critical thinking model plymouth

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Introduction

Critical thinking is about not accepting what you read or hear at face value, but always questioning other people’s information, ideas and arguments.

It is a key skill that should be applied to all aspects of your studies. You need to ask the right questions when reading the work of others, and in your writing you need to demonstrate that you have weighed up different arguments and ideas, and used evidence to help you form your own opinions, arguments and theories.

Critical thinking is about questioning and learning with an open mind, and recognising that no information is entirely neutral.  

Remember that your ideas and reactions to information are not neutral either - your personal attitudes, beliefs and experiences will affect how you receive all information.

The Library Skills Guide has a valuable section on tools to help you develop your critical thinking skils.

Critical Thinking

Why was the resource created?

When was the resource created?

How was the resource created?

Where was the resource created?

Who created the resource?

What is Critical Thinking?

Critical thinking is the ability to think clearly and rationally, understanding the  connection between ideas.

Someone with critical thinking skills can:

• Understand the links between ideas.
• Determine the importance and relevance of arguments and ideas.
• Recognise, build and appraise arguments.
• Identify inconsistencies and errors in reasoning.
• Approach problems in a consistent and systematic way.
• Reflect on the justification of their own assumptions, beliefs and values.

Taken from Skilsyouneed.com and reused with permission

• Critical thinking vodcast A short vodcast on critical thinking, what it is, how it can help you and how to do it!

Evaluating your results

A short video produced by the University of Leicester, explaining the importance of not taking things at face value and being critical in academic writing.

This video details the things to consider when evaluating websources. 

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Critical Thinking

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Introduction to Critical Thinking

Critical thinking involves asking questions to analyse and evaluate information to increase your understanding and identify the links between different ideas and theories.  It is an important skill that you will develop during your academic studies and use throughout your career.  This page will provide you with access to information that will help you to develop your critical reading and writing skills.  

Recommended Websites

LinkedIn Learning

LinkedIn Learning provides BPP students with access to free online courses which includes Developing a Critical Thinking Mindset  and Reading Critically

• Obstacles to Critical Thinking
• Bloom's Taxonomy
• Critical Thinking Model

Cottrell (2023) explains that critical thinking involves:

• Finding the most relevant information for your subject area
• Evaluating the evidence to identify if it is appropriate and supports different perspectives
• Creating a provisional argument and conclusion based on the available evidence
• Developing a logical argument supported by evidence that others can understand
• Choosing the most relevant sources and including examples to support your argument

Source: Cottrell, S (2023) Critical thinking skills . 4th ed. London: Bloomsbury Publishing.

Too much information -at university you are expected to read different information sources and the amount available can make you feel overwhelmed and unsure where to start. You are not expected to read everything that is available on a subject and your lecturer can help you to select relevant sources.  

Confidence -some students do not feel confident about evaluating information written by academics and worry that their answer is incorrect.  In many subjects there is no correct answer and academics in their work develop and challenge other academic's research. When you are reading different sources focus on your own thinking and you could discuss your understanding with your friends to help develop your confidence. 

It provides a list of questions that you can ask yourself when you are reading different sources, planning your assignment and structuring your writing.  This will help you decide if a source is relevant to your needs, create your own arguments and achieve higher marks.

Critical Reading and Writing

• Critical Analysis
• Critical Reading
• Critical Writing

Students often receive feedback that their assignment is too descriptive and more critical analysis needs to be included.

The table below explains the difference between descriptive writing and critical analysis:

Adapted from Cottrell, S, (2019) The Study Skills Handbook , 5th ed. London: Red Globe Press p.268.

Your assignment will include some descriptive writing such as to introduce the subject and the assignment structure.  However the majority should be critical analysis to demonstrate your understanding of the subject which will also help you to achieve higher marks.

• Critical Analysis Framework (Sheffield University)
• Is the author an expert in this subject?
• What is the purpose of this source?
• Is the information presented in a logical and consistent way?
• What are the main conclusions from their research?
• What evidence have they used to support their findings?
• How do their arguments compare with another academic’s research on this subject?

You may also be interested in the Academic Reading  page.

Evidence from academic sources of information is used to support and help you to develop your thinking and arguments.   

The arguments that you present are balanced which means that different perspectives on the issue or subject are considered and the conclusion is based on your understanding of the evidence.  

