Critical thinking helps you to make smarter decisions, solve problems better, and understand the world around you more clearly.
Use these two critical thinking cheat sheets to help you ask the right questions.
The following critical thinking model is used within the higher education and university sectors to help students.
Description phase
What
- What is this about?
- What is the context and situation?
- What is the main point, problem, or topic to be explored?
Where
- Where does it take place?
Who
- Who is involved?
- Who is affected?
- Who might be interested?
When
When does this occur?
Analysis phase
Why
- Why this argument, theory, suggestion, or solution?
- Why not something else?
- Why did this occur?
- Why was that done?
How
- How does one factor affect another?
- How do all the parts fit together?
- How does it work in theory, in practice, and in context?
What if
- What if this is wrong, and what are the alternatives?
- What if there is a problem?
- What if another factor was added, altered, or removed?
Evaluation phase
So what
- So what am I saying about this, and why?
- So what does this mean?
- So what is the point, underlying issue, or implication of this?
What next
- What can we learn from this?
- What needs to be done now or considered for the future?
- What can be transferred, or applied to another scenario?
