thinkers. It isn’t enough to think for yourself—you also need to share your conclusion with other project stakeholders. If there are multiple solutions, present them all. There may be a case where you implement one solution, then test to see if it works before implementing another solution. 

7. Analyze your decision

The seven-step critical thinking process yields a result—and you then need to put that solution into place. After you’ve implemented your decision, evaluate whether or not it was effective. Did it solve the initial problem? What lessons—whether positive or negative—can you learn from this experience to improve your critical thinking for next time? 

Depending on how your team shares information, consider documenting lessons learned in a central source of truth. That way, team members that are making similar or related decisions in the future can understand why you made the decision you made and what the outcome was. 

Example of critical thinking in the workplace

Imagine you work in user experience design (UX). Your team is focused on pricing and packaging and ensuring customers have a clear understanding of the different services your company offers. Here’s how to apply the critical thinking process in the workplace in seven steps: 

Start by identifying the problem

Your current pricing page isn’t performing as well as you want. You’ve heard from customers that your services aren’t clear, and that the page doesn’t answer the questions they have. This page is really important for your company, since it’s where your customers sign up for your service. You and your team have a few theories about why your current page isn’t performing well, but you decide to apply the critical thinking process to ensure you come to the best decision for the page. 

Gather information about how the problem started

Part of identifying the problem includes understanding how the problem started. The pricing and packaging page is important—so when your team initially designed the page, they certainly put a lot of thought into it. Before you begin researching how to improve the page, ask yourself: 

Why did you design the pricing page the way you did? 

Which stakeholders need to be involved in the decision making process? 

Where are users getting stuck on the page?

Are any features currently working?

Then, you research

In addition to understanding the history of the pricing and packaging page, it’s important to understand what works well. Part of this research means taking a look at what your competitor’s pricing pages look like. 

Ask yourself: 

How have our competitors set up their pricing pages?

Are there any pricing page best practices? 

How does color, positioning, and animation impact navigation? 

Are there any standard page layouts customers expect to see? 

Organize and analyze information

You’ve gathered all of the information you need—now you need to organize and analyze it. What trends, if any, are you noticing? Is there any particularly relevant or important information that you have to consider? 

Ask open-ended questions to reduce bias

In the case of critical thinking, it’s important to address and set bias aside as much as possible. Ask yourself: 

Is there anything I’m missing? 

Have I connected with the right stakeholders? 

Are there any other viewpoints I should consider? 

Determine the best solution for your team

You now have all of the information you need to design the best pricing page. Depending on the complexity of the design, you may want to design a few options to present to a small group of customers or A/B test on the live website.

Present your solution to stakeholders

Critical thinking can help you in every element of your life, but in the workplace, you must also involve key project stakeholders . Stakeholders help you determine next steps, like whether you’ll A/B test the page first. Depending on the complexity of the issue, consider hosting a meeting or sharing a status report to get everyone on the same page. 

Analyze the results

No process is complete without evaluating the results. Once the new page has been live for some time, evaluate whether it did better than the previous page. What worked? What didn’t? This also helps you make better critical decisions later on.

Critically successful 

Critical thinking takes time to build, but with effort and patience you can apply an unbiased, analytical mind to any situation. Critical thinking makes up one of many soft skills that makes you an effective team member, manager, and worker. If you’re looking to hone your skills further, read our article on the 25 project management skills you need to succeed . 

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How to develop critical thinking skills

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What are critical thinking skills?

How to develop critical thinking skills: 12 tips, how to practice critical thinking skills at work, become your own best critic.

A client requests a tight deadline on an intense project. Your childcare provider calls in sick on a day full of meetings. Payment from a contract gig is a month behind. 

Your day-to-day will always have challenges, big and small. And no matter the size and urgency, they all ask you to use critical thinking to analyze the situation and arrive at the right solution. 

Critical thinking includes a wide set of soft skills that encourage continuous learning, resilience , and self-reflection. The more you add to your professional toolbelt, the more equipped you’ll be to tackle whatever challenge presents itself. Here’s how to develop critical thinking, with examples explaining how to use it.

Critical thinking skills are the skills you use to analyze information, imagine scenarios holistically, and create rational solutions. It’s a type of emotional intelligence that stimulates effective problem-solving and decision-making . 

When you fine-tune your critical thinking skills, you seek beyond face-value observations and knee-jerk reactions. Instead, you harvest deeper insights and string together ideas and concepts in logical, sometimes out-of-the-box , ways. 

Imagine a team working on a marketing strategy for a new set of services. That team might use critical thinking to balance goals and key performance indicators , like new customer acquisition costs, average monthly sales, and net profit margins. They understand the connections between overlapping factors to build a strategy that stays within budget and attracts new sales. 

Looking for ways to improve critical thinking skills? Start by brushing up on the following soft skills that fall under this umbrella: 

• Analytical thinking: Approaching problems with an analytical eye includes breaking down complex issues into small chunks and examining their significance. An example could be organizing customer feedback to identify trends and improve your product offerings. 
• Open-mindedness: Push past cognitive biases and be receptive to different points of view and constructive feedback . Managers and team members who keep an open mind position themselves to hear new ideas that foster innovation . 
• Creative thinking: With creative thinking , you can develop several ideas to address a single problem, like brainstorming more efficient workflow best practices to boost productivity and employee morale . 
• Self-reflection: Self-reflection lets you examine your thinking and assumptions to stimulate healthier collaboration and thought processes. Maybe a bad first impression created a negative anchoring bias with a new coworker. Reflecting on your own behavior stirs up empathy and improves the relationship. 
• Evaluation: With evaluation skills, you tackle the pros and cons of a situation based on logic rather than emotion. When prioritizing tasks , you might be tempted to do the fun or easy ones first, but evaluating their urgency and importance can help you make better decisions. 

There’s no magic method to change your thinking processes. Improvement happens with small, intentional changes to your everyday habits until a more critical approach to thinking is automatic. 

Here are 12 tips for building stronger self-awareness and learning how to improve critical thinking: 

1. Be cautious

There’s nothing wrong with a little bit of skepticism. One of the core principles of critical thinking is asking questions and dissecting the available information. You might surprise yourself at what you find when you stop to think before taking action. 

Before making a decision, use evidence, logic, and deductive reasoning to support your own opinions or challenge ideas. It helps you and your team avoid falling prey to bad information or resistance to change .

2. Ask open-ended questions

“Yes” or “no” questions invite agreement rather than reflection. Instead, ask open-ended questions that force you to engage in analysis and rumination. Digging deeper can help you identify potential biases, uncover assumptions, and arrive at new hypotheses and possible solutions. 

3. Do your research

No matter your proficiency, you can always learn more. Turning to different points of view and information is a great way to develop a comprehensive understanding of a topic and make informed decisions. You’ll prioritize reliable information rather than fall into emotional or automatic decision-making. 

4. Consider several opinions

You might spend so much time on your work that it’s easy to get stuck in your own perspective, especially if you work independently on a remote team . Make an effort to reach out to colleagues to hear different ideas and thought patterns. Their input might surprise you.

If or when you disagree, remember that you and your team share a common goal. Divergent opinions are constructive, so shift the focus to finding solutions rather than defending disagreements. 

5. Learn to be quiet

Active listening is the intentional practice of concentrating on a conversation partner instead of your own thoughts. It’s about paying attention to detail and letting people know you value their opinions, which can open your mind to new perspectives and thought processes.

If you’re brainstorming with your team or having a 1:1 with a coworker , listen, ask clarifying questions, and work to understand other peoples’ viewpoints. Listening to your team will help you find fallacies in arguments to improve possible solutions.

6. Schedule reflection

Whether waking up at 5 am or using a procrastination hack, scheduling time to think puts you in a growth mindset . Your mind has natural cognitive biases to help you simplify decision-making, but squashing them is key to thinking critically and finding new solutions besides the ones you might gravitate toward. Creating time and calm space in your day gives you the chance to step back and visualize the biases that impact your decision-making. 

7. Cultivate curiosity

With so many demands and job responsibilities, it’s easy to seek solace in routine. But getting out of your comfort zone helps spark critical thinking and find more solutions than you usually might.

If curiosity doesn’t come naturally to you, cultivate a thirst for knowledge by reskilling and upskilling . Not only will you add a new skill to your resume , but expanding the limits of your professional knowledge might motivate you to ask more questions. 

You don’t have to develop critical thinking skills exclusively in the office. Whether on your break or finding a hobby to do after work, playing strategic games or filling out crosswords can prime your brain for problem-solving. 

9. Write it down

Recording your thoughts with pen and paper can lead to stronger brain activity than typing them out on a keyboard. If you’re stuck and want to think more critically about a problem, writing your ideas can help you process information more deeply.

The act of recording ideas on paper can also improve your memory . Ideas are more likely to linger in the background of your mind, leading to deeper thinking that informs your decision-making process. 

10. Speak up

Take opportunities to share your opinion, even if it intimidates you. Whether at a networking event with new people or a meeting with close colleagues, try to engage with people who challenge or help you develop your ideas. Having conversations that force you to support your position encourages you to refine your argument and think critically. 

11. Stay humble

Ideas and concepts aren’t the same as real-life actions. There may be such a thing as negative outcomes, but there’s no such thing as a bad idea. At the brainstorming stage , don’t be afraid to make mistakes.

Sometimes the best solutions come from off-the-wall, unorthodox decisions. Sit in your creativity , let ideas flow, and don’t be afraid to share them with your colleagues. Putting yourself in a creative mindset helps you see situations from new perspectives and arrive at innovative conclusions. 

12. Embrace discomfort

Get comfortable feeling uncomfortable . It isn’t easy when others challenge your ideas, but sometimes, it’s the only way to see new perspectives and think critically.

By willingly stepping into unfamiliar territory, you foster the resilience and flexibility you need to become a better thinker. You’ll learn how to pick yourself up from failure and approach problems from fresh angles. 

Thinking critically is easier said than done. To help you understand its impact (and how to use it), here are two scenarios that require critical thinking skills and provide teachable moments. 

Scenario #1: Unexpected delays and budget

Imagine your team is working on producing an event. Unexpectedly, a vendor explains they’ll be a week behind on delivering materials. Then another vendor sends a quote that’s more than you can afford. Unless you develop a creative solution, the team will have to push back deadlines and go over budget, potentially costing the client’s trust. 

Here’s how you could approach the situation with creative thinking:

• Analyze the situation holistically: Determine how the delayed materials and over-budget quote will impact the rest of your timeline and financial resources . That way, you can identify whether you need to build an entirely new plan with new vendors, or if it’s worth it to readjust time and resources. 
• Identify your alternative options: With careful assessment, your team decides that another vendor can’t provide the same materials in a quicker time frame. You’ll need to rearrange assignment schedules to complete everything on time. 
• Collaborate and adapt: Your team has an emergency meeting to rearrange your project schedule. You write down each deliverable and determine which ones you can and can’t complete by the deadline. To compensate for lost time, you rearrange your task schedule to complete everything that doesn’t need the delayed materials first, then advance as far as you can on the tasks that do. 
• Check different resources: In the meantime, you scour through your contact sheet to find alternative vendors that fit your budget. Accounting helps by providing old invoices to determine which vendors have quoted less for previous jobs. After pulling all your sources, you find a vendor that fits your budget. 
• Maintain open communication: You create a special Slack channel to keep everyone up to date on changes, challenges, and additional delays. Keeping an open line encourages transparency on the team’s progress and boosts everyone’s confidence. 

Scenario #2: Differing opinions 

A conflict arises between two team members on the best approach for a new strategy for a gaming app. One believes that small tweaks to the current content are necessary to maintain user engagement and stay within budget. The other believes a bold revamp is needed to encourage new followers and stronger sales revenue. 

Here’s how critical thinking could help this conflict:

• Listen actively: Give both team members the opportunity to present their ideas free of interruption. Encourage the entire team to ask open-ended questions to more fully understand and develop each argument. 
• Flex your analytical skills: After learning more about both ideas, everyone should objectively assess the benefits and drawbacks of each approach. Analyze each idea's risk, merits, and feasibility based on available data and the app’s goals and objectives. 
• Identify common ground: The team discusses similarities between each approach and brainstorms ways to integrate both idea s, like making small but eye-catching modifications to existing content or using the same visual design in new media formats. 
• Test new strategy: To test out the potential of a bolder strategy, the team decides to A/B test both approaches. You create a set of criteria to evenly distribute users by different demographics to analyze engagement, revenue, and customer turnover. 
• Monitor and adapt: After implementing the A/B test, the team closely monitors the results of each strategy. You regroup and optimize the changes that provide stronger results after the testing. That way, all team members understand why you’re making the changes you decide to make.

You can’t think your problems away. But you can equip yourself with skills that help you move through your biggest challenges and find innovative solutions. Learning how to develop critical thinking is the start of honing an adaptable growth mindset. 

Now that you have resources to increase critical thinking skills in your professional development, you can identify whether you embrace change or routine, are open or resistant to feedback, or turn to research or emotion will build self-awareness. From there, tweak and incorporate techniques to be a critical thinker when life presents you with a problem.

Elizabeth Perry

Content Marketing Manager, ACC

How to improve your creative skills for effective problem-solving

What is lateral thinking 7 techniques to encourage creative ideas, 6 ways to leverage ai for hyper-personalized corporate learning, 8 creative solutions to your most challenging problems, how divergent thinking can drive your creativity, critical thinking is the one skillset you can't afford not to master, what’s convergent thinking how to be a better problem-solver, can dreams help you solve problems 6 ways to try, thinking outside the box: 8 ways to become a creative problem solver, similar articles, what is creative thinking and why does it matter, discover the 7 essential types of life skills you need, 6 big picture thinking strategies that you'll actually use, what are analytical skills examples and how to level up, how intrapersonal skills shape teams, plus 5 ways to build them, stay connected with betterup, get our newsletter, event invites, plus product insights and research..

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3 Simple Habits to Improve Your Critical Thinking

• Helen Lee Bouygues

But simple doesn’t mean easy.

Too many business leaders are simply not reasoning through pressing issues, and it’s hurting their organizations.  The good news is that critical thinking is a learned behavior. There are three simple things you can do to train yourself to become a more effective critical thinker: question assumptions, reason through logic, and diversify your thought and perspectives. They may sound obvious, but deliberately cultivating these three key habits of mind go a long way in helping you become better at clear and robust reasoning.

A few years ago, a CEO assured me that his company was the market leader. “Clients will not leave for competitors,” he added. “It costs too much for them to switch.” Within weeks, the manufacturing giant Procter & Gamble elected not to renew its contract with the firm. The CEO was shocked — but he shouldn’t have been.

• HB Helen Lee Bouygues is the president of the Paris-based Reboot Foundation . A former partner at McKinsey & Company, she has served as interim CEO, CFO, or COO for more than one dozen companies.

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How to Improve Your Critical Thinking Skills

Traditional tools and new technologies..

Posted September 29, 2023 | Reviewed by Lybi Ma

Technology provides access to vast information and makes daily life easier. Yet, too much reliance on technology potentially interferes with the acquisition and maintenance of critical thinking skills in several ways:

1. Information Overload : The constant influx of data can discourage deep critical thinking as we may come to rely on quick, surface-level information rather than delving deeply into a subject.

2. Shortened Attention Span: Frequent digital distractions can disrupt our ability for the sustained focus and concentration required for critical thinking.

3. Confirmatory Bias and Echo Chambers: Technology, including social media and personalized content algorithms, can reinforce confirmation bias . People are often exposed to information that aligns with their beliefs and opinions, making them less likely to encounter diverse perspectives and engage in critical thinking about opposing views.

4. Reduced Problem-Solving Opportunities: Technology often provides quick solutions to problems. While this benefits efficiency, it may discourage individuals from engaging in complex problem-solving, a fundamental aspect of critical thinking.

5. Loss of Research Skills: The ease of accessing information online can diminish traditional research skills, such as library research or in-depth reading. These skills are essential for critical thinking, as they involve evaluating sources, synthesizing information, and analyzing complex texts.

While technology can pose challenges to developing critical thinking skills, it's important to note that technology can also be a valuable tool for learning and skill development. It can provide access to educational resources, facilitate collaboration , and support critical thinking when used thoughtfully and intentionally. Balancing technology use with activities that encourage deep thinking and analysis is vital to lessening its potential adverse effects on critical thinking.

Writing is a traditional and powerful tool to exercise and improve your critical thinking skills. Consider these ways writing can help enhance critical thinking:

1. Clarity of Thought: Writing requires that you articulate your thoughts clearly and coherently. When you need to put your ideas on paper, you must organize them logically, which requires a deeper understanding of the subject matter.

2. Analysis and Evaluation: Critical thinking involves analyzing and evaluating information. When you write, you often need to assess the validity and relevance of different sources, arguments, or pieces of evidence, which hone your critical thinking skills.

3. Problem-Solving: Writing can be a problem-solving exercise in itself. Whether crafting an argument, developing a thesis, or finding the right words to express your ideas, writing requires thinking critically about approaching these challenges effectively.

4. Research Skills: Good writing often involves research, and research requires critical thinking. You need to assess the credibility of sources, synthesize information, and draw conclusions based on the evidence you gather.

5. Argumentation: Constructing a persuasive argument in writing is a complex process requiring critical thinking. You must anticipate counterarguments, provide evidence to support your claims, and address potential weaknesses in your reasoning.

6. Revision and Editing: To be an influential writer, you must learn to read your work critically. Editing and revising requires evaluating your writing objectively, identifying areas that need improvement, and refining your ideas and arguments.

7. Problem Identification: In some cases, writing can help you identify problems or gaps in your thinking. As you write, you might realize that your arguments are not as strong as you initially thought or that you need more information to support your claims. This recognition of limitations is a crucial aspect of critical thinking.

Writing is a dynamic process that engages multiple facets of critical thinking. It has been a valuable tool used in education , business, and personal development for centuries.

