Importance of Critical Thinking for Success in Higher Education

This essay delves into the critical role of critical thinking within higher education, emphasizing its significance for student success. The essay begins by defining critical thinking as a multifaceted skill involving analysis, synthesis, and evaluation of information, and then it explores how this skill is essential for navigating complex academic challenges and real-world scenarios. The essay analyzes the nature of critical thinking, highlighting its cognitive components and its impact on student engagement and achievement. It examines the importance of fostering critical thinking from an early age, discussing the negative consequences of its absence. The essay also addresses various assessment methods for critical thinking, including the challenges and misconceptions associated with argumentation. The essay concludes by underscoring the importance of critical thinking in an information-rich world. This essay provides a comprehensive overview of the factors influencing student engagement, including structural, psycho-social, and socio-cultural elements.

Running head: IMPORTANCE OF CRITICAL THINKING IN HIGHER EDUCATION
IMPORTANCE OF CRITICAL THINKING IN HIGHER EDUCATION
Name of the Student
Name of the University
Authors Note:

1IMPORTANCE OF CRITICAL THINKING IN HIGHER EDUCATION
Introduction
(Liu et al., 2014) describes “Critical thinking is the intellectual disciplines process of
actively and skillfully conceptualizing, applying, analyzing, synthesizing or evaluating
information gathered from or generated by observation, experience, reflection, reasoning, or
communication, as a guide to belief and action” This essay shows one of the most important
skills considered to be an essential for higher education. () The article “Assessing Critical
Thinking in Higher Education: Current state and Direction For Next Generation” gives an insight
of a qualitative analysis which talks about how critical thinking plays an important role in higher
education. The present study aims at assessing whether the interactive educational models are
effective or not. This essay gives an outline about how critical thinking is required in order to
enlarge and widen the horizon of a student. It will arguable describe the main requirements of the
desired outcomes. This essay will also analyze about the concept critical thinking and will
evaluate and analyze that how lack of understanding makes them suffer in the future. This essay
will also give a framework of how critical thinking can be categorized into skills, knowledge,
attitudes, values and ethics. However in order to understand in a more elaborated of issue, there
is a need of obtaining from an insider’s view point, therefore it will discuss about the positive
points of critical thinking.
The Nature of Critical Thinking
“Critical thinking” denotes a general idea of what it demands, but it stays as a concept
over which there a lot of arguments and uncertainties about what it include and how will it
manifest further. However in a wider term critical thinking is knows as a cognitive skill that is
related to rational judgment for an individual. Critical thinking brings the frameworks reviewed

2IMPORTANCE OF CRITICAL THINKING IN HIGHER EDUCATION
in the Markle et al., (2013). The engagement of the student is broadly recognized as an important
influence on learning and achievement in higher education and is being widely researched and
theorized. (Kahu, 2013) recently suggests that the hope to review existing assessment in light of
the construct representation, item format and validity evidence will benefit higher education
institution as they choose among available assessments. This method of critical thinking has
gained widespread attention as recognition of the of higher education outcomes assessment has
increased. (Fayolle, 2013) the percentage of higher education institution using an external
measure of the outcomes of student learning has increased. There is several other research
framework of critical thinking as discussed by (Moore, 2013). These kinds of depositions, which
is either seen as habits or attitudes, involves inquisitiveness, fair mindedness, a desire to be well
informed, flexibility and a respect towards different point of views.
Behavioral Perspective
Teaching practice and student behavior is given the most emphasis in the higher
education the lack of critical thinking causes great loss in colleges and further studies. Critical
thinking, which is also known logical thinking, should be ingrained in a person from their
childhood (McPeck, 2016). The value of reasoning and logic in any form of study or general
behavior should be present in each and every human being. Otherwise they will learn to follow
things blindly which will end them nowhere. The engagement of the student is seen as an
evolving construct from an early age, it captures a range of institutional practice and the behavior
of student with respect to the to the students achievement and satisfaction, including social
teaching practice social and academic integration and to work on time (Goetsch, & Davis, 2014).
Critical thinking helps a person to learn actively, helps them to compete with the academic
challenge, more importantly it helps them to think more profusely which helps them to produce

