Critical thinking

Critical thinking is your ability to think clearly and question information and ideas.

It’s all about:  evaluating, problem-solving and logic.

Your critical thinking skill

School will have helped you develop your critical thinking skills. In class, you may have carefully considered a topic before debating it with someone else. In doing so, you’ll have given reasons or examples to show why you agree or disagree with their point of view.

Being a good critical thinker means your ability to solve problems and make decisions is trusted.

Top tips for developing your critical thinking

In general: Reading an online article, blog post, review of a product and asking yourself, ‘Do I trust this source?’.
In school: Asking 'Why?' when you don't understand the purpose of something. For example, you might not understand or agree with an analysis of a poem.
In work: Thinking about how you’re performing at work to understand what you’re good at and how you could improve.

Describing your critical thinking skill to employers

An employer may ask you questions where you need to identify which critical thinking skills you have, and say how you’ve used them.   Think about examples where you’ve:

made an educated guess and taken action based on that guess
analysed a situation, decided on the priorities and organised which actions to take
helped settle a disagreement by understanding both sides before deciding on a solution that's fair