Yet, this traditional approach of self-generated written thoughts is rapidly being supplanted by AI -generated writing tools like Chat GPT (Generative Pre-trained Transformer. With over 100 million users of Chat GPT alone, we cannot ignore its potential impact. How might the increasing reliance on AI-generated writing tools influence our critical thinking skills? The impact can vary depending on how the tools are used and the context in which they are employed.

Critical thinking involves evaluating information sources for credibility, relevance, and bias. If individuals consistently trust the information provided by chatbots without critically assessing its quality, it can hinder their development of critical thinking skills. This is especially true if they depend on the chatbot to provide answers without questioning or verifying the information. Relying solely on chatbots for answers may also reduce people's effort in problem-solving. Critical thinking often requires wrestling with complex problems, considering multiple perspectives, and generating creative solutions. If we default to chatbots for quick answers, we may miss opportunities to develop these skills.

However, it's essential to note that the impact of chatbots on critical thinking skills may not be entirely negative. These tools can also have positive effects:

1. Chatbots provide quick access to vast information, which can benefit research and problem-solving. When used as a supplement to critical thinking, they can enhance the efficiency of information retrieval.

2. Chatbots can sometimes assist in complex tasks by providing relevant data or suggestions. When individuals critically evaluate and integrate this information into their decision-making process, it can enhance their critical thinking.

3. Chatbots can be used as learning aids. They can provide explanations, examples, and guidance, which can support skill development and, when used effectively, encourage critical thinking.

In summary, the impact of chatbots on critical thinking skills depends on how we use them. The effect will be harmful if they become a crutch to avoid independent thought or analysis. However, they can be valuable resources when used as tools to facilitate and augment critical thinking and writing processes. Individuals must balance leveraging the convenience of chatbots and actively engaging in independent critical thinking and problem-solving to maintain and enhance their cognitive abilities. You can do that effectively through writing regularly.

Copyright 2023 Tara Well, PhD

Tara Well, Ph.D. , is a professor in the department of psychology at Barnard College of Columbia University.

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Critical Thinking and Decision-Making  - What is Critical Thinking?

Critical thinking and decision-making  -, what is critical thinking, critical thinking and decision-making what is critical thinking.

Critical Thinking and Decision-Making: What is Critical Thinking?

Lesson 1: what is critical thinking, what is critical thinking.

Critical thinking is a term that gets thrown around a lot. You've probably heard it used often throughout the years whether it was in school, at work, or in everyday conversation. But when you stop to think about it, what exactly is critical thinking and how do you do it ?

Watch the video below to learn more about critical thinking.

Simply put, critical thinking is the act of deliberately analyzing information so that you can make better judgements and decisions . It involves using things like logic, reasoning, and creativity, to draw conclusions and generally understand things better.

This may sound like a pretty broad definition, and that's because critical thinking is a broad skill that can be applied to so many different situations. You can use it to prepare for a job interview, manage your time better, make decisions about purchasing things, and so much more.

The process

As humans, we are constantly thinking . It's something we can't turn off. But not all of it is critical thinking. No one thinks critically 100% of the time... that would be pretty exhausting! Instead, it's an intentional process , something that we consciously use when we're presented with difficult problems or important decisions.

Improving your critical thinking

In order to become a better critical thinker, it's important to ask questions when you're presented with a problem or decision, before jumping to any conclusions. You can start with simple ones like What do I currently know? and How do I know this? These can help to give you a better idea of what you're working with and, in some cases, simplify more complex issues.  

Real-world applications

Let's take a look at how we can use critical thinking to evaluate online information . Say a friend of yours posts a news article on social media and you're drawn to its headline. If you were to use your everyday automatic thinking, you might accept it as fact and move on. But if you were thinking critically, you would first analyze the available information and ask some questions :

• What's the source of this article?
• Is the headline potentially misleading?
• What are my friend's general beliefs?
• Do their beliefs inform why they might have shared this?

After analyzing all of this information, you can draw a conclusion about whether or not you think the article is trustworthy.

Critical thinking has a wide range of real-world applications . It can help you to make better decisions, become more hireable, and generally better understand the world around you.

/en/problem-solving-and-decision-making/why-is-it-so-hard-to-make-decisions/content/

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Cultivating Critical Thinking for Problem Solving

August 25, 2023 - 10 min read

In today's fast-paced and complex world, the ability to think critically is crucial for problem solving. Critical thinking allows us to analyze information, evaluate different perspectives, and make informed decisions. In this article, we will explore the importance of critical thinking, the process of cultivating it, strategies for fostering it, and overcoming obstacles that hinder its development. We will also discuss how to apply critical thinking in various contexts, from everyday situations to professional settings.

Understanding the Importance of Critical Thinking

When faced with challenges or dilemmas, critical thinking is the key to finding effective solutions. It enables us to question assumptions, consider alternatives, and make logical connections. Critical thinking goes beyond rote memorization or blindly following instructions. It involves independent thinking, curiosity, and the ability to adapt in a rapidly changing world.

Moreover, critical thinking empowers us to think critically about the information we encounter. In an age of information overload, it is crucial to be able to discern between reliable sources and misinformation. Critical thinking equips us with the skills to evaluate evidence, assess credibility, and make informed judgments.

The Impact of Critical Thinking on Decision Making

Effective decision making relies on critical thinking. It allows us to weigh the pros and cons, consider potential consequences, and evaluate different options objectively. Critical thinking helps us avoid hasty judgments and biases, so that decisions are well-thought-out and based on rational analysis.

Moreover, critical thinking helps us anticipate and mitigate potential risks. By considering different scenarios and evaluating potential outcomes, we can identify potential pitfalls and take proactive measures to minimize their impact. This will surely lead to more successful outcomes and prevent costly mistakes.

Lastly, critical thinking fosters creativity and innovation. It encourages us to think outside the box and explore unconventional solutions. By challenging conventional wisdom and embracing new ideas, critical thinkers can drive positive change and make significant contributions to their fields.

The Process of Cultivating Critical Thinking

Cultivating critical thinking is an ongoing process that requires practice and reflection. While some individuals may have a natural inclination towards critical thinking, it is a skill that can be developed and strengthened over time.

Developing a Critical Mindset

A critical mindset involves actively questioning assumptions, seeking evidence, and challenging preconceived notions. It requires an open and inquisitive attitude towards learning and problem solving. Here are some guidelines to develop a critical mindset:

• Engage in critical reflection: Examine your own thought processes and biases, as well as seeking feedback from others. By reflecting on our own thinking, we can identify areas for improvement and develop a more objective and rational approach to problem solving.
• Embrace intellectual humility: Recognize that we don't have all the answers and being open to new ideas and perspectives. It requires a willingness to admit when we are wrong and a commitment to constantly learning and growing.
• Cultivate intellectual curiosity: Actively seek out new information, asking questions, and exploring different viewpoints. It involves a thirst for knowledge and a desire to understand the world around us.

Enhancing Analytical Skills

Analytical skills are essential for critical thinking. They involve the ability to examine information, identify patterns, and draw logical conclusions. Here are some ways to improve these skills:

• Complete activities such as analyzing data, solving puzzles, and engaging in logical reasoning exercises.
• Read and research in diverse fields to broaden your knowledge base and expose yourself to different perspectives. 
• Practice active listening to gain valuable insights and perspectives that can inform our own thinking. 
• Develop strong problem-solving skills by breaking down complex problems into smaller, more manageable parts, and systematically evaluating each component. 

Strategies for Fostering Critical Thinking

To foster critical thinking, it is essential to create an environment that encourages intellectual curiosity and open-mindedness. By fostering these qualities, we can stimulate critical thinking in ourselves and others.

Encouraging Open-Mindedness

Open-mindedness involves being receptive to different ideas and perspectives, even if they challenge our own beliefs. By valuing diverse viewpoints, we can foster a culture of critical thinking that promotes innovation and creativity.

• Actively seek out diverse opinions: Engage in conversations with people from different backgrounds, cultures, and experiences. By listening to their perspectives, we can broaden our own understanding and challenge our preconceived notions.
• Engage in respectful debates: By creating a safe and inclusive space for discussion, individuals can share their ideas and opinions without fear of judgment or ridicule. This allows for the exploration of different viewpoints and encourages critical thinking.
• Encourage others to share their ideas: By creating an environment where everyone's voice is valued and respected, people feel more comfortable expressing their thoughts and opinions. This not only promotes critical thinking but also enhances collaboration and teamwork.

Promoting Intellectual Curiosity

Intellectual curiosity drives critical thinking by inspiring us to ask questions and seek answers. It is the desire to explore new ideas, learn new concepts, and expand our knowledge.

• Encourage a love for learning: Provide opportunities for individuals to pursue their interests and passions. Whether it's through reading books, attending workshops, or participating in online courses, fostering a love for learning can ignite intellectual curiosity and fuel critical thinking.
• Ask thought-provoking questions: By getting individuals to think deeply about a topic, we can stimulate their curiosity and encourage them to seek answers. Thought-provoking questions challenge them to consider different perspectives, analyze information critically, and develop their own opinions.
• Provide opportunities for exploration and discovery: Offer hands-on activities, experiments, or projects that allow your team to engage with the subject matter actively. By providing these opportunities, individuals can develop a sense of ownership over their learning and become more motivated to think critically.

Overcoming Obstacles in Critical Thinking

While critical thinking is a valuable skill, there are certain obstacles that can hinder its development. Recognizing and addressing these obstacles is essential for cultivating effective critical thinking abilities.

• Influence of cognitive biases: Cognitive biases are inherent biases that affect our thinking and decision-making processes. They can lead to flawed reasoning and prevent us from considering alternative perspectives. For example, confirmation bias is the tendency to seek out information that confirms our existing beliefs, while ignoring or dismissing evidence that contradicts them. Groupthink, on the other hand, occurs when individuals prioritize harmony and consensus over critical evaluation of ideas. By being aware of common cognitive biases, such as confirmation bias or groupthink, we can actively work to mitigate their impact.
• Regular self-reflection: Taking the time to examine our own thought processes and beliefs can help us identify any biases that may be influencing our thinking. Seeking input from others is also crucial in overcoming cognitive biases. By actively soliciting different perspectives and opinions, we can broaden our understanding and challenge our own prejudices.
• Information overload: In today's digital age, we are constantly bombarded with information from various sources. This influx of information can overwhelm our cognitive abilities and hinder critical thinking. It is essential to develop information literacy skills to navigate this challenge.
• Non-credible sources: With the rise of fake news and misinformation, it is crucial to critically assess the sources of information we encounter. By considering factors such as the author's expertise, the publication's reputation, and the presence of bias, we can make more informed judgments about the reliability of the information.

Applying Critical Thinking in Problem Solving

While critical thinking is valuable in itself, its true impact lies in its application to real-world problem solving. Cultivating critical thinking skills allows us to tackle challenges in various contexts, from everyday situations to professional settings.

Everyday Situations

Everyday situations offer ample opportunities to apply critical thinking. From personal relationships to day-to-day decision making, critical thinking enables us to assess situations, consider different perspectives, and make informed choices. Whether it's evaluating the credibility of a news article or weighing the pros and cons of a personal decision within the family, critical thinking helps us navigate complex situations with confidence.

Professional Settings

In the professional world, critical thinking is highly valued and sought after. It is necessary for problem solving, decision making, and innovation. Furthermore, critical thinking lets us to analyze market trends, evaluate risks and opportunities, and develop effective strategies. By cultivating critical thinking skills, we can enhance our professional performance and contribute to the success of our organizations.

Foster Critical Thinking with Wrike

Cultivating critical thinking skills is crucial for effective problem-solving. With Wrike, you can foster an environment that encourages critical thinking. Wrike allows you to create individual folders for each project or task, serving as a central hub for all relevant information and updates, promoting transparency and encouraging informed decision-making. Beyond just fostering critical thinking, Wrike offers a comprehensive suite of tools designed to streamline your workflows, foster collaboration, and drive productivity. From real-time communication to intuitive task management features, Wrike provides everything you need to cultivate critical thinking for effective problem-solving. Ready to foster critical thinking and enhance your problem-solving capabilities? There's no better time to start than now. Get started with Wrike for free today.

Note: This article was created with the assistance of an AI engine. It has been reviewed and revised by our team of experts to ensure accuracy and quality.

Occasionally we write blog posts where multiple people contribute. Since our idea of having a gladiator arena where contributors would fight to the death to win total authorship wasn’t approved by HR, this was the compromise.

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Customization options: Some client management systems may offer a high level of customization, allowing you to tailor the system to fit your specific business processes and requirements. Integration capabilities: This is very important if you rely on other software tools such as accounting software, email marketing platforms, or customer support systems.  Key Features to Look for in a Client Management System After narrowing down your options, it's time to evaluate the key features that a client management system should offer to address your business needs effectively. Contact management: Allows you to store and organize all your client information in one place, making it easy to access and update as needed. Keep track of important details such as names, addresses, phone numbers, and email addresses. Activity tracking: Enables you to monitor and record all client interactions, including meetings, emails, phone calls, and any other relevant activities. Easily track the progress of your client relationships so that nothing falls through the cracks. Task management: Create and assign tasks to team members, set deadlines, and track their progress. Effective communication: These tools can include email integration, instant messaging, and even video conferencing capabilities. Collaborate seamlessly with team members and communicate with clients without having to switch between different platforms. Additional Features That Can Enhance Efficiency While the essential features mentioned above are crucial for effective client management, there are additional features that can further enhance efficiency. Automation capabilities: Streamline repetitive tasks, such as sending follow-up emails or generating reports. Reporting and analytics tools: Provide insights into your client data, allowing you to analyze trends, measure performance, and make data-driven decisions. Track key metrics, identify areas for improvement, and optimize your client management strategies. Integrations with other business systems: Lets all your business systems work seamlessly together, to save time and eliminate the need for manual data entry. Mobile accessibility: Allows you to manage your clients on the go, whether you're attending a meeting or traveling. Access client information, communicate with them and your team, and track all activities. Implementing Your Chosen Client Management System Once you have selected the most suitable client management system for your business, the next step is to implement it seamlessly. Set clear objectives. Define the scope of the implementation. Allocate resources accordingly. Train your team on how to effectively use the new system to maximize its benefits. Gradually migrate data from the old system to the new one, ensuring data integrity throughout the process. Regularly monitor and evaluate the system's performance to make necessary adjustments and pave the way for smooth operations. Overcoming Potential Challenges in System Implementation Implementing a new client management system may pose certain challenges, such as resistance to change, user adoption issues, and data migration complexities. To overcome these challenges, work with your staff to develop a comprehensive change management plan, provide sufficient training and support, and collaborate closely with the system provider.  Overall, choosing a successful client management system is a critical decision that can significantly impact your business's efficiency and customer satisfaction. By understanding the importance of a client management system, identifying your business needs, exploring different types of systems, evaluating key features, and implementing the chosen system effectively, you can streamline your client management processes and stay ahead in today's competitive marketplace. Choose a successful client management system guided by Wrike's comprehensive features. Start your free trial today and boost your client management efficiency. Note: This article was created with the assistance of an AI engine. It has been reviewed and revised by our team of experts to ensure accuracy and quality.

