The Objective of the Study The Significance of the Study

a critical thinker should have such thinking abilities. Media educator, S. Ferrett, suggests the following fifteen characteristics of a critical thinker: 7 1. Ask related questions of the issues. 2. Assess statements and arguments. 3. Able to admit a lack of understanding or information. 4. Have a sense of curiosity. 5. Interested in finding new solutions. 6. Able to define clearly a set of criteria for analyzing ideas. 7. Willing to examine beliefs, assumptions, and opinions and weigh them against facts. 8. Listen carefully to others and are able to give feedback. 9. Suspend judgment until all facts have been gathered and considered 10. Look for evidence to support assumptions and beliefs. 11. Able to adjust opinions when new facts are found. 12. Look for evidence. 13. Examine problems closely. 14. Are able to reject information that is incorrect or irrelevant. 15. See that critical thinking is a lifelong process of self-assessment. Paul and Elder, one of the leading researchers on critical thinking, mentioned some characteristic of a critical thinker as cited below: 1. find out the crucial questions and problems, and clearly formulating them; 2. collect and evaluate relevant information, using abstract ideas to interpret it effectively; 3. after finding well-reasoned conclusions and solutions, then testing them against relevant criteria and standards; 4. having open minded thought by recognizing and assessing with their assumptions, implications, and practical consequences; and 5. find out the solutions of the complex problems by effectively discussing it with other. 8 7 S. Ferrett. Peak Performance. Cited in GED 20902: Online Professional Development, 1997, Retrieved from: http:www.ket.orgged2002criticalcr3. htm. From the characteristics mentioned above, it can be drawn a conclusion that a good critical thinker must have the ability to evaluate information, examine and analyze the evidence, as well as think open mindedly. A cultivated critical thinker could be exp ressed in the phrase “reasonable person”. 9 Such person always tries to evaluate and criticize information, issue and evidence before making decision, judgment as well as conclusion.

3. The Kinds of Critical Thinking Skill

Critical thinking includes the component skills of analyzing arguments, making inferences, judging or evaluating, and making decisions or solving problems. Such skill has many levels of thinking as cited by Teys that critical thinking can be devided into two categories, namely lower order thinking and higher order thinking. Lower order thinking skills or basic skills covers many skills such as memorizing, summarizing, labelling, observing, and sorting. Meanwhile, higher order skills as usually called as comprehension skills include application, synthesis, making inference, comparisoncontrast, justification, analysis, evaluation, moral reasoning, and using inductive and deductive reasoning. 10 Meanwhile, Benjamin S. Bloom proposes six categories of thinking as usually called as “Bloom Taxonomy”. The taxonomy includes these categories: knowledge, comprehension, application, analysis, synthesis, and evaluation. The first two categories, knowledge and comprehension, are regarded as lower order thinking which do not require critical thinking but the last four categories which are include application, analysis, synthesis, and evaluation, require the higher order thinking or critical thinking. Here, is the table of Bloom taxonomy for the clear explanation: 8 Paul and Elder, op. cit., p. 2. 9 David Hunter, A Practical Guide to Critical Thinking: Deciding What to Do and Believe, Canada: John Wiley Sons, Inc., 2009, p. 3. 10 Wanda Teys, Second Thoughts: Critical Thinking for a Diverse Society, New York: The McGraw-Hill Companies, 2006, 3 rd edition, p. 3.