School of Pharmacy & Biomolecular Sciences
Student Safety & Study Skills
Handbook 11/12

• Introduction
• Time management
• Setting priorities
• Preparing to study
• Improving memory
• Managing stress
• Identifying your learning style
• Critical thinking
• Being a reflective learner

Critical Thinking

“The ability to think critically is probably the most transferable of the skills you will develop at university – and your future employers will expect you to be able to use it to tackle professional challenges” (McMillan et al, 2006, p 137).

Common Faults in thinking

6 Steps in critical thinking

What will I be doing and why?

What do my marks mean?

How do I get these marks?

Common Faults

A critical approach to learning, be it lectures or practicals, demands clear thinking. It may be helpful to be aware of some of the common faults in thinking, presentation and assessments of arguments, evidence and conclusions.

Causative Fallacy :

This is the assumption that since A and B occur together that A caused B or vice versa.

Convenient:

Anything can be proved by carefully selecting the data examples which best fit the point to be proved - all data should be considered, even negative data.

Tautology:

Saying the same thing twice while giving the appearance of an argument.

Exceeding the Evidence:

It is very tempting to develop exotic theories based on evidence extended beyond its validity.

Appealing to Authority:

X must be true because Y says so, or because it is a "well known fact", even the safest authorities are wrong sometimes.

To avoid these pitfalls you should:

• understand both the evidence and the theories
• avoid statements which have no supporting evidence
• consider all the evidence
• consider the topic from all viewpoints - including extreme conditions

 

6 Steps involved in critical thinking

Intellectual abilities, skills and knowledge have been organised into a hierarchy of six categories by Bloom (1956) as shown in Fig 1.  The assertion is that the higher order abilities depend on a mastery of the lower order abilities.

Figure 1:  Bloom's (1956) hierarchy of the cognitive domain.

• Knowledge concerns 'what there is to know' and would include facts, terminology, classifications, conventions etc. The skill is basically of description.
• Comprehension or 'making sense of' consists of translating, interpreting and extrapolating from the knowledge attained at the first level.
• Application refers to an ability to use the knowledge and understanding of principles, methods and theories to a 'real world' situation.
• Analysis involves breaking down material into its component parts and discovering and explaining the relationships between the parts. This may involve inductive (generalising from specific situations) or deductive (moving from generalisations to a specific example) thinking.
• Synthesis involves using the acquired knowledge in a new and unique way to solve problems and to predict likely consequences of actions. Abilities involved include originality and creativity.
• Evaluation involves making judgements about the value of various methods, ideas, findings, solutions etc. Judgements should be supported by evidence from research, literature etc. The basis/criteria for the stated judgements must be made explicit.

In higher education much assessment within undergraduate courses will focus on the four higher level categories identified by Bloom. Essays for example will ask the student more commonly to 'assess', 'evaluate', 'how' or 'why', rather than 'describe' or even 'discuss'. Clearly knowledge is rarely the only end trying to be achieved through assessment; higher education is concerned with the way in which people think as well as with what they know. Therefore assignments will often be trying to develop/assess skills such as 'critical thinking', 'problem solving', 'independent thinking' or the like. In order to demonstrate these skills, some knowledge of the set issue (encompassed in the assignment) will be required.

 

What will I be doing and why?

You will encounter a range of different assignments within your degree course. The assignments set in the modules run by the school may have varied educational objectives i.e. they will be testing a number of different things. You need to be aware of these.

What do my marks mean?

• First class >70%
• Upper second (2:I) 60-69%
• Lower second (2:2) 50-59%
• Third class 40-49%
• Fail 30-39%
• Threshold failure <30%

How do I get these marks?

Clearly, the criteria for the assessment of any particular assignment will reflect the varied educational objectives trying to be achieved. Find out more about this in the assessment criteria section.