The Art of Managing Teams: Tips and Techniques for Success

Managing teams effectively is a crucial skill for any leader. Whether you are leading a small project team or overseeing a large department, understanding the basics of team management is essential. In this article, we will explore the importance of effective team management, the key elements of a successful team, how to build your team, different leadership styles and their impact on teams, the role of communication in team management, and strategies for conflict resolution. Understanding the Basics of Team Management Effective team management involves more than just delegating tasks and supervising team members. It requires understanding the dynamics of a team and creating an environment that allows each member to thrive. The importance of effective team management cannot be overstated - it can make or break the success of a project or an organization as a whole.  Building Your Team Having the right staff is extremely important when building your team.  It is crucial to have a clear understanding of the goals and objectives you want to achieve, since they serve as the guiding principles for your team. Without clear goals, team members may feel lost and unmotivated, resulting in a lack of productivity and cohesion. Open and effective communication is another key element of successful team management. Encouraging team members to express their thoughts, ideas, and concerns openly fosters a sense of trust and collaboration. It also helps develop trust, mutual respect, and a sense of shared accountability. What's more, managers should strive to develop strong conflict resolution skills. Encouraging open and respectful dialogue, finding common ground, and seeking win-win solutions are essential for resolving conflicts in a constructive manner.  Leadership Styles and Their Impact on Teams Leadership styles can have a significant impact on team dynamics and performance. The way a leader chooses to lead can shape the atmosphere within a team and determine the level of success they achieve. Here, we will explore three common leadership styles in more detail, shedding light on their strengths and weaknesses. Autocratic Leadership Autocratic leaders make decisions without seeking input from team members. They provide clear instructions and expect strict adherence to their directives. This style of leadership can be effective in certain situations, such as during emergencies when immediate action is required. The autocratic leader's ability to make quick decisions can prevent chaos and ensure a swift response. However, this style can also stifle creativity and limit the staff's growth and development. When team members are not given the opportunity to contribute their ideas and opinions, they may feel undervalued and disengaged. This can lead to a lack of motivation and decreased productivity within the team. Democratic Leadership Democratic leaders, on the other hand, involve team members in decision-making processes, seeking their input and feedback. This style promotes collaboration and can lead to higher employee engagement. By giving team members a voice and valuing their opinions, democratic leaders create a sense of ownership and empowerment within the team. This can foster a positive work environment where individuals feel motivated to contribute their best efforts. However, the democratic leadership style may not be suitable for urgent situations where quick decisions are required. In such cases, the need for consensus and extensive discussion can slow down the decision-making process, potentially leading to missed opportunities or delayed actions. Transformational Leadership Transformational leaders inspire and motivate their team members to achieve their full potential. They encourage innovation and personal growth, fostering a sense of ownership and commitment within the team. Transformational leaders are charismatic and have a clear vision that they communicate effectively to their team. By setting high expectations and providing support, they empower their team members to exceed their own expectations and reach new heights. This leadership style can have a transformative effect on team performance and organizational culture. However, it requires a leader who is not only knowledgeable and skilled but also emotionally intelligent and able to connect with their team members on a deeper level. Without these qualities, the transformational leadership style may come across as insincere or manipulative. Communication: The Backbone of Team Management Effective communication is essential for team management. It makes sure that everyone is on the same page and working towards common goals. Enhancing team communication requires creating an open and inclusive environment where team members feel comfortable sharing their thoughts and ideas. The Role of Active Listening in Team Management Active listening is a key communication skill for team leaders. It involves fully focusing on and understanding what team members are saying, without interrupting or judging. It also requires paying attention to non-verbal cues such as body language, facial expressions, and tone of voice. These cues can provide valuable insights into the emotions and intentions behind the words, helping team leaders to better understand their team members' perspectives. Moreover, active listening helps team leaders to identify any potential issues or conflicts within the team. By carefully listening to what team members are saying, leaders can pick up on subtle signs of disagreement or dissatisfaction. This allows them to address these issues proactively, preventing them from escalating and negatively impacting team dynamics. Conflict Resolution Strategies for Team Leaders Conflicts are inevitable in any team. However, effective team management involves understanding the source of conflicts and implementing strategies to resolve them in a constructive manner. Understanding the Source of Conflicts Conflicts can arise from differences in opinions, goals, or personal values. It is important for team leaders to identify and address the root cause of conflicts rather than just managing their symptoms. When team members have different opinions, it can lead to clashes and disagreements. These conflicts can stem from diverse perspectives and approaches to problem-solving. For example, in a marketing team, one member might advocate for a traditional advertising campaign, while another member might believe in the power of social media marketing. These conflicting opinions can create tension and hinder progress. Goals can also be a source of conflict within a team. Each team member may have their own priorities and objectives, which can sometimes clash with the overall team goals. This misalignment can lead to frustration and animosity among team members. For instance, in a software development team, one member might prioritize delivering the project on time, while another member might prioritize creating a high-quality product. These conflicting goals can create friction and hinder collaboration. Personal values can also contribute to conflicts within a team. Each individual brings their own set of values and beliefs to the table, which can sometimes clash with those of their teammates. These clashes can arise from differences in work ethics, communication styles, or cultural backgrounds. For example, in a global team, one member might value punctuality and strict adherence to deadlines, while another member might prioritize a more flexible and relaxed approach. These conflicting values can lead to misunderstandings and conflicts. Techniques for Resolving Team Disputes There are several techniques that team leaders can use to resolve team disputes: Encouraging open dialogue: Team leaders can create a safe and non-judgmental space for staff to express their opinions and concerns. By promoting open dialogue, team leaders can encourage active listening and foster understanding among team members. This can help in resolving conflicts by addressing the underlying issues and finding common ground. Mediating disagreements: In situations where conflicts escalate and communication breaks down, team leaders can step in as mediators. They can facilitate discussions between the conflicting parties and help them find mutually acceptable solutions. Mediation allows team members to express their perspectives and concerns in a controlled setting, leading to a more constructive resolution. Promoting compromise and collaboration: Team leaders can encourage employees to find middle ground and work together towards a shared solution. By promoting compromise and collaboration, team leaders can foster a sense of unity and cooperation within the team. This approach helps in resolving conflicts by encouraging team members to focus on common goals rather than individual differences. Setting clear expectations: Team leaders can prevent conflicts by setting clear expectations and guidelines for team members. By establishing clear roles, responsibilities, and performance standards, team leaders can minimize misunderstandings and promote accountability. When the staff a clear understanding of what is expected from them, conflicts arising from ambiguity and miscommunication can be avoided. Providing constructive feedback: Team leaders can provide timely and constructive feedback to team members, both individually and as a team. Feedback helps in addressing performance issues and improving communication within the team. By giving specific and actionable feedback, team leaders can guide team members towards resolving conflicts and enhancing their overall performance. Ultimately, mastering the art of managing teams is a continuous learning process. By understanding the basics of team management, building the right team, adopting appropriate leadership styles, promoting effective communication, and implementing conflict resolution strategies, team leaders can increase team performance and achieve success. Remember, effective team management is not just about achieving goals - it is about creating an environment where team members can grow, collaborate, and thrive. Master the art of team management with Wrike's resourceful platform. Begin your free trial today and navigate your team coordination to successful outcomes. Note: This article was created with the assistance of an AI engine. It has been reviewed and revised by our team of experts to ensure accuracy and quality.

Paving the Way for Peace: Techniques for Effective Conflict Resolution

In a world filled with varying opinions, conflicting beliefs, and diverse perspectives, conflicts are bound to arise. Whether on a personal or global scale, these disagreements can often lead to negative consequences if not adequately addressed. However, by utilizing effective conflict resolution techniques, individuals and communities can pave the way for peace and create harmonious relationships. In this article, we will explore various strategies and methods that can help in resolving conflicts and fostering understanding among conflicting parties. Understanding the Nature of Conflict A natural part of human interaction, conflict arises when there is a difference in goals, values, or interests between individuals or groups. It can stem from various factors such as misunderstandings, power struggles, or limited resources. What's more, conflict can occur in various settings, including personal relationships, workplaces, and even on a global scale. When people with different perspectives and interests come together, conflicts are bound to arise. These can range from minor disagreements to full-blown disputes that have the potential to cause significant harm. The Psychology Behind Disagreements Disagreements often arise due to the way our brains perceive information and interpret situations. For instance, our brains are wired to seek confirmation of our existing beliefs and to protect our self-image. This can lead to a phenomenon known as confirmation bias, where we selectively interpret information to support our own views while dismissing or ignoring evidence that contradicts them. This cognitive bias can fuel conflicts, as individuals become entrenched in their positions and unwilling to consider alternative perspectives. Also, past experiences and personal belief systems shape our worldview and influence how we perceive and interpret conflicts. Our upbringing, cultural background, and socialization all play a role in shaping our attitudes and values. These factors can create barriers to understanding and empathy, as individuals may struggle to see beyond their own experiences and beliefs. The Role of Emotions in Conflict Emotions play a significant role in conflict escalation or resolution. Anger, fear, frustration, and resentment can intensify conflicts and hinder productive dialogue. Typically, these emotions end up clouding your judgement and decreases your ability to engage in calm and rational discussions. However, emotions can also serve as a catalyst for positive change. When individuals recognize and acknowledge their emotions, they can use them as a starting point for understanding their own needs and desires. They can practice active listening and empathy, thereby de-escalating conflicts and reaching satisfactory resolutions. The Importance of Communication in Conflict Resolution Effective communication involves more than just exchanging words; it requires a deep understanding of the power of both verbal and non-verbal cues. Active listening and non-verbal communication play crucial roles in conflict resolution, as they help create an environment of understanding and empathy. Active Listening  When engaging in active listening, give your undivided attention to the speaker. This means avoiding distractions, such as checking phones or thinking about what to say next. You want to demonstrate respect and create a safe space for open and honest communication. Moreover, active listening involves not only hearing the words being spoken but also understanding the underlying emotions and intentions. It requires paying attention to non-verbal cues, such as facial expressions, body language, and tone of voice. These cues can provide valuable insights into the speaker's true feelings and help uncover the root causes of the conflict. Non-Verbal Communication Non-verbal communication encompasses gestures, facial expressions, and body language. Often, non-verbal cues can convey more about a person's emotions and intentions than their words alone. Becoming aware of and interpreting these non-verbal signals can aid in understanding and resolving conflicts more effectively. For example, crossed arms and a furrowed brow may indicate defensiveness or disagreement, while open body language and a friendly smile may signal receptiveness and willingness to find common ground. However, non-verbal communication is not always straightforward and can vary across cultures and individuals. Therefore, it is crucial to approach non-verbal cues with sensitivity and avoid making assumptions based solely on them. Instead, use non-verbal cues as additional information to complement the verbal communication and gain a more comprehensive understanding of the conflict. Techniques for Effective Conflict Resolution Once a foundation of understanding and open communication is established, various techniques can be employed to facilitate conflict resolution. Mediation and its Benefits Mediation involves a neutral third party assisting conflicting individuals or groups in reaching a mutually satisfactory solution. During the mediation process, the mediator creates a safe and supportive environment where all parties can express their concerns and perspectives. This empathetic approach allows conflicting parties to see each other's point of view and find areas of agreement. Also, mediators are skilled in identifying underlying issues and interests that may be fueling the conflict. By addressing these underlying concerns, mediators can help parties find creative and mutually beneficial solutions that go beyond simple compromises. Negotiation Strategies for Win-Win Outcomes Negotiation allows conflicting parties to collaboratively search for solutions that meet the needs and interests of all involved. During this process, negotiators should be flexible and open to compromise. There may not be a perfect solution for everyone, but by exploring options, compromising, and focusing on shared goals, negotiators can create win-win outcomes.  One effective negotiation strategy is to separate the people from the problem. By focusing on the issue at hand rather than personal differences, negotiators can maintain a constructive and objective approach. This helps prevent conflicts from escalating and allows parties to work together towards a resolution. Another important aspect of negotiation is the ability to generate multiple options. By brainstorming and considering various alternatives, negotiators can find creative solutions that address the interests of all parties involved. This collaborative approach fosters a sense of ownership and commitment to the final agreement. The Role of Empathy in Resolving Disputes Empathy lies at the heart of conflict resolution. It goes beyond sympathy, which is feeling sorry for someone. Empathy is about truly understanding and experiencing the emotions of another person. It requires us to step outside of ourselves and imagine what it would be like to be in someone else's situation. It is a powerful tool that can bridge the gap between people and lead to effective conflict resolution. Conflict Resolution Empathy is a skill that can be developed and honed. It requires actively listening, considering other perspectives, and seeking to understand the underlying emotions and motivations. Practicing empathy also involves being aware of our own emotions and reactions. It is important to recognize when we are becoming defensive or closed off, as this can hinder our ability to empathize with others. By staying open and curious, we can better connect with the emotions of others and find creative solutions to conflicts. Lastly, empathy is not limited to verbal communication. Non-verbal cues, such as body language and facial expressions, can also convey empathy. By maintaining eye contact, nodding, and mirroring the body language of the other person, we can show that we are fully present and engaged in the conversation. This helps to create a sense of trust and understanding, which is essential for resolving disputes. Relationship Dynamics Empathy forms the cornerstone of healthy and sustainable relationships. By empathizing with others, conflicts can be transformed into opportunities for growth and connection. For example, when we empathize with someone, we validate their emotions and experiences. This validation is crucial for building trust and deepening our connection with others. It shows that we genuinely care about their well-being and are willing to put in the effort to understand their perspective. This, in turn, creates a safe space for open and honest communication, where conflicts can be addressed and resolved in a constructive manner. Moreover, empathy allows us to see beyond the surface-level issues and understand the underlying needs and motivations of others. By recognizing and addressing these deeper concerns, we can find mutually beneficial solutions that meet the needs of all parties involved. This not only leads to resolution but also strengthens the relationship, as it demonstrates a willingness to work together and find common ground. Maintaining Peace Post-Conflict While conflict resolution techniques are essential during disagreements, it is equally crucial to maintain peaceful relationships in the aftermath. By employing strategies to sustain peace, individuals can prevent future conflicts and nurture understanding and cooperation. Active communication Conflict prevention measures Fostering mutual respect and understanding The Role of Forgiveness in Conflict Resolution Forgiveness also plays a significant role in healing and moving forward from conflicts. It involves letting go of resentment, grudges, and the desire for revenge. Forgiveness allows for personal growth, reconciliation, and the restoration of trust. By embracing forgiveness, you can pave the way for lasting peace and reconciliation. Resolve Conflicts Effectively with Wrike Effective conflict resolution is key to maintaining a peaceful and productive work environment. With Wrike, you can easily manage conflict resolution processes. Wrike allows you to create individual folders for each conflict resolution initiative, serving as a central hub for all relevant information and updates, fostering effective conflict resolution. Beyond just conflict resolution, Wrike offers a comprehensive suite of tools designed to streamline your workflows, foster collaboration, and drive productivity. From real-time communication to intuitive task management features, Wrike provides everything you need to pave the way for peace and resolve conflicts effectively. Ready to resolve conflicts effectively and maintain a peaceful work environment? There's no better time to start than now. Get started with Wrike for free today. Note: This article was created with the assistance of an AI engine. It has been reviewed and revised by our team of experts to ensure accuracy and quality.

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6 Strategies for Increasing Critical Thinking with Problem Solving

By Mary Montero

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For many teachers, problem-solving feels synonymous with word problems, but it is so much more. That’s why I’m sharing my absolute favorite lessons and strategies for increasing critical thinking through problem solving below. You’ll learn six strategies for increasing critical thinking through mathematical word problems, the importance of incorporating error analysis into your weekly routines,  and several resources I use for improving critical thinking – almost all of which are free! I’ll also briefly touch on teaching students to dissect word problems in a way that enables them to truly understand what steps to take to solve the problem.

This post is based on my short and sweet (and FREE!) Increasing Critical Thinking with problem Solving math mini-course . When you enroll in the free course you’ll get access to everything you need to get started:

• Problem Solving Essentials
• Six lessons to implement into your classroom
• How to Implement Error Analysis
• FREE Error Analysis Starter Kit
• FREE Mathematician Posters
• FREE Multi-Step Problem Solving Starter Kit
• FREE Task Card Starter Kit

Introduction to Critical Thinking and Problem Solving

According to the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics, “The term “problem solving” refers to mathematical tasks that have the potential to provide intellectual challenges for enhancing students’ mathematical understanding and development .)”

That’s a lot of words, but I’d like to focus in on the word POTENTIAL. I’m going to share with you strategies that move these tasks from having the potential to provide a challenge to actually providing that challenge that will enrich their mathematical understanding and development. 

If you’re looking for an introduction to multi-step problem solving, I have a free multi-step problem solving starter kit for that! 

I also highly encourage you to download and use my free Mathematician posters that help students see what their “jobs” are as mathematicians. Giving students this title of mathematician not only holds them accountable, but it gives them greater confidence and gives me very specific verbiage to use when discussing math with my students. 

The impacts of Incorporating Problem Solving

When I made the shift to incorporate problem solving into my everyday instruction intentionally, I saw a distinct increase in student understanding and application of mathematical concepts, more authentic connections to real-world mathematics scenarios, greater student achievement, and notably increased engagement. There are also ripple effects observed in other areas, as students learn grit and a growth mindset after tackling some more challenging problem-solving situations. I hope that by implementing some of these ideas, you see the very same shift.

Here’s an overview of some problem solving essentials I use to teach students to solve problems.

Routine vs. Non-Routine Problem Solving

Routine problems comprise the vast majority of the word problems we pose to students. They require using an algorithm through one or more of the four major operations, have relevance to real-world situations, and often have a distinct answer. They are solvable, and students can use several concrete strategies for solving, like “make a table” or “draw a picture” to solve.

Conversely, non-routine problem-solving focuses on mathematical reasoning. These are often more open-ended and allow students to make generalizations about math and numbers. There isn’t usually a straight path leading to the answer, there isn’t an algorithm readily available for finding the solution (or students are going to have to come up with the algorithm), and it IS going to require some level of experimentation and manipulation of numbers in order to solve it. In non-routine problems, students learn to look for patterns, work backwards, build models, etc. 

Incorporating both routine and non-routine problems into your instruction for EVERY student is critical. When solving non-routine problems, students can use some of the strategies they’ve learned for solving routine problems, and when solving routine problems, students benefit from a deeper understanding of the complexity of numbers that they gained from non-routine problems. For this training, we will focus heavily on routine problems, though the impacts of these practices will transition into non-routine problem solving.

Increasing Critical Thinking in Problem Solving

When tackling a problem, students need to be able to determine WHAT to do and HOW to do it.  Knowing the HOW is what you likely teach every day – your students know how to add, subtract, multiply, and divide. But knowing WHAT to do is arguably the most essential part of solving problems – once students know what needs to be done, then they can apply the conceptual skills – the algorithms and strategies – they’ve learned and will know how to solve. While dissecting word problems is an excellent starting point, exposing students to various ways to examine problems can help them figure out the WHAT. 

Being faced with a lengthy, complex word problem can be intimidating to even your most adept students. Having a toolbox of strategies to use when you tackle problems and seeing problems in various ways can enable students to get to the point where they feel comfortable knowing where to begin.

Shifting away from keywords

While it isn’t best practice to rely solely on operation “keywords” to determine what operation needs to occur when solving a problem, I’m not ready to fully ditch keyword-based instruction in math. I think there’s a huge difference between teaching students to blindly rely on keywords to determine which operation to use for a solution and using words found in the text to guide students in figuring out what to do. For that reason, I place heavy emphasis on using precise mathematical vocabulary , including specific operation keywords, and when students become accustomed to using that precise mathematical vocabulary every day, it really helps them to identify that language in word problems as well.

I also allow my students to dissect math word problems using strategies like CUBES , but in a way that is more aligned with best practice. 

Six Lessons for Easy Implementation

Here are six super quick “outside the box” word problem, problem solving lessons to begin implementing into your classroom. These lessons shouldn’t replace your everyday problem solving, but are instead extensions that will help students tackle those tricky problems they encounter everyday. As a reminder, we look at all of these lessons in the FREE Increasing Critical Thinking with problem Solving math mini-course .

Lesson #1: What’s the Question?

In this lesson, we’ll encourage students to see. just how many different questions can be asked about the same statements or information. We start with a typical, one-step, one-operation problem. Then we cross out or cover up the answer and ask students to generate possible questions.

After students have come up with a variety of questions, ask them to determine HOW they would solve for each one.

Reveal the question and ask students how they would solve this one and see if any of the questions they came up with match.

This activity is important because it demonstrates to students just how many different questions can be asked about the same statement or information. It’s perfect for your students who automatically pick out numbers and start “operating” on them blindly. I’ve had students come up with 5-8 questions with a single statement!

