The Power of Critical Thinking

CAT Scan: A Critical Review of the Critical-Thinking Assessment Test

“…There are numerous critical-thinking assessment tests commercially available, all with decades of use and research in support of them and critical reviews questioning them. Most of these tests are for the purposes of assessing a wide array of general critical-thinking skills, determined by a general definition of critical thinking, such as "a process, the goal of which is to make reasonable decisions about what to believe and what to do" (Ennis 1996) or "the practice of requiring, assessing, and giving cogent reasons for one's beliefs, values, and actions" (Possin 2002).…”

“…• Identifying reasons or arguments • Analyzing or dissecting arguments into premises, conclusions, and subconclusions (explicit and implicit) • Taxonomizing arguments as deductive or inductive • Assessing the cogency of arguments, relative to their type, in terms of the truth or acceptability of their premises and the relevance of their premises as indicating the truth or probable truth of their conclusions • Identifying formal and informal fallacies-in essence, popular ways of failing these cogency conditions • Critically reviewing definitions and analyzing concepts • Assembling these competencies so as to select and argue for rational positions on a diversity of issues, critically reviewing competing positions and their arguments, all in a cogent and intellectually honest manner (Possin 2002(Possin , 2008.…”