Critical Thinking Definition:
Critical thinking is the ability to make arguments that question the norms in order to validate certain beliefs. It is also used to shut down some invalid arguments. Using critical thinking enables someone to be open-minded while still questioning and contemplating the truth.
1st Assignment
Reflection on The Allegory of The Cave Assignment
Critical Thinking Competency
This assignment was created for the Critical Thinking and Problem Solving Course, in this reflection I will be evaluating the work and skills that were employed in creating this assignment using the Indicator of Success in Critical Thinking Indicator 2 (Develops and reasonably defends arguments, positions, and decisions.) I believe I was at Intermediate Level. In this assignment, we were asked 10 questions that analyze the allegory of The Cave. The allegory of The Cave is a fundamental critical thinking principle made by Plato, it speaks about people chained within a cave looking at a wall, and behind them there is a torch and people use pictures to show them through the torch which creates shadows. Those shadows are the chained peoples’ only reality. suddenly one person is Unchained and goes out into the light to see the real world, it is hard for him to see it at first but then he gets used to it and understands that that is reality. Later that same person goes back into The Cave and tells the chained people about what he has seen, in which their response is to beat him or kill him because they do not see the bigger picture unlike him, they do not see the truth. the 10 questions were asked about certain parts of the allegory of The Cave they were very challenging to answer; because you had to employ critical thinking. Finally, I was able to scan for the answers to the 10 questions and then argue about the answers and build a solid argument.
2nd Assignment
Reflection on Critical Thinking Demonstration Assignment
Critical Thinking Competency
This assignment was created for Critical Thinking and Problem Solving, in this reflection I will be evaluating the work and skills that were employed in creating this assignment using the Indicator of Success Critical Thinking Indicator 2 (Develops and reasonably defends arguments, positions, and decisions.) I believe I was at Advanced Level. In this assignment, we were asked to demonstrate the critical thinking ability that we learned throughout the semester. I chose to demonstrate that by creating a theory, which in my opinion is the pinnacle of critical thinking. my theory was whether or not my instructor had changed his behavior towards our section intentionally or not; because at first, he was very strict about everything and he would tell everyone to drop the course if they don’t like it, and my theory was that he did that intentionally to weed out the people who are not serious about the course. At the end of the assignment, we were asked to give our opinion about the grade we deserve according to how well we did in the demonstration. The paper that was submitted was only a placeholder so the instructor could grade the assignment. Instead, we were meant to demonstrate that in a class by either a presentation or speech or a theory or any way that we were supposed to prove that we’ve gained the critical thinking competency in this course. Finally, it was very challenging to find a good demonstration to prove that I had good critical thinking abilities. In the end, I learned through this assignment how to build an argument in this case a theory and defend it and debate about it.
3rd Reflection:
Reflection on Assignment 1 Questions and short Essay
Critical Thinking Competency
This assignment was made for the World Civilizations Course, in this reflection I will be evaluating the work and skills that were used in creating this assignment using the Critical Thinking indicator of success. In Critical Thinking indicator 1 (Gathers and processes information for decision making) and indicator 2 (Develops and reasonably defends arguments) I believe I was at Advanced level. This assignment was an Individual Assignment where we were given three main questions. Question one was about the difference between primary sources and secondary sources which were categorized by historians. The second question required listing the needed information for a correct citation. Question 3, which will be the focus of this reflection had three parts, part A,B,C, and D. And parts A through C we were to gather information and answer questions about the essay that we will be writing. My topic was “again the road to war (1933-1939) Hitler’s goal” here I answered question A by listing the main reason why Hitler started the Second World War, and what his goals were in the years that led to the Second World War. Part B of the question was that we had to create three questions for ourselves and then answer them during the essay writing. Part C was about an example of a primary source that we could find today which originated at the time, and my example was Hitler’s personal book as a primary source which is titled Mein Kampf (My Struggle) in fact in the original assignment I misspelled the original German name of the book -Mein Kompf-which might have led for me to lose a mark. I believe this assignment was very easy and very fun at the time and I have not faced any challenges during that assignment, due to my personal liking to history and knowledge gathering. Ultimately this assignment did not pose much of a challenge to me due to it being a question-answer type of assignment which is reflected in my grade 19 out of 20.
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