I like to do this throughout the year using different word problems based on the skill we’re focused on at the time AND skills we’ve previously mastered, but be careful not to only use examples based on the skill you’re teaching right then so their brains don’t automatically go to the same place.

These 32 What’s My Operation? task cards will help your student learn and review which operations to use for different types of word problems! They’re perfect to use as a quick assessment, game of SCOOT, math center activity, or homework.

Lesson 2: Similar Scenarios

In this lesson, students will evaluate similar scenarios to determine the appropriate operations. Start with three similar scenarios requiring different operations and identify what situation is happening in each scenario (finding total, determining an amount, splitting or combining, etc.).

Read all three-word problems on a similar topic. Determine the similarity of all of them and determine which operation would be used to solve them. How does the situation/action of the problem help you determine what step to take?

I also created these differentiated word problem task cards after noticing my students struggling with which operation to choose, especially when given multiple problems from a similar scenario. They encourage students to select the appropriate operation for each word problem.

Lesson 3: Opposing Operations

In this lesson, students will determine relevant information from a set of facts, which requires a great deal of critical thinking to determine which operation to use. Give students a scenario and a variety of facts/information relating to the scenario as well as several questions to answer based on the facts . Students will focus on determining HOW they will solve each question using only the relevant information. 

These Operation Fascination task c ards engage students in critical thinking about operations. Each card has a scenario, multiple clues and facts to support the scenario, and four questions to accompany each scenario. The questions are a variety of operations so that students can see how using the same information can solve multiple problems.

Lesson 4: Next Level Numberless

In this lesson, we’ll take numberless word problems to the next level by developing a strong conceptual understanding of word problems. Give students scenarios without numbers and have them write a question and/or insert numbers using a specific operation and purpose . This requires a great deal of thinking to not only determine the situation, but to also figure out numbers that fit into the situation in a way that makes sense.

By integrating these types of math problems into your daily lessons, you can significantly enhance your students’ comprehension of word problems and problem-solving. These numberless word problem task cards are the ideal to improve your students’ critical thinking and problem-solving skills. They offer a variety of numbered and numberless word problems.

Lesson 5: Story Situations

In this lesson, we’ll discuss the importance of students generating their own word problems with a given set of information. This requires a great deal of quantitative reasoning as students determine how they would use a given set of numbers to create a realistic situation. Present students with two predetermined numbers and a theme. Then have students write a word problem, including a question, using the given information. 

Engage your students in additional practice with these differentiated division task cards that require your students to write their OWN word problems (and create real-world relevance in their learning!). Each task card has numbers and a theme that students use to guide their thinking and creation of a word problem.

Lesson 6: No Scenario Solving

In this lesson, we’ll decontextualize problem solving and require students to create the situation, represent it numerically, and solve. It’s a cognitively demanding task! Give students an operation and a purpose (joining, separating, comparing, etc.) with no other context, numbers, numbers, or theme. Then have students generate a word problem.

For additional practice, have students swap problems to identify the operation, purpose, and solution.

Implementing Error Analysis

Error analysis is an exceptional way to promote thinking and learning, but how do we teach students to figure out which type of math error they’ve made? This error analysis starter kit can help!

First, it is very rare that I will tell my students what error they have made in their work. I want to challenge them to figure it out on their own. So, when I see that they have a wrong answer, I ask them to go back and figure out where something went wrong. Because I resist the urge to tell them right away where their error is, my students tend to get a lot more practice identifying them!

Second, when I introduce a concept, I always, always, always create anchor charts with students and complete interactive notebook activities with them so that they have step-by-step procedures for completing tasks right at their fingertips. I have them go back and reference their notebooks while they are looking at their errors.  Usually, they can follow the anchor chart step-by-step to make sure they haven’t made a conceptual error, and if they have, they can identify it.

Third, I let them use a calculator. When worst comes to worst, and they are fairly certain they haven’t made a conceptual mistake to identify, I let them get out a calculator and start computing, step-by-step to see where they’ve made a mistake.

IF, after taking these steps, a student can’t figure out their mistake (especially if I find that it’s a conceptual mistake), I know I need to go back and do some individual reteaching with them because they don’t have a solid understanding of the concept.

This FREE addition error analysis is a good place to start, no matter the grade level. I show them the process of walking through the problem and how best to complete an error analysis task.

Digging Deeper into Error Analysis

Once students show proficiency in the standard algorithm (or strategies), I take it a step further and have them dive into error analysis where they can show a “reverse” understanding as they evaluate mistakes made and fix them. Being able to identify an error in someone else’s work requires higher order thinking not found in most other projects or activities and certainly not found in basic math fact completion.

First, teach students the difference between a computational error and a conceptual error. 

• Computational is when they make a mistake in basic math facts. This might look as simple as  64/8 does not equal 7. Oops!
• A Conceptual or Procedural Error is when they make a mistake in the procedure or concept. 
• I can’t tell you how many times students show as not proficient on a topic when the mistakes they are making are COMPUTATIONAL and not conceptual or procedural. They don’t need more review in how to use a strategy… they need to slow down and pay closer attention to their math facts!

Once we’ve introduced the types of errors they should be looking out for, we move on to actually analyzing these errors in someone else’s work and fixing the mistake.

I have created error analysis tasks for you to use with you students so they can identify the errors, types of errors, rework the problem, and create their own version of the problem and solve it. I have seen great success with incorporating these tasks into ALL of my math units. I even have kids beg to take their error analysis tasks out to recess to finish! These are great resources to start:

• Error Analysis Bundle
• 3rd Grade Word Problem of the Day
• 4th Grade Word Problem of the Day
• 5th Grade Word Problem of the Day

The final step in using error analysis is actually having students correct their OWN mistakes. Once I have instructed on types of errors, I will start by simply telling them, Oops! You’ve made a computational error here! That way they aren’t furiously looking through the procedure for a mistake, instead they are looking to see where they computed wrong. Conversely, I’ll tell them if they’ve made a procedural mistake, and that can guide them in figuring out what they need to look for.

Looking at the different types of errors students are making is essential to guiding my instruction as well, so even though it takes a bit longer to grade things like this, it is immensely helpful to me as I make adjustments to my instruction.

Resources and Ideas for Critical Thinking

I’ve compiled a collection of websites for complex tasks with multiple, open-ended answers and scenarios. The majority of these tasks are non-routine and so easy to implement. I often post these tasks and allow students short bursts of time to strategize and plan for a solution. Consider using the tasks and problems from these sites as warm-ups, extensions of your morning meeting, during enrichment groups, or on a Problem of the Week board. I also highly encourage you to incorporate these non-routine problems into your core instruction time for all students at least once or twice a month.

• NRICH provides thousands of FREE online mathematics resources for ages 3 to 18. The tasks focus on developing problem-solving skills, perseverance, mathematical reasoning, the ability to apply knowledge creatively in unfamiliar contexts, and confidence in tackling new challenges..
• Open Middle offers challenging math word problems that require a higher depth of knowledge than most problems that assess procedural and conceptual understanding. They support the Common Core State Standards and provide students with opportunities for discussing their thinking. All problems have a “closed beginning,” meaning that they all start with the same initial problem, a “closed-end” meaning that they all end with the same answer, and an “open middle” meaning that there are multiple ways to approach and ultimately solve the problem.
• Mathcurious offers interactive digital puzzles. Each adventure is dedicated to exploring the world of math and sharing experiences, knowledge, and ideas.
• Robert Kaplinsky shares math strategies, lessons, and resources designed to create problem solvers. The lessons are detailed and challenging!
• Mathigon “The mathematical playground” offers free manipulatives, activities, and lessons to make online learning interactive and engaging. The digital manipulates are a must-use!
• Fractal Foundation uses fractals to inspire interest in science, math and art. It has numerous fractal activities, software to help your students create their own fractals, and more.
• Greg Fletcher 3 Act Tasks contain engaging math videos with guiding questions. You can also download recording sheets to go with each video.

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• Published: 11 January 2023

The effectiveness of collaborative problem solving in promoting students’ critical thinking: A meta-analysis based on empirical literature

• Enwei Xu   ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0001-6424-8169 1 ,
• Wei Wang 1 &
• Qingxia Wang 1  

Humanities and Social Sciences Communications volume  10 , Article number:  16 ( 2023 ) Cite this article

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Collaborative problem-solving has been widely embraced in the classroom instruction of critical thinking, which is regarded as the core of curriculum reform based on key competencies in the field of education as well as a key competence for learners in the 21st century. However, the effectiveness of collaborative problem-solving in promoting students’ critical thinking remains uncertain. This current research presents the major findings of a meta-analysis of 36 pieces of the literature revealed in worldwide educational periodicals during the 21st century to identify the effectiveness of collaborative problem-solving in promoting students’ critical thinking and to determine, based on evidence, whether and to what extent collaborative problem solving can result in a rise or decrease in critical thinking. The findings show that (1) collaborative problem solving is an effective teaching approach to foster students’ critical thinking, with a significant overall effect size (ES = 0.82, z  = 12.78, P  < 0.01, 95% CI [0.69, 0.95]); (2) in respect to the dimensions of critical thinking, collaborative problem solving can significantly and successfully enhance students’ attitudinal tendencies (ES = 1.17, z  = 7.62, P  < 0.01, 95% CI[0.87, 1.47]); nevertheless, it falls short in terms of improving students’ cognitive skills, having only an upper-middle impact (ES = 0.70, z  = 11.55, P  < 0.01, 95% CI[0.58, 0.82]); and (3) the teaching type (chi 2  = 7.20, P  < 0.05), intervention duration (chi 2  = 12.18, P  < 0.01), subject area (chi 2  = 13.36, P  < 0.05), group size (chi 2  = 8.77, P  < 0.05), and learning scaffold (chi 2  = 9.03, P  < 0.01) all have an impact on critical thinking, and they can be viewed as important moderating factors that affect how critical thinking develops. On the basis of these results, recommendations are made for further study and instruction to better support students’ critical thinking in the context of collaborative problem-solving.

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Introduction

Although critical thinking has a long history in research, the concept of critical thinking, which is regarded as an essential competence for learners in the 21st century, has recently attracted more attention from researchers and teaching practitioners (National Research Council, 2012 ). Critical thinking should be the core of curriculum reform based on key competencies in the field of education (Peng and Deng, 2017 ) because students with critical thinking can not only understand the meaning of knowledge but also effectively solve practical problems in real life even after knowledge is forgotten (Kek and Huijser, 2011 ). The definition of critical thinking is not universal (Ennis, 1989 ; Castle, 2009 ; Niu et al., 2013 ). In general, the definition of critical thinking is a self-aware and self-regulated thought process (Facione, 1990 ; Niu et al., 2013 ). It refers to the cognitive skills needed to interpret, analyze, synthesize, reason, and evaluate information as well as the attitudinal tendency to apply these abilities (Halpern, 2001 ). The view that critical thinking can be taught and learned through curriculum teaching has been widely supported by many researchers (e.g., Kuncel, 2011 ; Leng and Lu, 2020 ), leading to educators’ efforts to foster it among students. In the field of teaching practice, there are three types of courses for teaching critical thinking (Ennis, 1989 ). The first is an independent curriculum in which critical thinking is taught and cultivated without involving the knowledge of specific disciplines; the second is an integrated curriculum in which critical thinking is integrated into the teaching of other disciplines as a clear teaching goal; and the third is a mixed curriculum in which critical thinking is taught in parallel to the teaching of other disciplines for mixed teaching training. Furthermore, numerous measuring tools have been developed by researchers and educators to measure critical thinking in the context of teaching practice. These include standardized measurement tools, such as WGCTA, CCTST, CCTT, and CCTDI, which have been verified by repeated experiments and are considered effective and reliable by international scholars (Facione and Facione, 1992 ). In short, descriptions of critical thinking, including its two dimensions of attitudinal tendency and cognitive skills, different types of teaching courses, and standardized measurement tools provide a complex normative framework for understanding, teaching, and evaluating critical thinking.

Cultivating critical thinking in curriculum teaching can start with a problem, and one of the most popular critical thinking instructional approaches is problem-based learning (Liu et al., 2020 ). Duch et al. ( 2001 ) noted that problem-based learning in group collaboration is progressive active learning, which can improve students’ critical thinking and problem-solving skills. Collaborative problem-solving is the organic integration of collaborative learning and problem-based learning, which takes learners as the center of the learning process and uses problems with poor structure in real-world situations as the starting point for the learning process (Liang et al., 2017 ). Students learn the knowledge needed to solve problems in a collaborative group, reach a consensus on problems in the field, and form solutions through social cooperation methods, such as dialogue, interpretation, questioning, debate, negotiation, and reflection, thus promoting the development of learners’ domain knowledge and critical thinking (Cindy, 2004 ; Liang et al., 2017 ).

Collaborative problem-solving has been widely used in the teaching practice of critical thinking, and several studies have attempted to conduct a systematic review and meta-analysis of the empirical literature on critical thinking from various perspectives. However, little attention has been paid to the impact of collaborative problem-solving on critical thinking. Therefore, the best approach for developing and enhancing critical thinking throughout collaborative problem-solving is to examine how to implement critical thinking instruction; however, this issue is still unexplored, which means that many teachers are incapable of better instructing critical thinking (Leng and Lu, 2020 ; Niu et al., 2013 ). For example, Huber ( 2016 ) provided the meta-analysis findings of 71 publications on gaining critical thinking over various time frames in college with the aim of determining whether critical thinking was truly teachable. These authors found that learners significantly improve their critical thinking while in college and that critical thinking differs with factors such as teaching strategies, intervention duration, subject area, and teaching type. The usefulness of collaborative problem-solving in fostering students’ critical thinking, however, was not determined by this study, nor did it reveal whether there existed significant variations among the different elements. A meta-analysis of 31 pieces of educational literature was conducted by Liu et al. ( 2020 ) to assess the impact of problem-solving on college students’ critical thinking. These authors found that problem-solving could promote the development of critical thinking among college students and proposed establishing a reasonable group structure for problem-solving in a follow-up study to improve students’ critical thinking. Additionally, previous empirical studies have reached inconclusive and even contradictory conclusions about whether and to what extent collaborative problem-solving increases or decreases critical thinking levels. As an illustration, Yang et al. ( 2008 ) carried out an experiment on the integrated curriculum teaching of college students based on a web bulletin board with the goal of fostering participants’ critical thinking in the context of collaborative problem-solving. These authors’ research revealed that through sharing, debating, examining, and reflecting on various experiences and ideas, collaborative problem-solving can considerably enhance students’ critical thinking in real-life problem situations. In contrast, collaborative problem-solving had a positive impact on learners’ interaction and could improve learning interest and motivation but could not significantly improve students’ critical thinking when compared to traditional classroom teaching, according to research by Naber and Wyatt ( 2014 ) and Sendag and Odabasi ( 2009 ) on undergraduate and high school students, respectively.

The above studies show that there is inconsistency regarding the effectiveness of collaborative problem-solving in promoting students’ critical thinking. Therefore, it is essential to conduct a thorough and trustworthy review to detect and decide whether and to what degree collaborative problem-solving can result in a rise or decrease in critical thinking. Meta-analysis is a quantitative analysis approach that is utilized to examine quantitative data from various separate studies that are all focused on the same research topic. This approach characterizes the effectiveness of its impact by averaging the effect sizes of numerous qualitative studies in an effort to reduce the uncertainty brought on by independent research and produce more conclusive findings (Lipsey and Wilson, 2001 ).

This paper used a meta-analytic approach and carried out a meta-analysis to examine the effectiveness of collaborative problem-solving in promoting students’ critical thinking in order to make a contribution to both research and practice. The following research questions were addressed by this meta-analysis:

What is the overall effect size of collaborative problem-solving in promoting students’ critical thinking and its impact on the two dimensions of critical thinking (i.e., attitudinal tendency and cognitive skills)?

How are the disparities between the study conclusions impacted by various moderating variables if the impacts of various experimental designs in the included studies are heterogeneous?

This research followed the strict procedures (e.g., database searching, identification, screening, eligibility, merging, duplicate removal, and analysis of included studies) of Cooper’s ( 2010 ) proposed meta-analysis approach for examining quantitative data from various separate studies that are all focused on the same research topic. The relevant empirical research that appeared in worldwide educational periodicals within the 21st century was subjected to this meta-analysis using Rev-Man 5.4. The consistency of the data extracted separately by two researchers was tested using Cohen’s kappa coefficient, and a publication bias test and a heterogeneity test were run on the sample data to ascertain the quality of this meta-analysis.

Data sources and search strategies

There were three stages to the data collection process for this meta-analysis, as shown in Fig. 1 , which shows the number of articles included and eliminated during the selection process based on the statement and study eligibility criteria.

This flowchart shows the number of records identified, included and excluded in the article.

First, the databases used to systematically search for relevant articles were the journal papers of the Web of Science Core Collection and the Chinese Core source journal, as well as the Chinese Social Science Citation Index (CSSCI) source journal papers included in CNKI. These databases were selected because they are credible platforms that are sources of scholarly and peer-reviewed information with advanced search tools and contain literature relevant to the subject of our topic from reliable researchers and experts. The search string with the Boolean operator used in the Web of Science was “TS = (((“critical thinking” or “ct” and “pretest” or “posttest”) or (“critical thinking” or “ct” and “control group” or “quasi experiment” or “experiment”)) and (“collaboration” or “collaborative learning” or “CSCL”) and (“problem solving” or “problem-based learning” or “PBL”))”. The research area was “Education Educational Research”, and the search period was “January 1, 2000, to December 30, 2021”. A total of 412 papers were obtained. The search string with the Boolean operator used in the CNKI was “SU = (‘critical thinking’*‘collaboration’ + ‘critical thinking’*‘collaborative learning’ + ‘critical thinking’*‘CSCL’ + ‘critical thinking’*‘problem solving’ + ‘critical thinking’*‘problem-based learning’ + ‘critical thinking’*‘PBL’ + ‘critical thinking’*‘problem oriented’) AND FT = (‘experiment’ + ‘quasi experiment’ + ‘pretest’ + ‘posttest’ + ‘empirical study’)” (translated into Chinese when searching). A total of 56 studies were found throughout the search period of “January 2000 to December 2021”. From the databases, all duplicates and retractions were eliminated before exporting the references into Endnote, a program for managing bibliographic references. In all, 466 studies were found.