Include in your writing phrases that demonstrate your critical thinking such as the main weakness in this research is…

Further information regarding critical writing is available from York University Building a Critical Argument  and you may also be interested in the Academic Writing  page.

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Study skills- being critical.

• Critical Thinking
• Why Critical Thinking is Important
• How to Think More Critically
• Critical Reading
• Critical Writing

How To Think More Critically

If critical thinking is so important, how do we do it, williams (2014) critical thinking stairway, highlights several skills or processes involved in thinking critically and she arranges them in such a way as to show their increasing complexity from engaging with new information to crafting an argument. .

To be able to do any of these, we need to have a healthy scepticism when we consider information and take a questioning approach.  

Why not watch the video below, encouraging you to explore critical questioning in more detail. 

• The Plymouth Model of Critical Thinking

The Plymouth Model of Critical Thinking is one tool to help us question, make connections between ideas and to not take information for granted. 

Each paragraph of an assignment should focus on one main point, ensure that you do not just describe throughout the paragraph. It is important to give some background details but to move on to comparing, contrasting and criticising the text. 

Many students do not evaluate throughout their assignment, choosing to leave it to the conclusion at the end. By evaluating in each paragraph you can demonstrate that you understand how the texts apply to your context, or whether information was biased, and as a result you can recommend that studies are conducted differently in the future. It is difficult to make recommendations if you have not analysed the evidence to justify your argument. 

See the Plymouth Model and questions it suggests for each section below. For further information see the link below for further questions and advice. 

Watch the video below to further support your critical thinking. 

• Last Updated: Apr 11, 2024 2:35 PM
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Critical thinking

A model for critical thinking.

Critical thinking is an important life skill, and an essential part of university studies. Central to critical thinking is asking meaningful questions.

This three-stage model, adapted from LearnHigher , will help you generate questions to understand, analyse, and evaluate something, such as an information source.

Description

Starting with the description stage, you ask questions such as: What? Where? Why? and Who? These help you establish the background and context.

For example, if you are reading a journal article, you might ask questions such as:

• Who wrote this?
• What is it about?
• When was it written?
• What is the aim of the article?

If you are thinking through a problem, you might ask:

• What is this problem about?
• Who does it involve or affect?
• When and where is this happening?

These types of questions lead to descriptive answers. Although the ability to describe something is important, to really develop your understanding and critically engage, we need to move beyond these types of questions. This moves you into the analysis stage.

Here you will ask questions such as: How? Why? and What if? These help you to examine methods and processes, reasons and causes, and the alternative options. For example, if you are reading a journal article, you might ask:

• How was the research conducted?
• Why are these theories discussed?
• What are the alternative methods and theories?
• What are the contributing factors to the problem?
• How might one factor impact another?
• What if one factor is removed or altered?

Asking these questions helps you to break something into parts and consider the relationship between each part, and each part to the whole. This process will help you develop more analytical answers and deeper thinking.

Finally, you come to the evaluation stage, where you will ask 'so what?' and 'what next?' questions to make judgments and consider the relevance; implications; significance and value of something.

You may ask questions such as:

• What do I think about this?
• How is this relevant to my assignment?
• How does this compare to other research I have read?

Making such judgments will lead you to reasonable conclusions, solutions, or recommendations.

The way we think is complex. This model is not intended to be used in a strictly linear way, or as a prescriptive set of instructions. You may move back and forth between different segments. For example, you may ask, 'what is this about?', and then move straight to, 'is this relevant to me?'

The model is intended to encourage a critically questioning approach, and can be applied to many learning scenarios at university, such as: interpreting assignment briefs; developing arguments; evaluating sources; analysing data or formulating your own questions to research an answer.

Watch the ‘Thinking Critically at University’ video for an in-depth description of a critical thinking model. View video using Microsoft Stream (link opens in a new window, available for University members only). The rest of our Critical thinking pages will show you how to use this model in practice.

This model has been adapted from LearnHigher under a Creative Commons BY-NC-SA 3.0.

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Study Skills: Critical Writing

by Harriet · Published November 10, 2017 · Updated July 17, 2019

Criticality is a key component of academic study. It shows how you have been able to not only understand a subject, but also analyse and evaluate arguments presented.  A critical approach is also a significant aspect of the generic assessment criteria (GAC) which is the criteria against which you are marked at the University of Sunderland.  Therefore, in short, developing a more critical approach to your thinking and writing helps you achieve higher grades.

