CRITICAL THINKING & KM

If you cannot think staright, then it would be extremely challenging. Why? Because one would not be sure whether the issues, ideas and thoughts that is so easily available these days on the internet are actually purposeful or useful for the question at hand, assuming that we are happy with the authenticity of what is available.

Richard Paul and Linda Elder's work in the field of Critical Thinking can equip us better train ourselves to think and reason critically. To me, the ability to do this is foundational to knowledge construction. Up to now this ability, which is clearly not something that anyone is born with, is largely gained when one seeks and achieves higher education levels. A simple example is that an MBA or MSc equips a person with higher cognitive abilities. Then again, there are many PhDs whom I have met who have left me wondering about their ability to think, despite their training in scientific rigour.

I have had the pleasure in attending one of the Foundation for Critical Thinking conferences 2 years ago where there was a 2-day training workshop thrown in. The 8-step model is available from their site - I like it because if gives me a working frame to build my hypothesis or argument on. Paul and Elder also move into traits and standards, and this is where anyone seeking to build some sort of a training package to kickstart critical thinking can immediately used these frames.

The KM Practitioner of the future will need to strengthen his/her critical thinking abilities - and this, unfortunately, is not attended to in schools and other educational institutes to the extent that it is necessary for the next generation economy. So a bit of self-help is going to be necessary as we better prepare ourself to use information to create knowledge.