Second, the studies that matched the inclusion and exclusion criteria for the meta-analysis were chosen by two researchers after they had reviewed the abstracts and titles of the gathered articles, yielding a total of 126 studies.

Third, two researchers thoroughly reviewed each included article’s whole text in accordance with the inclusion and exclusion criteria. Meanwhile, a snowball search was performed using the references and citations of the included articles to ensure complete coverage of the articles. Ultimately, 36 articles were kept.

Two researchers worked together to carry out this entire process, and a consensus rate of almost 94.7% was reached after discussion and negotiation to clarify any emerging differences.

Eligibility criteria

Since not all the retrieved studies matched the criteria for this meta-analysis, eligibility criteria for both inclusion and exclusion were developed as follows:

The publication language of the included studies was limited to English and Chinese, and the full text could be obtained. Articles that did not meet the publication language and articles not published between 2000 and 2021 were excluded.

The research design of the included studies must be empirical and quantitative studies that can assess the effect of collaborative problem-solving on the development of critical thinking. Articles that could not identify the causal mechanisms by which collaborative problem-solving affects critical thinking, such as review articles and theoretical articles, were excluded.

The research method of the included studies must feature a randomized control experiment or a quasi-experiment, or a natural experiment, which have a higher degree of internal validity with strong experimental designs and can all plausibly provide evidence that critical thinking and collaborative problem-solving are causally related. Articles with non-experimental research methods, such as purely correlational or observational studies, were excluded.

The participants of the included studies were only students in school, including K-12 students and college students. Articles in which the participants were non-school students, such as social workers or adult learners, were excluded.

The research results of the included studies must mention definite signs that may be utilized to gauge critical thinking’s impact (e.g., sample size, mean value, or standard deviation). Articles that lacked specific measurement indicators for critical thinking and could not calculate the effect size were excluded.

Data coding design

In order to perform a meta-analysis, it is necessary to collect the most important information from the articles, codify that information’s properties, and convert descriptive data into quantitative data. Therefore, this study designed a data coding template (see Table 1 ). Ultimately, 16 coding fields were retained.

The designed data-coding template consisted of three pieces of information. Basic information about the papers was included in the descriptive information: the publishing year, author, serial number, and title of the paper.

The variable information for the experimental design had three variables: the independent variable (instruction method), the dependent variable (critical thinking), and the moderating variable (learning stage, teaching type, intervention duration, learning scaffold, group size, measuring tool, and subject area). Depending on the topic of this study, the intervention strategy, as the independent variable, was coded into collaborative and non-collaborative problem-solving. The dependent variable, critical thinking, was coded as a cognitive skill and an attitudinal tendency. And seven moderating variables were created by grouping and combining the experimental design variables discovered within the 36 studies (see Table 1 ), where learning stages were encoded as higher education, high school, middle school, and primary school or lower; teaching types were encoded as mixed courses, integrated courses, and independent courses; intervention durations were encoded as 0–1 weeks, 1–4 weeks, 4–12 weeks, and more than 12 weeks; group sizes were encoded as 2–3 persons, 4–6 persons, 7–10 persons, and more than 10 persons; learning scaffolds were encoded as teacher-supported learning scaffold, technique-supported learning scaffold, and resource-supported learning scaffold; measuring tools were encoded as standardized measurement tools (e.g., WGCTA, CCTT, CCTST, and CCTDI) and self-adapting measurement tools (e.g., modified or made by researchers); and subject areas were encoded according to the specific subjects used in the 36 included studies.

The data information contained three metrics for measuring critical thinking: sample size, average value, and standard deviation. It is vital to remember that studies with various experimental designs frequently adopt various formulas to determine the effect size. And this paper used Morris’ proposed standardized mean difference (SMD) calculation formula ( 2008 , p. 369; see Supplementary Table S3 ).

Procedure for extracting and coding data

According to the data coding template (see Table 1 ), the 36 papers’ information was retrieved by two researchers, who then entered them into Excel (see Supplementary Table S1 ). The results of each study were extracted separately in the data extraction procedure if an article contained numerous studies on critical thinking, or if a study assessed different critical thinking dimensions. For instance, Tiwari et al. ( 2010 ) used four time points, which were viewed as numerous different studies, to examine the outcomes of critical thinking, and Chen ( 2013 ) included the two outcome variables of attitudinal tendency and cognitive skills, which were regarded as two studies. After discussion and negotiation during data extraction, the two researchers’ consistency test coefficients were roughly 93.27%. Supplementary Table S2 details the key characteristics of the 36 included articles with 79 effect quantities, including descriptive information (e.g., the publishing year, author, serial number, and title of the paper), variable information (e.g., independent variables, dependent variables, and moderating variables), and data information (e.g., mean values, standard deviations, and sample size). Following that, testing for publication bias and heterogeneity was done on the sample data using the Rev-Man 5.4 software, and then the test results were used to conduct a meta-analysis.

Publication bias test

When the sample of studies included in a meta-analysis does not accurately reflect the general status of research on the relevant subject, publication bias is said to be exhibited in this research. The reliability and accuracy of the meta-analysis may be impacted by publication bias. Due to this, the meta-analysis needs to check the sample data for publication bias (Stewart et al., 2006 ). A popular method to check for publication bias is the funnel plot; and it is unlikely that there will be publishing bias when the data are equally dispersed on either side of the average effect size and targeted within the higher region. The data are equally dispersed within the higher portion of the efficient zone, consistent with the funnel plot connected with this analysis (see Fig. 2 ), indicating that publication bias is unlikely in this situation.

This funnel plot shows the result of publication bias of 79 effect quantities across 36 studies.

Heterogeneity test

To select the appropriate effect models for the meta-analysis, one might use the results of a heterogeneity test on the data effect sizes. In a meta-analysis, it is common practice to gauge the degree of data heterogeneity using the I 2 value, and I 2  ≥ 50% is typically understood to denote medium-high heterogeneity, which calls for the adoption of a random effect model; if not, a fixed effect model ought to be applied (Lipsey and Wilson, 2001 ). The findings of the heterogeneity test in this paper (see Table 2 ) revealed that I 2 was 86% and displayed significant heterogeneity ( P  < 0.01). To ensure accuracy and reliability, the overall effect size ought to be calculated utilizing the random effect model.

The analysis of the overall effect size

This meta-analysis utilized a random effect model to examine 79 effect quantities from 36 studies after eliminating heterogeneity. In accordance with Cohen’s criterion (Cohen, 1992 ), it is abundantly clear from the analysis results, which are shown in the forest plot of the overall effect (see Fig. 3 ), that the cumulative impact size of cooperative problem-solving is 0.82, which is statistically significant ( z  = 12.78, P  < 0.01, 95% CI [0.69, 0.95]), and can encourage learners to practice critical thinking.

This forest plot shows the analysis result of the overall effect size across 36 studies.

In addition, this study examined two distinct dimensions of critical thinking to better understand the precise contributions that collaborative problem-solving makes to the growth of critical thinking. The findings (see Table 3 ) indicate that collaborative problem-solving improves cognitive skills (ES = 0.70) and attitudinal tendency (ES = 1.17), with significant intergroup differences (chi 2  = 7.95, P  < 0.01). Although collaborative problem-solving improves both dimensions of critical thinking, it is essential to point out that the improvements in students’ attitudinal tendency are much more pronounced and have a significant comprehensive effect (ES = 1.17, z  = 7.62, P  < 0.01, 95% CI [0.87, 1.47]), whereas gains in learners’ cognitive skill are slightly improved and are just above average. (ES = 0.70, z  = 11.55, P  < 0.01, 95% CI [0.58, 0.82]).

The analysis of moderator effect size

The whole forest plot’s 79 effect quantities underwent a two-tailed test, which revealed significant heterogeneity ( I 2  = 86%, z  = 12.78, P  < 0.01), indicating differences between various effect sizes that may have been influenced by moderating factors other than sampling error. Therefore, exploring possible moderating factors that might produce considerable heterogeneity was done using subgroup analysis, such as the learning stage, learning scaffold, teaching type, group size, duration of the intervention, measuring tool, and the subject area included in the 36 experimental designs, in order to further explore the key factors that influence critical thinking. The findings (see Table 4 ) indicate that various moderating factors have advantageous effects on critical thinking. In this situation, the subject area (chi 2  = 13.36, P  < 0.05), group size (chi 2  = 8.77, P  < 0.05), intervention duration (chi 2  = 12.18, P  < 0.01), learning scaffold (chi 2  = 9.03, P  < 0.01), and teaching type (chi 2  = 7.20, P  < 0.05) are all significant moderators that can be applied to support the cultivation of critical thinking. However, since the learning stage and the measuring tools did not significantly differ among intergroup (chi 2  = 3.15, P  = 0.21 > 0.05, and chi 2  = 0.08, P  = 0.78 > 0.05), we are unable to explain why these two factors are crucial in supporting the cultivation of critical thinking in the context of collaborative problem-solving. These are the precise outcomes, as follows:

Various learning stages influenced critical thinking positively, without significant intergroup differences (chi 2  = 3.15, P  = 0.21 > 0.05). High school was first on the list of effect sizes (ES = 1.36, P  < 0.01), then higher education (ES = 0.78, P  < 0.01), and middle school (ES = 0.73, P  < 0.01). These results show that, despite the learning stage’s beneficial influence on cultivating learners’ critical thinking, we are unable to explain why it is essential for cultivating critical thinking in the context of collaborative problem-solving.

Different teaching types had varying degrees of positive impact on critical thinking, with significant intergroup differences (chi 2  = 7.20, P  < 0.05). The effect size was ranked as follows: mixed courses (ES = 1.34, P  < 0.01), integrated courses (ES = 0.81, P  < 0.01), and independent courses (ES = 0.27, P  < 0.01). These results indicate that the most effective approach to cultivate critical thinking utilizing collaborative problem solving is through the teaching type of mixed courses.

Various intervention durations significantly improved critical thinking, and there were significant intergroup differences (chi 2  = 12.18, P  < 0.01). The effect sizes related to this variable showed a tendency to increase with longer intervention durations. The improvement in critical thinking reached a significant level (ES = 0.85, P  < 0.01) after more than 12 weeks of training. These findings indicate that the intervention duration and critical thinking’s impact are positively correlated, with a longer intervention duration having a greater effect.

Different learning scaffolds influenced critical thinking positively, with significant intergroup differences (chi 2  = 9.03, P  < 0.01). The resource-supported learning scaffold (ES = 0.69, P  < 0.01) acquired a medium-to-higher level of impact, the technique-supported learning scaffold (ES = 0.63, P  < 0.01) also attained a medium-to-higher level of impact, and the teacher-supported learning scaffold (ES = 0.92, P  < 0.01) displayed a high level of significant impact. These results show that the learning scaffold with teacher support has the greatest impact on cultivating critical thinking.

Various group sizes influenced critical thinking positively, and the intergroup differences were statistically significant (chi 2  = 8.77, P  < 0.05). Critical thinking showed a general declining trend with increasing group size. The overall effect size of 2–3 people in this situation was the biggest (ES = 0.99, P  < 0.01), and when the group size was greater than 7 people, the improvement in critical thinking was at the lower-middle level (ES < 0.5, P  < 0.01). These results show that the impact on critical thinking is positively connected with group size, and as group size grows, so does the overall impact.

Various measuring tools influenced critical thinking positively, with significant intergroup differences (chi 2  = 0.08, P  = 0.78 > 0.05). In this situation, the self-adapting measurement tools obtained an upper-medium level of effect (ES = 0.78), whereas the complete effect size of the standardized measurement tools was the largest, achieving a significant level of effect (ES = 0.84, P  < 0.01). These results show that, despite the beneficial influence of the measuring tool on cultivating critical thinking, we are unable to explain why it is crucial in fostering the growth of critical thinking by utilizing the approach of collaborative problem-solving.

Different subject areas had a greater impact on critical thinking, and the intergroup differences were statistically significant (chi 2  = 13.36, P  < 0.05). Mathematics had the greatest overall impact, achieving a significant level of effect (ES = 1.68, P  < 0.01), followed by science (ES = 1.25, P  < 0.01) and medical science (ES = 0.87, P  < 0.01), both of which also achieved a significant level of effect. Programming technology was the least effective (ES = 0.39, P  < 0.01), only having a medium-low degree of effect compared to education (ES = 0.72, P  < 0.01) and other fields (such as language, art, and social sciences) (ES = 0.58, P  < 0.01). These results suggest that scientific fields (e.g., mathematics, science) may be the most effective subject areas for cultivating critical thinking utilizing the approach of collaborative problem-solving.

The effectiveness of collaborative problem solving with regard to teaching critical thinking

According to this meta-analysis, using collaborative problem-solving as an intervention strategy in critical thinking teaching has a considerable amount of impact on cultivating learners’ critical thinking as a whole and has a favorable promotional effect on the two dimensions of critical thinking. According to certain studies, collaborative problem solving, the most frequently used critical thinking teaching strategy in curriculum instruction can considerably enhance students’ critical thinking (e.g., Liang et al., 2017 ; Liu et al., 2020 ; Cindy, 2004 ). This meta-analysis provides convergent data support for the above research views. Thus, the findings of this meta-analysis not only effectively address the first research query regarding the overall effect of cultivating critical thinking and its impact on the two dimensions of critical thinking (i.e., attitudinal tendency and cognitive skills) utilizing the approach of collaborative problem-solving, but also enhance our confidence in cultivating critical thinking by using collaborative problem-solving intervention approach in the context of classroom teaching.

Furthermore, the associated improvements in attitudinal tendency are much stronger, but the corresponding improvements in cognitive skill are only marginally better. According to certain studies, cognitive skill differs from the attitudinal tendency in classroom instruction; the cultivation and development of the former as a key ability is a process of gradual accumulation, while the latter as an attitude is affected by the context of the teaching situation (e.g., a novel and exciting teaching approach, challenging and rewarding tasks) (Halpern, 2001 ; Wei and Hong, 2022 ). Collaborative problem-solving as a teaching approach is exciting and interesting, as well as rewarding and challenging; because it takes the learners as the focus and examines problems with poor structure in real situations, and it can inspire students to fully realize their potential for problem-solving, which will significantly improve their attitudinal tendency toward solving problems (Liu et al., 2020 ). Similar to how collaborative problem-solving influences attitudinal tendency, attitudinal tendency impacts cognitive skill when attempting to solve a problem (Liu et al., 2020 ; Zhang et al., 2022 ), and stronger attitudinal tendencies are associated with improved learning achievement and cognitive ability in students (Sison, 2008 ; Zhang et al., 2022 ). It can be seen that the two specific dimensions of critical thinking as well as critical thinking as a whole are affected by collaborative problem-solving, and this study illuminates the nuanced links between cognitive skills and attitudinal tendencies with regard to these two dimensions of critical thinking. To fully develop students’ capacity for critical thinking, future empirical research should pay closer attention to cognitive skills.

The moderating effects of collaborative problem solving with regard to teaching critical thinking

In order to further explore the key factors that influence critical thinking, exploring possible moderating effects that might produce considerable heterogeneity was done using subgroup analysis. The findings show that the moderating factors, such as the teaching type, learning stage, group size, learning scaffold, duration of the intervention, measuring tool, and the subject area included in the 36 experimental designs, could all support the cultivation of collaborative problem-solving in critical thinking. Among them, the effect size differences between the learning stage and measuring tool are not significant, which does not explain why these two factors are crucial in supporting the cultivation of critical thinking utilizing the approach of collaborative problem-solving.

In terms of the learning stage, various learning stages influenced critical thinking positively without significant intergroup differences, indicating that we are unable to explain why it is crucial in fostering the growth of critical thinking.

Although high education accounts for 70.89% of all empirical studies performed by researchers, high school may be the appropriate learning stage to foster students’ critical thinking by utilizing the approach of collaborative problem-solving since it has the largest overall effect size. This phenomenon may be related to student’s cognitive development, which needs to be further studied in follow-up research.

With regard to teaching type, mixed course teaching may be the best teaching method to cultivate students’ critical thinking. Relevant studies have shown that in the actual teaching process if students are trained in thinking methods alone, the methods they learn are isolated and divorced from subject knowledge, which is not conducive to their transfer of thinking methods; therefore, if students’ thinking is trained only in subject teaching without systematic method training, it is challenging to apply to real-world circumstances (Ruggiero, 2012 ; Hu and Liu, 2015 ). Teaching critical thinking as mixed course teaching in parallel to other subject teachings can achieve the best effect on learners’ critical thinking, and explicit critical thinking instruction is more effective than less explicit critical thinking instruction (Bensley and Spero, 2014 ).

In terms of the intervention duration, with longer intervention times, the overall effect size shows an upward tendency. Thus, the intervention duration and critical thinking’s impact are positively correlated. Critical thinking, as a key competency for students in the 21st century, is difficult to get a meaningful improvement in a brief intervention duration. Instead, it could be developed over a lengthy period of time through consistent teaching and the progressive accumulation of knowledge (Halpern, 2001 ; Hu and Liu, 2015 ). Therefore, future empirical studies ought to take these restrictions into account throughout a longer period of critical thinking instruction.

With regard to group size, a group size of 2–3 persons has the highest effect size, and the comprehensive effect size decreases with increasing group size in general. This outcome is in line with some research findings; as an example, a group composed of two to four members is most appropriate for collaborative learning (Schellens and Valcke, 2006 ). However, the meta-analysis results also indicate that once the group size exceeds 7 people, small groups cannot produce better interaction and performance than large groups. This may be because the learning scaffolds of technique support, resource support, and teacher support improve the frequency and effectiveness of interaction among group members, and a collaborative group with more members may increase the diversity of views, which is helpful to cultivate critical thinking utilizing the approach of collaborative problem-solving.

