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This thread just shows that many don't know what critical thinking is, but are happy to use their misunderstanding as a cudgel against a whole group of people.
Exactly.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Coldjensens
The belief comes from businesses with experience hiring STEM majors. STEM generally involves logical not analytical or critical thinking. .
Wrong. Logic is part of analysis and analysis is essential to critical thinking.
In critical thinking, data is presented and analyzed, coming up with all the possible, plausible explanations. If the teacher says " 2 + 2 = 4" the critical student counts it out on his fingers, considers non-base 10 counting systems and then still asks for it to be proven by the teacher.
The non-critical thinker just says, "OK. I'll remember that."
.... STEM generally involves logical not analytical or critical thinking. ....
Are you actually writing this in all seriousness? Have you ever either done, or managed, any kind of technical work?
Here's a scenario that happens many, many times every year in every organization that does technology. It's almost a stereotype of STEM work and it's called the corrective and preventive action process.
1) Identify the technical problem (it could be high warranty rate, it could be the prototypes failing in the lab). Critical thinking required to make sure you are describing the problem, not someone's interpretation of the cause or ideas about the solution.
2) Identify potential root causes (in the mechanical industries, a common tool is the fishbone or Ishikawa diagram, where you identify potential root causes and categorize them. This is the very definition of analysis.)
3) Analyze the data (see, it's right there in the verb) to determine if there are correlations amongst potential root causes and effects. Segregate the data according to various typical other characteristics - for example, warranty rates by type of customer or by application; time of day when manufactured, etc. Develop some theories about which causes are most likely to be working in the case (critical thinking required to assess the relative likelihood of the different potential root causes).
4) Perform experiments to confirm or refute proposed root causes (can you turn the effect on and off?) Critical thinking is paramount here to make sure that extraneous effects, precision of measurements, or other factors don't lead you either to assume something does have a causal function when it doesn't, or vice versa. And of course analytical thinking is necessary to make sense of the data resulting from these experiments.
5) Develop proposed corrective actions. Critical thinking is important here because some of the proposals won't be financially sustainable; others will involve vast efforts and only affect a small percentage of the problem; sometimes it's best to try the fast and cheap thing even though its chance of success is small, just because it's fast and cheap, other times you decide to go all-out because you've only got one chance to get it right. Being able to see the specific problem you're trying to solve in the context of the overall goals of the organization is all about critical thinking. The other aspect here that you don't even touch on is synthesis. Taking a bunch of data, results of experiments, history, etc., and developing corrective actions that are practical and related to the problem at hand is a problem of synthesis.
6) Try the corrective action (usually on a small sample, or a controlled-lot build) and see if the corrective action actually corrects. Lots of data are generated, and analytical thinking is required to pull evidence of success or failure out of the data.
7) If the trail shows the corrective action does correct, implement it.
Now this is kind of a long essay on the process, but engineers and scientists all over the world are doing this as one of the most fundamental tasks of engineering and science. Most of the other fundamental tasks of engineering and science have similar requirements. Successful STEM practicioners are able to move easily and seamlessly from the reductive mindset (analysis) to the holistic mindset (synthesis) in order to do the job of engineering and science.
What I think you need to do is to get acquainted with some actual engineers and scientists, ask them about their work - not the details, but the principles underlying the work.
To be fair, yes, STEM people do perform the research and then write the reports. Unfortunately those reports are not always easily comprehensible by the general public. There is a duty of both the communicator to try to express things in a language the reader/listener to understand and the person receiving the information to try his/her best to understand. If you go to a doctor and get lab results or other testing, you might not be able to understand the report. It is not your fault because you don’t have the background. That is why it is up to the doctor to give you the relevant information in information that you can understand, whatever that might be. One patient might have a lot of medical knowledge, while another patient might need some more basic explanation. Hopefully the communicator knows enough about the audience to present the information correctly.
This is an interesting side discussion. One of the biggest issues is "losing something in translation" when moving from the technical to the general public. It add room for misinterpretation and confusion as different analogies appear to contradict one another after a couple of retellings even though the underlying facts remain the same.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Coldjensens
The belief comes from businesses with experience hiring STEM majors. STEM generally involves logical not analytical or critical thinking. STEM does not teach this kind of thinking so it is not usually developed in STEM majors. Some people seem to develop certain types of thinking without any teaching, but usually not. You have to train your brain to think in certain ways. We are so specialized now, that your career path in college determines whether you will train you brain to think one way or another.
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Would you mind elaborating on how you define that logical thinking is not analytical or critical? Are we defining terms the same way?
Quote:
Originally Posted by Coldjensens
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With some exceptions, STEM people generally make bad business leaders, bad fiction authors, bad movie reviewers etc. There are of course exceptions, but the exceptions are exceptional in other ways as well. (Bill Gates for example).
Curious how you'd rate HP prior to Carly and HP after?
Ok, saw an article today that used the current Corona crisis to argue that we need more liberal arts/humanities majors because STEM didn't provide critical thinkers.
Putting aside the use of a crisis to justify a position, I'm more interested in the implication that STEM majors don't learn critical thinking skills. We've even seen that argument posed here in CD. What is the basis for this belief? Just looked up the STEM program where my daughter graduated. 29 of the credits were from various humanities requirements. In contrast, History only requires 8 science and math credits.
Where did that belief come from?
I think it comes from people who ALREADY lack critical thinking skills. They're coming from a place of all-or-nothing, stereotyped thinking that holds that gearheads can't think critically and liberal-arts longhairs can't know anything practical. I would sincerely hope that if you're better at thinking about one area, that would make it easier to think about everything in general. That's the whole basis of RFT (Relational Frame Theory) after all. The more you use your brain, the more you CAN use it. The more you learn, the more you CAN learn. It's a rare individual who learns only by absorbing facts without questioning them. Heck, the whole point of becoming a teenager is starting to question the things you've been told all your life and -- up to then -- believed uncritically. It's a phase we're all supposed to go through.
And here we are, 65 posts in and not a one of you can define "critical thinking", how to teach it or even what it is. Yet, most of you have been on threads over in Teaching bemoaning the fact that "teachers don't teach critical thinking".
As a note, teaching critical thinking is included in the Mission Statement and Beliefs of likely about 99.9% of school systems in the US and the curriculum of every class offered.
And here we are, 65 posts in and not a one of you can define "critical thinking", how to teach it or even what it is. Yet, most of you have been on threads over in Teaching bemoaning the fact that "teachers don't teach critical thinking".
As a note, teaching critical thinking is included in the Mission Statement and Beliefs of likely about 99.9% of school systems in the US and the curriculum of every class offered.
I suspect it's like many things: We can't tell you what it is, but we know it when we see it? Of course, that depends on the observer too.
I still think it's the last gasp of the 17-18th century divinity training...
I think it comes from people who ALREADY lack critical thinking skills. They're coming from a place of all-or-nothing, stereotyped thinking that holds that gearheads can't think critically and liberal-arts longhairs can't know anything practical. I would sincerely hope that if you're better at thinking about one area, that would make it easier to think about everything in general. That's the whole basis of RFT (Relational Frame Theory) after all. The more you use your brain, the more you CAN use it. The more you learn, the more you CAN learn. It's a rare individual who learns only by absorbing facts without questioning them. Heck, the whole point of becoming a teenager is starting to question the things you've been told all your life and -- up to then -- believed uncritically. It's a phase we're all supposed to go through.
Exactly that! Thank you.
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Of course, that depends on the observer too.