It could be argued that there are different layers to critical writing and the Plymouth University model of criticality is one framework you may find useful to develop a structured and logical approach to your development of critical writing.  There is a link to a PDF of the model at the end of this post.  More specifically, according to the Plymouth model, there are 3 main phases of thinking and writing, each phase building on the previous. In addition, each phase is necessary to construct a piece of critical writing.

Initially, descriptive information, which focusses on details such as what, when, where and who, is required to convey background or foundational information.  For example, when you are setting out a particular theory, concept or practice, your reader is likely to find it beneficial to have background details such as what the theory/concept/practice is, or how it is defined by particular authors and where and when the theory/concept/practice is applicable or can be seen.

Thereafter, the next level of critical writing, according to the Plymouth model (2010), focusses on questions of analysis such as ‘why ‘and ‘how’.  This requires you to consider the initial descriptive information in more detail.  For instance, why is the particular theory/concept/practice important or relevant to the overall question or task set?  Also, how does a particular theory relate to a relevant example or practice, or not?

The third level of critical writing requires students to evaluate theory/concepts/practice by asking questions such as ‘so what’?  ‘What if?’ and/or ‘What next?’  This stage of writing can encourage you to consider what the overall purpose or function of a particular theory/concept or practice (or combinations of these) may be or whether an alternative theory/concept or practice could be introduced as a further discussion point.

It is important to note that the critical questions within the Plymouth model can also be used to help you review your own writing at the stage of reviewing what you have written and maybe re-drafting and editing what you have written before you finally submit your assignment.  There will be a later blog post which provides specific hints and tips for how the Plymouth model can be used to help you critically review and edit your own writing – so look out for that!

A PDF guide of the Plymouth model discussed here can be found at: Plymouth Model

If you would like to discuss this technique in more detail you can book a One-to-one appointment with one of the Study Skills’ Support Advisers,  One to One Support

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Plymouth Model for Critical Thinking

Create a Plymouth Model for Critical Thinking based on the topic of planning a holiday.

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Wall Street Journal Article: Plymouth State Ranked Top in the Nation for Critical-Thinking Improvement

On June 6, 2017, the Wall Street Journal named Plymouth State University among the top schools in America for students to learn critical-thinking skills that prepare them to enter their careers as leaders in their chosen fields.

The front-page story detailed how few U.S. colleges teach their students how to think. According to the article and the statistics citied in the story, PSU ranked number one for critical-thinking improvement.

PSU ranked first among public colleges and universities across the country for its ability to improve the critical-thinking ability of students. The June 6 report showed that PSU far outpaced well-known public institutions, including University of Kentucky, University of Texas, Ohio State University, Keene State, and The Citadel.  The full story as reported in the Union Leader can be found at here. 

“We were delighted to receive validation that our focus on critical thinking and attention to student development was reflected in these national rankings,” said Gail Mears, dean of the College of Education, Health and Human Services. “The results suggest that our students’ critical-thinking skills develop significantly over their time here. These results are not surprising given our unprecedented engagement with students, high-quality teaching, and a curriculum that emphasizes critical thinking.”

As PSU continues the move to the Integrated Clusters model of education, administrators are confident these critical-thinking skills combined with real-world experience will serve students well as they enter the world as PSU alumni.

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Computer Science > Human-Computer Interaction

Title: language models as critical thinking tools: a case study of philosophers.

Abstract: Current work in language models (LMs) helps us speed up or even skip thinking by accelerating and automating cognitive work. But can LMs help us with critical thinking -- thinking in deeper, more reflective ways which challenge assumptions, clarify ideas, and engineer new concepts? We treat philosophy as a case study in critical thinking, and interview 21 professional philosophers about how they engage in critical thinking and on their experiences with LMs. We find that philosophers do not find LMs to be useful because they lack a sense of selfhood (memory, beliefs, consistency) and initiative (curiosity, proactivity). We propose the selfhood-initiative model for critical thinking tools to characterize this gap. Using the model, we formulate three roles LMs could play as critical thinking tools: the Interlocutor, the Monitor, and the Respondent. We hope that our work inspires LM researchers to further develop LMs as critical thinking tools and philosophers and other 'critical thinkers' to imagine intellectually substantive uses of LMs.

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