With regard to the learning scaffold, the three different kinds of learning scaffolds can all enhance critical thinking. Among them, the teacher-supported learning scaffold has the largest overall effect size, demonstrating the interdependence of effective learning scaffolds and collaborative problem-solving. This outcome is in line with some research findings; as an example, a successful strategy is to encourage learners to collaborate, come up with solutions, and develop critical thinking skills by using learning scaffolds (Reiser, 2004 ; Xu et al., 2022 ); learning scaffolds can lower task complexity and unpleasant feelings while also enticing students to engage in learning activities (Wood et al., 2006 ); learning scaffolds are designed to assist students in using learning approaches more successfully to adapt the collaborative problem-solving process, and the teacher-supported learning scaffolds have the greatest influence on critical thinking in this process because they are more targeted, informative, and timely (Xu et al., 2022 ).

With respect to the measuring tool, despite the fact that standardized measurement tools (such as the WGCTA, CCTT, and CCTST) have been acknowledged as trustworthy and effective by worldwide experts, only 54.43% of the research included in this meta-analysis adopted them for assessment, and the results indicated no intergroup differences. These results suggest that not all teaching circumstances are appropriate for measuring critical thinking using standardized measurement tools. “The measuring tools for measuring thinking ability have limits in assessing learners in educational situations and should be adapted appropriately to accurately assess the changes in learners’ critical thinking.”, according to Simpson and Courtney ( 2002 , p. 91). As a result, in order to more fully and precisely gauge how learners’ critical thinking has evolved, we must properly modify standardized measuring tools based on collaborative problem-solving learning contexts.

With regard to the subject area, the comprehensive effect size of science departments (e.g., mathematics, science, medical science) is larger than that of language arts and social sciences. Some recent international education reforms have noted that critical thinking is a basic part of scientific literacy. Students with scientific literacy can prove the rationality of their judgment according to accurate evidence and reasonable standards when they face challenges or poorly structured problems (Kyndt et al., 2013 ), which makes critical thinking crucial for developing scientific understanding and applying this understanding to practical problem solving for problems related to science, technology, and society (Yore et al., 2007 ).

Suggestions for critical thinking teaching

Other than those stated in the discussion above, the following suggestions are offered for critical thinking instruction utilizing the approach of collaborative problem-solving.

First, teachers should put a special emphasis on the two core elements, which are collaboration and problem-solving, to design real problems based on collaborative situations. This meta-analysis provides evidence to support the view that collaborative problem-solving has a strong synergistic effect on promoting students’ critical thinking. Asking questions about real situations and allowing learners to take part in critical discussions on real problems during class instruction are key ways to teach critical thinking rather than simply reading speculative articles without practice (Mulnix, 2012 ). Furthermore, the improvement of students’ critical thinking is realized through cognitive conflict with other learners in the problem situation (Yang et al., 2008 ). Consequently, it is essential for teachers to put a special emphasis on the two core elements, which are collaboration and problem-solving, and design real problems and encourage students to discuss, negotiate, and argue based on collaborative problem-solving situations.

Second, teachers should design and implement mixed courses to cultivate learners’ critical thinking, utilizing the approach of collaborative problem-solving. Critical thinking can be taught through curriculum instruction (Kuncel, 2011 ; Leng and Lu, 2020 ), with the goal of cultivating learners’ critical thinking for flexible transfer and application in real problem-solving situations. This meta-analysis shows that mixed course teaching has a highly substantial impact on the cultivation and promotion of learners’ critical thinking. Therefore, teachers should design and implement mixed course teaching with real collaborative problem-solving situations in combination with the knowledge content of specific disciplines in conventional teaching, teach methods and strategies of critical thinking based on poorly structured problems to help students master critical thinking, and provide practical activities in which students can interact with each other to develop knowledge construction and critical thinking utilizing the approach of collaborative problem-solving.

Third, teachers should be more trained in critical thinking, particularly preservice teachers, and they also should be conscious of the ways in which teachers’ support for learning scaffolds can promote critical thinking. The learning scaffold supported by teachers had the greatest impact on learners’ critical thinking, in addition to being more directive, targeted, and timely (Wood et al., 2006 ). Critical thinking can only be effectively taught when teachers recognize the significance of critical thinking for students’ growth and use the proper approaches while designing instructional activities (Forawi, 2016 ). Therefore, with the intention of enabling teachers to create learning scaffolds to cultivate learners’ critical thinking utilizing the approach of collaborative problem solving, it is essential to concentrate on the teacher-supported learning scaffolds and enhance the instruction for teaching critical thinking to teachers, especially preservice teachers.

Implications and limitations

There are certain limitations in this meta-analysis, but future research can correct them. First, the search languages were restricted to English and Chinese, so it is possible that pertinent studies that were written in other languages were overlooked, resulting in an inadequate number of articles for review. Second, these data provided by the included studies are partially missing, such as whether teachers were trained in the theory and practice of critical thinking, the average age and gender of learners, and the differences in critical thinking among learners of various ages and genders. Third, as is typical for review articles, more studies were released while this meta-analysis was being done; therefore, it had a time limit. With the development of relevant research, future studies focusing on these issues are highly relevant and needed.

Conclusions

The subject of the magnitude of collaborative problem-solving’s impact on fostering students’ critical thinking, which received scant attention from other studies, was successfully addressed by this study. The question of the effectiveness of collaborative problem-solving in promoting students’ critical thinking was addressed in this study, which addressed a topic that had gotten little attention in earlier research. The following conclusions can be made:

Regarding the results obtained, collaborative problem solving is an effective teaching approach to foster learners’ critical thinking, with a significant overall effect size (ES = 0.82, z  = 12.78, P  < 0.01, 95% CI [0.69, 0.95]). With respect to the dimensions of critical thinking, collaborative problem-solving can significantly and effectively improve students’ attitudinal tendency, and the comprehensive effect is significant (ES = 1.17, z  = 7.62, P  < 0.01, 95% CI [0.87, 1.47]); nevertheless, it falls short in terms of improving students’ cognitive skills, having only an upper-middle impact (ES = 0.70, z  = 11.55, P  < 0.01, 95% CI [0.58, 0.82]).

As demonstrated by both the results and the discussion, there are varying degrees of beneficial effects on students’ critical thinking from all seven moderating factors, which were found across 36 studies. In this context, the teaching type (chi 2  = 7.20, P  < 0.05), intervention duration (chi 2  = 12.18, P  < 0.01), subject area (chi 2  = 13.36, P  < 0.05), group size (chi 2  = 8.77, P  < 0.05), and learning scaffold (chi 2  = 9.03, P  < 0.01) all have a positive impact on critical thinking, and they can be viewed as important moderating factors that affect how critical thinking develops. Since the learning stage (chi 2  = 3.15, P  = 0.21 > 0.05) and measuring tools (chi 2  = 0.08, P  = 0.78 > 0.05) did not demonstrate any significant intergroup differences, we are unable to explain why these two factors are crucial in supporting the cultivation of critical thinking in the context of collaborative problem-solving.

Data availability

All data generated or analyzed during this study are included within the article and its supplementary information files, and the supplementary information files are available in the Dataverse repository: https://doi.org/10.7910/DVN/IPFJO6 .

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Acknowledgements

This research was supported by the graduate scientific research and innovation project of Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region named “Research on in-depth learning of high school information technology courses for the cultivation of computing thinking” (No. XJ2022G190) and the independent innovation fund project for doctoral students of the College of Educational Science of Xinjiang Normal University named “Research on project-based teaching of high school information technology courses from the perspective of discipline core literacy” (No. XJNUJKYA2003).

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Xu, E., Wang, W. & Wang, Q. The effectiveness of collaborative problem solving in promoting students’ critical thinking: A meta-analysis based on empirical literature. Humanit Soc Sci Commun 10 , 16 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1057/s41599-023-01508-1

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Helping Students Hone Their Critical Thinking Skills

Used consistently, these strategies can help middle and high school teachers guide students to improve much-needed skills.

Critical thinking skills are important in every discipline, at and beyond school. From managing money to choosing which candidates to vote for in elections to making difficult career choices, students need to be prepared to take in, synthesize, and act on new information in a world that is constantly changing.

While critical thinking might seem like an abstract idea that is tough to directly instruct, there are many engaging ways to help students strengthen these skills through active learning.

Make Time for Metacognitive Reflection

Create space for students to both reflect on their ideas and discuss the power of doing so. Show students how they can push back on their own thinking to analyze and question their assumptions. Students might ask themselves, “Why is this the best answer? What information supports my answer? What might someone with a counterargument say?”

Through this reflection, students and teachers (who can model reflecting on their own thinking) gain deeper understandings of their ideas and do a better job articulating their beliefs. In a world that is go-go-go, it is important to help students understand that it is OK to take a breath and think about their ideas before putting them out into the world. And taking time for reflection helps us more thoughtfully consider others’ ideas, too.

Teach Reasoning Skills 

Reasoning skills are another key component of critical thinking, involving the abilities to think logically, evaluate evidence, identify assumptions, and analyze arguments. Students who learn how to use reasoning skills will be better equipped to make informed decisions, form and defend opinions, and solve problems. 

One way to teach reasoning is to use problem-solving activities that require students to apply their skills to practical contexts. For example, give students a real problem to solve, and ask them to use reasoning skills to develop a solution. They can then present their solution and defend their reasoning to the class and engage in discussion about whether and how their thinking changed when listening to peers’ perspectives. 

A great example I have seen involved students identifying an underutilized part of their school and creating a presentation about one way to redesign it. This project allowed students to feel a sense of connection to the problem and come up with creative solutions that could help others at school. For more examples, you might visit PBS’s Design Squad , a resource that brings to life real-world problem-solving.

Ask Open-Ended Questions 

Moving beyond the repetition of facts, critical thinking requires students to take positions and explain their beliefs through research, evidence, and explanations of credibility. 

When we pose open-ended questions, we create space for classroom discourse inclusive of diverse, perhaps opposing, ideas—grounds for rich exchanges that support deep thinking and analysis. 

For example, “How would you approach the problem?” and “Where might you look to find resources to address this issue?” are two open-ended questions that position students to think less about the “right” answer and more about the variety of solutions that might already exist. 

Journaling, whether digitally or physically in a notebook, is another great way to have students answer these open-ended prompts—giving them time to think and organize their thoughts before contributing to a conversation, which can ensure that more voices are heard. 

Once students process in their journal, small group or whole class conversations help bring their ideas to life. Discovering similarities between answers helps reveal to students that they are not alone, which can encourage future participation in constructive civil discourse.

Teach Information Literacy 

Education has moved far past the idea of “Be careful of what is on Wikipedia, because it might not be true.” With AI innovations making their way into classrooms, teachers know that informed readers must question everything. 

Understanding what is and is not a reliable source and knowing how to vet information are important skills for students to build and utilize when making informed decisions. You might start by introducing the idea of bias: Articles, ads, memes, videos, and every other form of media can push an agenda that students may not see on the surface. Discuss credibility, subjectivity, and objectivity, and look at examples and nonexamples of trusted information to prepare students to be well-informed members of a democracy.

One of my favorite lessons is about the Pacific Northwest tree octopus . This project asks students to explore what appears to be a very real website that provides information on this supposedly endangered animal. It is a wonderful, albeit over-the-top, example of how something might look official even when untrue, revealing that we need critical thinking to break down “facts” and determine the validity of the information we consume. 

A fun extension is to have students come up with their own website or newsletter about something going on in school that is untrue. Perhaps a change in dress code that requires everyone to wear their clothes inside out or a change to the lunch menu that will require students to eat brussels sprouts every day. 

Giving students the ability to create their own falsified information can help them better identify it in other contexts. Understanding that information can be “too good to be true” can help them identify future falsehoods. 

Provide Diverse Perspectives 

Consider how to keep the classroom from becoming an echo chamber. If students come from the same community, they may have similar perspectives. And those who have differing perspectives may not feel comfortable sharing them in the face of an opposing majority. 

To support varying viewpoints, bring diverse voices into the classroom as much as possible, especially when discussing current events. Use primary sources: videos from YouTube, essays and articles written by people who experienced current events firsthand, documentaries that dive deeply into topics that require some nuance, and any other resources that provide a varied look at topics. 

I like to use the Smithsonian “OurStory” page , which shares a wide variety of stories from people in the United States. The page on Japanese American internment camps is very powerful because of its first-person perspectives. 

Practice Makes Perfect 

To make the above strategies and thinking routines a consistent part of your classroom, spread them out—and build upon them—over the course of the school year. You might challenge students with information and/or examples that require them to use their critical thinking skills; work these skills explicitly into lessons, projects, rubrics, and self-assessments; or have students practice identifying misinformation or unsupported arguments.

Critical thinking is not learned in isolation. It needs to be explored in English language arts, social studies, science, physical education, math. Every discipline requires students to take a careful look at something and find the best solution. Often, these skills are taken for granted, viewed as a by-product of a good education, but true critical thinking doesn’t just happen. It requires consistency and commitment.

In a moment when information and misinformation abound, and students must parse reams of information, it is imperative that we support and model critical thinking in the classroom to support the development of well-informed citizens.

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Strategies to Increase Critical Thinking Skills in students

Matthew Joseph October 2, 2019 Blog , Engage Better , Lesson Plan Better , Personalize Student Learning Better

In This Post:

• The importance of helping students increase critical thinking skills.
• Ways to promote the essential skills needed to analyze and evaluate.
• Strategies to incorporate critical thinking into your instruction.

We ask our teachers to be “future-ready” or say that we are teaching “for jobs that don’t exist yet.” These are powerful statements. At the same time, they give teachers the impression that we have to drastically change what we are doing .

So how do we plan education for an unknown job market or unknown needs?

My answer: We can’t predict the jobs, but whatever they are, students will need to think critically to do them. So, our job is to teach our students HOW to think, not WHAT to think.

Helping Students Become Critical Thinkers

My answer is rooted in the call to empower our students to be critical thinkers. I believe that to be critical thinkers, educators need to provide students with the strategies they need. And we need to ask more than just surface-level questions.

Questions to students must motivate them to dig up background knowledge. They should inspire them to make connections to real-world scenarios. These make the learning more memorable and meaningful.

Critical thinking is a general term. I believe this term means that students effectively identify, analyze, and evaluate content or skills. In this process, they (the students) will discover and present convincing reasons in support of their answers or thinking.

You can look up critical thinking and get many definitions like this one from Wikipedia: “ Critical thinking consists of a mental process of analyzing or evaluating information, particularly statements or propositions that people have offered as true. ”

Essential Skills for Critical Thinking

In my current role as director of curriculum and instruction, I work to promote the use of 21st-century tools and, more importantly, thinking skills. Some essential skills that are the basis for critical thinking are:

• Communication and Information skills
• Thinking and Problem-Solving skills
• Interpersonal and Self- Directional skills
• Collaboration skills

These four bullets are skills students are going to need in any field and in all levels of education. Hence my answer to the question. We need to teach our students to think critically and for themselves.

One of the goals of education is to prepare students to learn through discovery . Providing opportunities to practice being critical thinkers will assist students in analyzing others’ thinking and examining the logic of others.

Understanding others is an essential skill in collaboration and in everyday life. Critical thinking will allow students to do more than just memorize knowledge.

Ask Questions

So how do we do this? One recommendation is for educators to work in-depth questioning strategies into a lesson launch.

Ask thoughtful questions to allow for answers with sound reasoning. Then, word conversations and communication to shape students’ thinking. Quick answers often result in very few words and no eye contact, which are skills we don’t want to promote.

When you are asking students questions and they provide a solution, try some of these to promote further thinking:

• Could you elaborate further on that point?
• Will you express that point in another way?
• Can you give me an illustration?
• Would you give me an example?
• Will you you provide more details?
• Could you be more specific?
• Do we need to consider another point of view?
• Is there another way to look at this question?

Utilizing critical thinking skills could be seen as a change in the paradigm of teaching and learning. Engagement in education will enhance the collaboration among teachers and students. It will also provide a way for students to succeed even if the school system had to start over.

[scroll down to keep reading]

Promoting critical thinking into all aspects of instruction.

Engagement, application, and collaboration are skills that withstand the test of time. I also promote the integration of critical thinking into every aspect of instruction.

In my experience, I’ve found a few ways to make this happen.

Begin lessons/units with a probing question: It shouldn’t be a question you can answer with a ‘yes’ or a ‘no.’ These questions should inspire discovery learning and problem-solving.

Encourage Creativity: I have seen teachers prepare projects before they give it to their students many times. For example, designing snowmen or other “creative” projects. By doing the design work or by cutting all the circles out beforehand, it removes creativity options.

It may help the classroom run more smoothly if every child’s material is already cut out, but then every student’s project looks the same. Students don’t have to think on their own or problem solve.

Not having everything “glue ready” in advance is a good thing. Instead, give students all the supplies needed to create a snowman, and let them do it on their own.

Giving independence will allow students to become critical thinkers because they will have to create their own product with the supplies you give them. This might be an elementary example, but it’s one we can relate to any grade level or project.

Try not to jump to help too fast – let the students work through a productive struggle .

Build in opportunities for students to find connections in learning.  Encouraging students to make connections to a real-life situation and identify patterns is a great way to practice their critical thinking skills. The use of real-world scenarios will increase rigor, relevance, and critical thinking.

A few other techniques to encourage critical thinking are:

• Use analogies
• Promote interaction among students
• Ask open-ended questions
• Allow reflection time
• Use real-life problems
• Allow for thinking practice

Critical thinking prepares students to think for themselves for the rest of their lives. I also believe critical thinkers are less likely to go along with the crowd because they think for themselves.

About Matthew X. Joseph, Ed.D.