3IMPORTANCE OF CRITICAL THINKING IN HIGHER EDUCATION
better results in exam. Pragmatic research suggests that people who develops critical thinking
competency at a very young age. All people can taught to think critically, however especially in
higher education it is even more important. At time there are students who do not develop critical
thinking which creates a problem for them in future.
Multiple theme of Assessments
Interest in seeking the perception from both students and academics was highlighted by the
disparity on measures of active learning, work related learning and interaction between these
associates in a large scale. There are two aspect of critical thinking, general and domain. There is
an importance of giving an argument in the academic writing; there is still a lack of
understanding in students of the implementation or misconception. () States that in a prior study
the majority of the students felt that argumentation means presenting their original opinions and
views. There is a severe need of originality, each individual is unique and they have their own
thoughts which has to be enhanced and therefore it is important think critically and not what the
tutors spoon feed the, there is another famous misconception is that the argument is manifested
only through an adversarial stance in writing. However (Fairclough, 2014) explains that every
argument should be sensitive and connect with different point of views, where he evaluates the
thought rather than criticizing the cause and therefore incorporating those claims which are
closest to their own position (Evans, 2013). There are many reasons why critical thinking is
important. In today’s technological world, most of the learning’s and information is taken from
the computer and mobile. It has become a computer- mediate world, where people blindly
believe sources like Google and all the various other information given there. ICT is introduced
in most of the schools these days and therefore from a very young age students blindly follows it.

4IMPORTANCE OF CRITICAL THINKING IN HIGHER EDUCATION
This also hampers there critical thinking as this block their thought process and makes them
completely dependent on the technology.
Conceptual Framework
Critical thinking is normally generalized and it makes the students as stereotypical
members of the society as stated by (Chan, 2013). However By understanding the difficult array
of factors influencing a student’s engagement and by embedding these phenomena and process
within the wider socio-culture context, and the uniqueness of an individual’s experience becomes
more clearly and therefore then the need of in depth knowledge or study of an individual student
arises. Even though this essay talks about the importance of critical thinking in higher education,
however this wideness or in depth thinking arises because of few factors i.e. the structural factor,
psycho-socio influences, socio cultural context and the distal and proximal consequences.
Conclusion
The aim of this essay was to show the importance of critical thinking in higher education
from different point of view and to provide with ideas from authors and from the articles to
understand the importance of it. The evaluation of this essay has been done secondarily mostly.
The essay talks about various numbers of factors such as analysis, reasoning, evaluation and
argumentation. These factors differs along with their individual dimension, however with this
essay the seriousness of critical thinking has been understood. The depth of the cause has been
perfectly evaluated in this essay. This essay found that irrespective of levels, every individual has
the power and ability to think critically however this power should be sharpened and enhanced
with activities.

5IMPORTANCE OF CRITICAL THINKING IN HIGHER EDUCATION
References:
Chan, Z. C. (2013). A systematic review of critical thinking in nursing education. Nurse
Education Today, 33(3), 236-240.
Evans, C. (2013). Making sense of assessment feedback in higher education. Review of
educational research, 83(1), 70-120.
Fairclough, N. (2014). Critical language awareness. Routledge.
Fayolle, A. (2013). Personal views on the future of entrepreneurship education. Entrepreneurship
& Regional Development, 25(7-8), 692-701.
Goetsch, D. L., & Davis, S. B. (2014). Quality management for organizational excellence. Upper
Saddle River, NJ: pearson.
Kahu, E. R. (2013). Framing student engagement in higher education. Studies in higher
education, 38(5), 758-773.
Lea, M. R., & Street, B. (2014). understanding textual practices ‘in higher education. Writing:
Texts, processes and practices, 62.
Liu, O. L., Frankel, L., & Roohr, K. C. (2014). Assessing Critical Thinking in Higher Education:
Current State and Directions for Next‐Generation Assessment. ETS Research Report
Series, 2014(1), 1-23.
McPeck, J. E. (2016). Critical thinking and education. Routledge.

6IMPORTANCE OF CRITICAL THINKING IN HIGHER EDUCATION
Moore, T. (2013). Critical thinking: Seven definitions in search of a concept. Studies in Higher
Education, 38(4), 506-522.