Critical thinking is reflective thinking that guarantees the autonomy of being. The ability to think critically implies identifying and applying analogies. It is a cognitive process of inference, which passes from one particular object to another particular object, valuing the common elements. It is used as a problem solving technique.
Phases of Critical Thinking
• The process of producing critical thinking begins with identifying what is known and what is lacking. This first phase involves collecting relevant information about what we already know, how we know and identifying what needs to be known. Diagnosis Phase
• Organize ideas and create logic. You must understand what you need to understand, why it is necessary, and what it is needed for. It is a time when it is necessary to look at the issues from different perspectives, to understand the different meanings. Question phase
• Identify faults and absences. By looking at what is lacking and knowing what is known in different ways, it becomes easier to understand what is missing and what fails in thinking about that object. Phase of Revelation or Insight
• The moment when appropriating what is and what is missing implies making a new synthesis. Reviewing what has been done and integrating the new, Simplifying by analogy can be an exercise in favor of discovery. Synthesis Phase
• We reach a poetic phase, where through analogy we seek pure, simple and enlightening forms that give stability to the problem (resolution). Phase of Poetics.
Critical thinking is the basis of pedagogy for autonomy. It is at the center of educational activity and is the object of educational activity. To think autonomously is to know how to evaluate ideas and arguments according to the reasons and evidence presented, supported by value systems. Far from being an innate exercise in the cognitive process, it needs to be constantly trained and applied. It is the basis of living in society.
A society that practices the critical spirit, at its limit, would not need institutions that regulate social action. The different state institutions, however, are confronted with the need to place limits on the action of critical thinking, based on a definition of the common good, forgetting that this common good is fluid and unstable.
This is one of the paradoxes of school. At the same time it must practice the exercise of critical thinking for one of its purposes, as an agent of state action, it acts by limiting the exercise of this critical thinking. It applies discipline and authoritarianism as a model of regulation.
A second paradox, however, is in schools today. In an era of societal transition, where the flow of information flows through different channels, the school is no longer the sole legitimizing instance of knowledge. Critical thinking is the only instrument available to find a course in information flows. However, it is not amenable to ownership by schools because it reverses the principles of authority where it is founded, and where the legitimacy that gives it stability rests.