Dr. Matthew X. Joseph has been a school and district leader in many capacities in public education over his 25 years in the field. Experiences such as the Director of Digital Learning and Innovation in Milford Public Schools (MA), elementary school principal in Natick, MA and Attleboro, MA, classroom teacher, and district professional development specialist have provided Matt incredible insights on how to best support teaching and learning. This experience has led to nationally publishing articles and opportunities to speak at multiple state and national events. He is the author of Power of Us: Creating Collaborative Schools and co-author of Modern Mentoring , Reimagining Teacher Mentorship (Due out, fall 2019). His master’s degree is in special education and his Ed.D. in Educational Leadership from Boston College.

Visit Matthew’s Blog

A guide to improving critical thinking skills

Critical thinking: you might have seen it featured in job ads or heard people talking about the importance of critical thinking. But what's critical thinking? And how do you go about adjusting the way you think about things to become less emotional, and more critical? 

That’s a lot of questions, but this guide has the answers. Below, we’ll break down the complex concept of critical thinking into simpler chunks, as well as providing examples of critical thinking in action. By the end, you’ll have a much clearer picture of what critical thinking is and how it can help you grow in your career and personal life. 

What's critical thinking? 

Let's start with a simple definition of critical thinking to understand what it is and the basics of how it works. Critical thinking is simply a way of looking at things in a more rational, logical way.  

Usually, when faced with a situation, decision or dilemma, you might let your emotions, biases and other factors get involved in the thinking process. That’s completely natural. We all have our own ways of thinking about things and looking at the world. 

But, if you’ve ever wanted to see things differently with a clearer mind, free of emotions and biases, that’s what critical thinking is all about. 

Thinking critically is about quieting those emotions that might impact your decision-making. It’s  about looking at a situation or problem from rational angles, analysing all the information available and coming to a logical conclusion. 

Here are several steps to critical thinking: 

• Analysis: The gathering and understanding of data and information. 
• Interpretation: Drawing out meaning from the available data. 
• Inference: The ability to make conclusions based on the data analysed. 
• Explanation: Being able to communicate one’s conclusions and findings with others. 
• Evaluation: Questioning the conclusions and looking at other angles and possibilities. 
• Self-regulation: Understanding how one’s own biases may impact the process. 

Examples of critical thinking in problem-solving 

One of the best ways to see the benefits of critical thinking is when you’re faced with a problem. When you come up against some sort of challenge, you might find yourself stumped or struggling to find the right solution. 

That’s all normal and natural, and critical thinking can help you approach challenges and problems more confidently. You’ll be able to see those kinds of situations from new angles revealing previously unseen solutions along the way. 

Example : Suppose you're in an interview and faced with a challenging question about your weaknesses. Instead of avoiding the question, apply critical thinking to identify a genuine weakness. Explain your strategies for improvement, showcase your self-awareness and commitment to growth. 

Examples of critical thinking in decision-making 

Decision-making. It can be hard. You might struggle when weighing up the pros, cons and potential outcomes of one decision or the other. If you feel that way, then critical thinking could help. 

When you apply critical thinking to a big decision, you cut out all the noise and emotion , leaving nothing but the facts and stats. These skills allow you to analyse situations fairly and logically, reaching smart, sensible conclusions with the best potential outcomes. 

Example: Imagine you have multiple job offers on the table. By applying critical thinking, you can carefully assess each offer by considering factors like company culture, growth and opportunities. Also, you could consider things like job responsibilities, and alignment with your long-term career goals. 

Examples of critical thinking in creativity 

Creativity is all about letting your imagination loose and thinking outside the box. It might not seem like critical thinking can help, but in action critical thinking can be the key to helping you unlock more of your imaginative potential. You might discover insights and ideas you wouldn’t have thought of without it. 

There are several creative critical thinking techniques, like mind maps and brainstorms, that you can use in many situations. When brainstorming, try to see a situation from lots of angles. Think about a situation in different ways to come up with related ideas, which is one of the cornerstones of critical thinking. 

Example: Imagine you’re a teacher trying to think of a new lesson plan to teach kids about a difficult subject. If you rely solely on your experiences and favourite systems, you may struggle to think of anything new. But, by thinking critically, you can explore new ways to approach the subject and teach it to your class. 

Examples of critical thinking in communication 

Communication is another area where critical thinking can make a massive difference. When you let your emotions influence what you say, you might end up saying something you don’t mean. If you’ve ever felt like your mood has influenced discussions with colleagues or people outside work, critical thinking could help. 

It helps you to focus more clearly and have more productive, pleasant conversations with others. It’s also helpful to apply critical thinking if you have a disagreement with someone or simply have differing ideas. It can help you see things from their perspective. 

Example: Let’s say that two members of your team are arguing about which one of their solutions to a problem is best. With critical thinking, you can put your opinions to the side and help to resolve the conflict in a rational and level-headed way. 

Examples of critical thinking in analysis and evaluation 

Analysing and evaluating information is an important part of everyday life. You might be given information that you need to process. But naturally you have biases that may prevent you from independently assessing the data you receive. 

Critical thinking can help you see information in a different light, absorbing it in a rational and logical way. It'll allow you to allow you to evaluate it based purely on facts, rather than bias or preconception. 

Example: Imagine you just got assigned a new task at work with a technology you haven’t used before. It’s easy to be overwhelmed, but by thinking critically and analysing the relevant instructions, you can set up a clear plan of action. This will help you become better prepared to tackle the challenge of learning something new. 

Examples of critical thinking in self-reflection 

Another important aspect of critical thinking is being able to reflect on your own thoughts, actions and beliefs. It’s important to question the motives and origins of certain ideas or biases that may be present and could be affecting your decision-making. Through critical introspection, you may uncover biases you were unaware of and can then take actions to improve your future actions or reactions. 

Example: Imagine you're reflecting on your recent job performance. Instead of simply accepting your accomplishments at face value, you apply critical thinking. You assess not only what you achieved but also how you achieved it. You question whether there were missed opportunities for improvement, and you identify areas where you can further develop your skills. 

The benefits of developing critical thinking skills 

So, why might you want to focus on improving your critical thinking capability through critical thinking exercises? Critical thinking can offer an array of unique benefits, making you a stronger, better and happier worker . Some of the benefits of critical thinking are: 

Improved decision making: Critical thinking can help you make more informed decisions. Rather than rushing to hasty calls or letting your emotions and other factors cloud your judgement. 

Enhanced problem-solving skills: When you’re able to think critically about things, you can become a much more effective problem solver. You’ll be able to see problems from different angles, gathering information effectively to arrive at a logical solution. 

Improved communication skills: Often, emotions and biases can negatively impact our communications with the people around us. But, with a critical thinking approach, it’s much easier to communicate clearly and effectively, even with those who have different views. 

Better understanding of different perspectives: A big part of becoming a critical thinker is becoming a better listener. It can be hugely helpful in starting to understand and accept other ways of looking at things. 

Increased creativity: Critical thinking can also be helpful for creativity . When looking at problems and situations rationally and analysing information, you might often come across unique and creative ideas you hadn’t previously imagined. 

The barriers to critical thinking 

Critical thinking isn’t always easy to practise and you might find you encounter a range of barriers when trying to approach problems critically: 

Personal biases and prejudices 

Personal bias is the number one barrier to critical thinking, and it can be very hard to avoid. When thinking about a problem or trying to make decisions, especially involving other people, our opinions and biases can impact our view. 

Emotional influences 

Emotions can also get in the way when trying to think critically. It’s simply a part of human nature, and it’s very difficult to try to 'switch your feelings off'. It can be challenging to make a rational, logical decision in certain circumstances. But, by improving your critical thinking skills, you can learn to detach emotions from decision making. 

Lack of knowledge and understanding 

In some cases, a simple lack of knowledge can make you unable to approach a situation in a balanced and rational way. 

External pressures 

There may also be external factors beyond our control which influence the decisions you make and the way you think about things. For example, deadlines or the opinions of stakeholders and decision-makers. 

Lack of time 

Sometimes, a simple lack of time is all that’s needed to interfere with the critical thinking process. It takes time to look at things critically and gather information. 

Critical thinking in practice 

So, what are the actual effects of critical thinking when you take this approach and put it into action at work? Here are some of the ways in which work-based critical thinking can manifest: 

Decision-making processes 

Critical thinking is exceptionally useful for making workplace decisions in the fairest of ways. For example, who to hire for a certain role or whether to take one job over another. 

Conflict resolution 

Critical thinking can also be very useful when you’re dealing with challenging situations with colleagues or your manager. Rather than making emotional or biassed decisions, you can think about how to resolve the issues in the fairest and most reasonable way.  

Innovation 

Critical thinking can also be a driving force for innovation. When you think about problems critically, you may come across unique solutions you might not have otherwise discovered. 

Evaluating information 

Critical thinking at work can help you evaluate complex data and information. It can help you make well-informed decisions, identify potential risks and develop solutions around strategy, project management and problem-solving. 

Making informed decisions 

Critical thinking helps you gather and analyse relevant data and consider various perspectives. It allows you to weigh the pros and cons before arriving at a well-informed decision. So, whether you’re in a leadership role or part of a team, these critical thinking skills can help you make informed decisions:  

Problem-solving 

Critical thinking and problem-solving skills can help you achieve your business objectives. It allows you to break down tough challenges and figure out what's really causing the issue. You’re able to come up with creative fixes and make decisions that work. Ultimately, keeping things efficient and effective. 

Communication 

Critical thinking can also make you a more effective communicator with those around you. You’re able to become a better listener and build your understanding of other people’s views and personalities. It may lead to better and happier friendships and relationships. 

Developing critical thinking skills 

Active listening  .

If you’re eager to start working on your own critical thinking skills, a good way to get started is to become a more active listener . Don’t just hear what people are saying - listen actively to understand, considering the why and how behind their words, ideas and opinions. Ask questions to get more data, and challenge assumptions or misconceptions. 

Practise mindfulness 

Take time to consider your approach. From the words you say to the actions you take, to the behaviour and opinions of those around you. By focusing more on these different aspects, rather than simply letting them pass you by, you can start to master the basics of critical thinking. 

Be patient 

When dealing with a difficult situation, like a challenge at work or a relationship issue, try to apply the fundamentals of critical thinking. Be patient. Don’t rush to a conclusion or decision. Think carefully and deliberately to reach a decision that seems fair. 

It’s also important to remember that critical thinking takes time to develop and practise. Becoming a good critical thinker is a continuous process of learning and development, requiring constant commitment and the ability to self-regulate and self-evaluate.  

How to improve critical thinking skills 

Once you’ve got the basics of critical thinking skills, there are still many ways to improve them over time. So, how can you develop critical thinking skills further? The main way to improve is through understanding what critical thinking involves. It’s about using your skills as much as possible in many aspects of everyday life, including work and personal life. 

When you face a problem or situation, make the choice to think about it critically, rather than simply acting on instinct or making emotional decisions.  

Reflect, analyse different viewpoints and question assumptions or ideas that might be influencing your train of thought. With time and repetition, it’s possible to hone your critical thinking abilities.  

Tools and techniques for critical thinking 

There are various useful tools and methods that can help you put critical thinking processes and concepts into action, including: 

SWOT analysis 

SWOT stands for strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats. A SWOT analysis is when you take those factors into account to come to a fair assessment of the situation. It's often a useful way to evaluate how well a project is performing and where it can be improved. 

Fishbone diagram 

A fishbone diagram is a useful tool that can help you visualise a problem and learn about its causes. It makes it easier to find a solution. The 'fishbone' name comes from the fact that the diagram involves a central line with adjoining lines and arrows coming off either side. These represent various factors that contribute to the problem or situation, making the final diagram look like a fish skeleton. 

Mind mapping 

Mind mapping is another kind of diagram that can be useful for visualising situations and extrapolating information about a given subject or problem. Start with the main subject in the centre, and then branch off with connected thoughts and considerations. You can also think about adding sub-topics and notes, resulting in a 'map' of the situation. 

Cost-benefit analysis  

A cost-benefit analysis is another handy technique that many businesses use when trying to make decisions. It has a lot in common with critical thinking, as it's all about taking in information and making rational conclusions based on the available data.  

As the name implies, a cost-benefit analysis focuses on measuring how much a decision or action will cost and what benefits it can provide. You can then analyse that information to determine if the decision offers good value and makes sense or not. 

Decision trees 

A decision tree is a simple framework in which you write down a potential decision and then branch off from it. It allows you to imagine what would happen based on various decisions.  

Decision trees can help you visualise the prospective consequences of every decision, giving you the information to make the best possible choice. 

Benefits of a workplace culture that encourages critical thinking 

It can be hugely beneficial to be part of a workplace that encourages critical thinking as part of the culture. It can lead to many advantages, including: 

Improved decision-making: When critical thinking is part of the culture, employees are more likely to think carefully about big decisions and make the smartest calls. 

Increased innovation and creativity: Critical thinking skills can also help you develop innovation and creativity. They encourage outside-the-box thinking, rather than restricting your own biases and limitations. 

Better problem solving: One of the best benefits of critical thinking in the workplace is how it can help you solve problems more effectively. You’re able to take all the necessary info into account to arrive at a sensible and efficient solution. 

Higher employee engagement and job satisfaction : When you’re encouraged to think critically, you’re more likely to engage at work and happier overall.  

The future of critical thinking 

As the world changes and new technologies emerge, the concept of critical thinking could change in the years to come. There's a concern among various experts in the field of AI that the proliferation of AI could give people weaker critical thinking skills. As people grow to rely on technological tools like AI bots to solve problems and make decisions for you. 

It could be particularly impactful on children and younger generations. Children grow up in a world with so many technological tools and services to help with almost every aspect of their lives. But even if critical thinking becomes trickier to learn in the future, it'll still be a very valuable and useful skill for all. 

Conclusion 

There's no doubt that critical and creative thinking skills are important in any workplace. These skills allow you to think about problems in the most fair and reasonable way, making the logical and rational conclusions. These skills can be perfect for problem-solving and dealing with big and tricky decisions.  

If you’re wanting to improve the way you deal with everyday situations in a more logical way, then applying critical thinking skills is a great practise.  

What are critical thinking skills, and why are they important?  

Critical thinking skills are the ability to look at situations in an objective and rational way. It’s about analysing available data to draw logical conclusions, without letting your own biases interfere. It’s important at work, as it allows you to make rational, logical decisions and solve problems fairly. 

How can I improve my critical thinking skills?  

There are many ways to work on your critical thinking skills. Practise is key, and skills can improve with repetition. Start by approaching problems and decisions in more rational ways. Clear your mind of biases and focus purely on the facts and information available to you. 

Can critical thinking skills be taught, or are they innate?  

Critical thinking is very much a learned skill. It’s human nature to allow our biases and preconceptions to affect our thinking and decision-making. But by learning critical thinking, it’s possible to change the way you consider things. 

What are some examples of critical thinking in everyday life?  

An example of a critical thinking decision in everyday life might be trying to find a new job. You can carry out research and read company reviews. You can also source varying job descriptions and look at specifications like the salary to make the right choice for you. Other examples include deciding on diet and lifestyle factors, buying big purchases or solving problems at home. 

What are the most common barriers to critical thinking, and how can I overcome them?  

The main barriers to critical thinking are personal or shared biases, emotions and preconceptions. Through your experiences and interactions with other people, you may develop certain ideas or notions that can impact your thinking and decision-making abilities. Emotions like fear or social pressure can also obstruct critical thinking. Overcoming these barriers involves practise and the ability to free your mind of biases. 

How can critical thinking skills benefit my career development?  

Many employers value critical thinking skills. By using them effectively in the workplace, you may find it easier to deal with difficult colleagues and add value to your company.  

How can I encourage my colleagues to develop their critical thinking skills?  

A good way is to lead by example. Demonstrate logical and rational thinking to solve problems. You can pull out resources like fishbone diagrams or mind-mapping, where people may feel inspired to follow your approach.  

Are there any industries or job roles where critical thinking skills are particularly important?  

Industries including Education and Science are particularly reliant on critical thinking, along with Healthcare, Engineering and Finance, but this skill can be valuable in almost any line of work. 

What are some common misconceptions about critical thinking?  

You might believe that critical thinking has little practical use, or that it's only useful in settings like scientific research and education. But, having an open and analytical mind can be hugely beneficial in many industries and situations. 

How can I measure my progress in developing my critical thinking skills? 

A good way to measure your critical thinking skills is to think critically about where you’ve used them and the improvements you’ve seen. Consider problems they’ve helped you solve, and the impacts of the decisions you made through critical thinking. You could also ask for feedback from the people around you.  

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Improve Problem-Solving and Develop Critical Thinking Skills Online

Written by: Bianca Villanueva – BS (Psychology)

Last updated date : January 12, 2023

• 1. What Is Problem Solving?
• 2. What Are the Different Problem Solving Skills?
• 3. How Can Problem Solving Skills Be Improved?
• 4. How Can Problem Solving Skills Be Improved?
• 5. How to Develop Critical Thinking Skills
• 6. Journaling to Develop Critical Thinking  

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Try to remember the last 24 hours leading up to now. What did you do? What activities did you do? I’m pretty sure you were faced with something where you had to think of a solution to. Whether it’s a small inconvenience or a normal problem you have at work, you’ve used some form of problem solving. Even the most mundane of days will require you to solve problems.

Although, there are times when we think that some people are better problem solvers than others. You might be thinking that solutions come so naturally to them. However, this is not the case. Take Albert Einstein for example. Many people consider him to be one of greatest problem solvers of all time. Lots of people think he’d be the kind of person who makes decisions quickly and effectively. Actually, he said, “if I had an hour to solve a problem I’d spend 55 minutes thinking about the problem and five minutes thinking about solutions.” As you can see, even the best problem solvers aren’t always quick to make decisions.

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What Is Problem Solving?

What Are the Different Problem Solving Skills?

Identifying the problem

Like the like problem-solving, we said, this is the first important step that needs to be done before even thinking about solutions. Gathering as information about the situation will give you a good idea of what you’re facing. It’s knowing the “who”, “what”, “when”, “where”, and “why” of a situation so that you can tackle the problem from all sides.

Brainstorming

This skill involves coming up with many ideas at once. You may have encountered this in group projects where you throw out ideas now and think about the consequences later. If you’re good at brainstorming, it means you can spew out ideas quickly, without fear of criticism, and also take in the ideas of others without judgment.

This is when you try to view the problem from different perspectives. Different fields have various ways of analyzing problems. For example, before we make decisions, we do a risk-benefit analysis. In other words, we run the pros and cons of each option. It’s something many people do even on a subconscious level. Analyzing helps you decide what the best course of action to take will be.

The best problem solvers are people who can think outside the box. They’re not chained to one aspect of the problem. What Einstein said, “You cannot solve a problem with the same consciousness that created it.” When you find yourself facing a problem you can’t solve, being creative helps you tackle the problem from another viewpoint.

There’s more to a problem than just logic. If the problem involves others, you need to take into account who they are as people. Do they support the solution? Will they agree or cooperate with your plan? Why or why not? Many people believe that emotions dull reason, but they actually ground you to reality. After all, no solution works without the people who execute it.

Critical thinking

Logic and reason are two of the most important tools in problem-solving. It’s one thing to have an idea on how to solve a problem, but connecting ideas together to come up with a viable solution is something else. Critical thinking is putting these skills together into a process or method to better judge which option is the best.

Coming up with great solutions doesn’t mean anything if you can’t bring these ideas into practice. What sets apart great problem solvers is their will to see their visions through. That’s why plans not only need to be creative, they have to be feasible. They need to be possible to carry out by the people involved. Otherwise, it falls apart.

How Can Problem Solving Skills Be Improved?

• The desire to learn more. They try to understand what they can about the problem. When they can’t, they consult someone like an expert who can help. More importantly, they know when to ask for help.
• They see the big picture . They analyze all the factors and stakeholders involved when they make decisions.
• They’re committed to their plans . Execution needs commitment. It won’t work if you’re willing to give up at the slightest inconvenience. Instead, be flexible.

Steps in Critical Thinking

1. Identify and define the problem

Ask yourself if there is a problem. If there’s no problem, ask yourself if it can still be improved. Be specific about the problem so you have a sure starting point. You might even find you have more than one problem to tackle.

2. Gather info

Problems are solved better when you get the whole picture, not just what you immediately experience. It’s easier and faster to come up with solutions with less uncertainty.

3. Analyze the data

In any field, there are different ways to analyze a situation. What are your strengths? Weaknesses? What challenges do you expect along the way? What will happen if you don’t solve this problem? Who is affected by your decision here? Figure out what you find important or your goals in context of the situation.

4. Brainstorming

Like what we’ve mentioned, brainstorming involves coming up with solutions off the top of your head, regardless of any criticism it might receive. Quantity, not quality, matters in this step, so make sure to write down your options.

This is the part where you start to narrow down your options and pick the best solution. You can even find a solution to solve more than one problem you have, or combine different solutions. Most people run the pros and cons of their problems and pick the solution with the least amount of cons or most amount of pros.

You need to write down the step-by-step process of your solution. That way, the things you need to do are chunked into smaller, easier tasks. Be specific, and make sure it’s feasible. Set deadlines as well which can help you commit to your solution.

7. Execute your plan

Gather the resources you need and start. However, even if things don’t go as planned, have backup plans ready. So apart from discipline, you also need flexibility.

8. Evaluate your solution

Not all solutions are perfect. It’s normal to feel frustrated if things don’t work out. What matters is that you think about what went wrong and how it could be improved for next time.

How to Develop Critical Thinking Skills

One of the most important things you need to develop your critical thinking skills is dealing with your biases. Many people fall victim to their prejudices and faulty reasoning which cloud their judgement. In this case, it helps to imagine how other people see the situation. What would my boss suggest if he/she were brainstorming with me? What kind of ideas would my smart friend put forward? Are the people in question going to see this solution the same way I do?

Another way to analyze your decisions is to consider how it affects the people involved. Before you make any decision, always consider the outcome. You should train your brain to automatically think of the “what if”s and “so what”s. Make sure you think about both positive and negative outcomes. Don’t over-complicate things. Keeping things simple is something many people forget to do. While it is important to take some time to think about what to do, there comes a point when it takes too much time. Sometimes keeping it simple can get the job done just as well.

Journaling to Develop Critical Thinking  

The truth is, it’s simply easier to think when everything’s been said and done. When our minds are clearer, decisions are easier to make. Good ideas pop out easier when nothing stressful is occupying your mind. That’s why it might be helpful to keep a chart of your successes and mistakes. Looking back at how you did can give you insight on how you make decisions.

Pick a time of the day when you’re in a relaxed state of mind, like before you sleep. Write down decisions that you made throughout the day that stuck out for you. Then, write down how you could have come to a better decision. For your mistakes, what questions should you have asked yourself? What thought process did you follow instead? For your successes, what questions did you ask that helped you  succeed?

Note that critical thinking won’t develop overnight. You need to make some right and wrong decisions again and again before you see any improvement. On some days, you’ll doubt the decisions you make– even the best ones. Self-doubt is part of the process, but learn to build confidence in your decision-making process. With the right mindset and a lot of practice, you’ll develop  problem solving  skills in no time!

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50 Problem-Solving and Critical Thinking Examples

Critical thinking and problem solving are essential skills for success in the 21st century. Critical thinking is the ability to analyze information, evaluate evidence, and draw logical conclusions. Problem solving is the ability to apply critical thinking to find effective solutions to various challenges. Both skills require creativity, curiosity, and persistence. Developing critical thinking and problem solving skills can help students improve their academic performance, enhance their career prospects, and become more informed and engaged citizens.

Sanju Pradeepa

In today’s complex and fast-paced world, the ability to think critically and solve problems effectively has become a vital skill for success in all areas of life. Whether it’s navigating professional challenges, making sound decisions, or finding innovative solutions, critical thinking and problem-solving are key to overcoming obstacles and achieving desired outcomes. In this blog post, we will explore problem-solving and critical thinking examples.

Table of Contents

Developing the skills needed for critical thinking and problem solving.

It is not enough to simply recognize an issue; we must use the right tools and techniques to address it. To do this, we must learn how to define and identify the problem or task at hand, gather relevant information from reliable sources, analyze and compare data to draw conclusions, make logical connections between different ideas, generate a solution or action plan, and make a recommendation.

The first step in developing these skills is understanding what the problem or task is that needs to be addressed. This requires careful consideration of all available information in order to form an accurate picture of what needs to be done. Once the issue has been identified, gathering reliable sources of data can help further your understanding of it. Sources could include interviews with customers or stakeholders, surveys, industry reports, and analysis of customer feedback.

After collecting relevant information from reliable sources, it’s important to analyze and compare the data in order to draw meaningful conclusions about the situation at hand. This helps us better understand our options for addressing an issue by providing context for decision-making. Once you have analyzed the data you collected, making logical connections between different ideas can help you form a more complete picture of the situation and inform your potential solutions.

Once you have analyzed your options for addressing an issue based on all available data points, it’s time to generate a solution or action plan that takes into account considerations such as cost-effectiveness and feasibility. It’s also important to consider the risk factors associated with any proposed solutions in order to ensure that they are responsible before moving forward with implementation. Finally, once all the analysis has been completed, it is time to make a recommendation based on your findings, which should take into account any objectives set out by stakeholders at the beginning of this process as well as any other pertinent factors discovered throughout the analysis stage.

By following these steps carefully when faced with complex issues, one can effectively use critical thinking and problem-solving skills in order to achieve desired outcomes more efficiently than would otherwise be possible without them, while also taking responsibility for decisions made along the way.

What Does Critical Thinking Involve: 5 Essential Skill

Problem-solving and critical thinking examples.

Problem-solving and critical thinking are key skills that are highly valued in any professional setting. These skills enable individuals to analyze complex situations, make informed decisions, and find innovative solutions. Here, we present 25 examples of problem-solving and critical thinking. problem-solving scenarios to help you cultivate and enhance these skills.

Ethical dilemma: A company faces a situation where a client asks for a product that does not meet quality standards. The team must decide how to address the client’s request without compromising the company’s credibility or values.

Brainstorming session: A team needs to come up with new ideas for a marketing campaign targeting a specific demographic. Through an organized brainstorming session, they explore various approaches and analyze their potential impact.

Troubleshooting technical issues : An IT professional receives a ticket indicating a network outage. They analyze the issue, assess potential causes (hardware, software, or connectivity), and solve the problem efficiently.

Negotiation : During contract negotiations, representatives from two companies must find common ground to strike a mutually beneficial agreement, considering the needs and limitations of both parties.

Project management: A project manager identifies potential risks and develops contingency plans to address unforeseen obstacles, ensuring the project stays on track.

Decision-making under pressure: In a high-stakes situation, a medical professional must make a critical decision regarding a patient’s treatment, weighing all available information and considering potential risks.

Conflict resolution: A team encounters conflicts due to differing opinions or approaches. The team leader facilitates a discussion to reach a consensus while considering everyone’s perspectives.

Data analysis: A data scientist is presented with a large dataset and is tasked with extracting valuable insights. They apply analytical techniques to identify trends, correlations, and patterns that can inform decision-making.

Customer service: A customer service representative encounters a challenging customer complaint and must employ active listening and problem-solving skills to address the issue and provide a satisfactory resolution.

Market research : A business seeks to expand into a new market. They conduct thorough market research, analyzing consumer behavior, competitor strategies, and economic factors to make informed market-entry decisions.

Creative problem-solvin g: An engineer faces a design challenge and must think outside the box to come up with a unique and innovative solution that meets project requirements.

Change management: During a company-wide transition, managers must effectively communicate the change, address employees’ concerns, and facilitate a smooth transition process.

Crisis management: When a company faces a public relations crisis, effective critical thinking is necessary to analyze the situation, develop a response strategy, and minimize potential damage to the company’s reputation.

Cost optimization : A financial analyst identifies areas where expenses can be reduced while maintaining operational efficiency, presenting recommendations for cost savings.

Time management : An employee has multiple deadlines to meet. They assess the priority of each task, develop a plan, and allocate time accordingly to achieve optimal productivity.

Quality control: A production manager detects an increase in product defects and investigates the root causes, implementing corrective actions to enhance product quality.

Strategic planning: An executive team engages in strategic planning to define long-term goals, assess market trends, and identify growth opportunities.

Cross-functional collaboration: Multiple teams with different areas of expertise must collaborate to develop a comprehensive solution, combining their knowledge and skills.

Training and development : A manager identifies skill gaps in their team and designs training programs to enhance critical thinking, problem-solving, and decision-making abilities.

Risk assessment : A risk management professional evaluates potential risks associated with a new business venture, weighing their potential impact and developing strategies to mitigate them.

Continuous improvement: An operations manager analyzes existing processes, identifies inefficiencies, and introduces improvements to enhance productivity and customer satisfaction.

Customer needs analysis: A product development team conducts extensive research to understand customer needs and preferences, ensuring that the resulting product meets those requirements.

Crisis decision-making: A team dealing with a crisis must think quickly, assess the situation, and make timely decisions with limited information.

Marketing campaign analysis : A marketing team evaluates the success of a recent campaign, analyzing key performance indicators to understand its impact on sales and customer engagement.

Constructive feedback: A supervisor provides feedback to an employee, highlighting areas for improvement and offering constructive suggestions for growth.

Conflict resolution in a team project: Team members engaged in a project have conflicting ideas on the approach. They must engage in open dialogue, actively listen to each other’s perspectives, and reach a compromise that aligns with the project’s goals.

Crisis response in a natural disaster: Emergency responders must think critically and swiftly in responding to a natural disaster, coordinating rescue efforts, allocating resources effectively, and prioritizing the needs of affected individuals.

Product innovation : A product development team conducts market research, studies consumer trends, and uses critical thinking to create innovative products that address unmet customer needs.

Supply chain optimization: A logistics manager analyzes the supply chain to identify areas for efficiency improvement, such as reducing transportation costs, improving inventory management, or streamlining order fulfillment processes.

Business strategy formulation: A business executive assesses market dynamics, the competitive landscape, and internal capabilities to develop a robust business strategy that ensures sustainable growth and competitiveness.

Crisis communication: In the face of a public relations crisis, an organization’s spokesperson must think critically to develop and deliver a transparent, authentic, and effective communication strategy to rebuild trust and manage reputation.

Social problem-solving: A group of volunteers addresses a specific social issue, such as poverty or homelessness, by critically examining its root causes, collaborating with stakeholders, and implementing sustainable solutions for the affected population.

Problem-Solving Mindset: How to Achieve It (15 Ways)

Risk assessment in investment decision-making: An investment analyst evaluates various investment opportunities, conducting risk assessments based on market trends, financial indicators, and potential regulatory changes to make informed investment recommendations.

Environmental sustainability: An environmental scientist analyzes the impact of industrial processes on the environment, develops strategies to mitigate risks, and promotes sustainable practices within organizations and communities.

Adaptation to technological advancements : In a rapidly evolving technological landscape, professionals need critical thinking skills to adapt to new tools, software, and systems, ensuring they can effectively leverage these advancements to enhance productivity and efficiency.

Productivity improvement: An operations manager leverages critical thinking to identify productivity bottlenecks within a workflow and implement process improvements to optimize resource utilization, minimize waste, and increase overall efficiency.

Cost-benefit analysis: An organization considering a major investment or expansion opportunity conducts a thorough cost-benefit analysis, weighing potential costs against expected benefits to make an informed decision.

Human resources management : HR professionals utilize critical thinking to assess job applicants, identify skill gaps within the organization, and design training and development programs to enhance the workforce’s capabilities.

Root cause analysis: In response to a recurring problem or inefficiency, professionals apply critical thinking to identify the root cause of the issue, develop remedial actions, and prevent future occurrences.

Leadership development: Aspiring leaders undergo critical thinking exercises to enhance their decision-making abilities, develop strategic thinking skills, and foster a culture of innovation within their teams.

Brand positioning : Marketers conduct comprehensive market research and consumer behavior analysis to strategically position a brand, differentiating it from competitors and appealing to target audiences effectively.

Resource allocation: Non-profit organizations distribute limited resources efficiently, critically evaluating project proposals, considering social impact, and allocating resources to initiatives that align with their mission.

Innovating in a mature market: A company operating in a mature market seeks to innovate to maintain a competitive edge. They cultivate critical thinking skills to identify gaps, anticipate changing customer needs, and develop new strategies, products, or services accordingly.

Analyzing financial statements : Financial analysts critically assess financial statements, analyze key performance indicators, and derive insights to support financial decision-making, such as investment evaluations or budget planning.

Crisis intervention : Mental health professionals employ critical thinking and problem-solving to assess crises faced by individuals or communities, develop intervention plans, and provide support during challenging times.

Data privacy and cybersecurity : IT professionals critically evaluate existing cybersecurity measures, identify vulnerabilities, and develop strategies to protect sensitive data from threats, ensuring compliance with privacy regulations.

Process improvement : Professionals in manufacturing or service industries critically evaluate existing processes, identify inefficiencies, and implement improvements to optimize efficiency, quality, and customer satisfaction.

Multi-channel marketing strategy : Marketers employ critical thinking to design and execute effective marketing campaigns across various channels such as social media, web, print, and television, ensuring a cohesive brand experience for customers.

Peer review: Researchers critically analyze and review the work of their peers, providing constructive feedback and ensuring the accuracy, validity, and reliability of scientific studies.

Project coordination : A project manager must coordinate multiple teams and resources to ensure seamless collaboration, identify potential bottlenecks, and find solutions to keep the project on schedule.  

These examples highlight the various contexts in which problem-solving and critical-thinking skills are necessary for success. By understanding and practicing these skills, individuals can enhance their ability to navigate challenges and make sound decisions in both personal and professional endeavors.

Conclusion:

Critical thinking and problem-solving are indispensable skills that empower individuals to overcome challenges, make sound decisions, and find innovative solutions. By honing these skills, one can navigate through the complexities of modern life and achieve success in both personal and professional endeavors. Embrace the power of critical thinking and problem-solving, and unlock the door to endless possibilities and growth.

• Problem solving From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
• Critical thinking From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
• The Importance of Critical Thinking and Problem Solving Skills for Students (5 Minutes)

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Critical thinking definition

Critical thinking, as described by Oxford Languages, is the objective analysis and evaluation of an issue in order to form a judgement.

Active and skillful approach, evaluation, assessment, synthesis, and/or evaluation of information obtained from, or made by, observation, knowledge, reflection, acumen or conversation, as a guide to belief and action, requires the critical thinking process, which is why it's often used in education and academics.

Some even may view it as a backbone of modern thought.

However, it's a skill, and skills must be trained and encouraged to be used at its full potential.

People turn up to various approaches in improving their critical thinking, like:

• Developing technical and problem-solving skills
• Engaging in more active listening
• Actively questioning their assumptions and beliefs
• Seeking out more diversity of thought
• Opening up their curiosity in an intellectual way etc.

Is critical thinking useful in writing?

Critical thinking can help in planning your paper and making it more concise, but it's not obvious at first. We carefully pinpointed some the questions you should ask yourself when boosting critical thinking in writing:

• What information should be included?
• Which information resources should the author look to?
• What degree of technical knowledge should the report assume its audience has?
• What is the most effective way to show information?
• How should the report be organized?
• How should it be designed?
• What tone and level of language difficulty should the document have?

Usage of critical thinking comes down not only to the outline of your paper, it also begs the question: How can we use critical thinking solving problems in our writing's topic?

Let's say, you have a Powerpoint on how critical thinking can reduce poverty in the United States. You'll primarily have to define critical thinking for the viewers, as well as use a lot of critical thinking questions and synonyms to get them to be familiar with your methods and start the thinking process behind it.

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