Welcome
For over 25 years, Insight Assessment has provided tools to measure critical thinking for clients who understand that a measure of an individual’s critical thinking ability is a reliable indicator of how they will perform when faced with new problems in high stakes and time-limited situations. As a world leader in the measurement of critical thinking, Insight Assessment has developed a uniquely comprehensive array of test instruments which includes tools designed for professional and academic use from the third grade through doctoral level. Each test has been designed to objectively measure the critical thinking skills and dispositions of test takers at targeted educational levels or with question content attuned to the interests of specific professional fields. Online or paper and pencil administration is available.
In English and in many authorized translations, these high quality instruments are in use with professionals, new hires, candidates, and students at every educational level by businesses, universities, schools, and government agencies.
No society, local or global, can sustain itself and flourish without its members learning to think well together.
Critical Thinking
Super Bowl: May the Best Thinkers Win
The ultimate critical thinking sports event, the Super Bowl, approaches. Building a strong successful winning sports team requires the same critical thinking team building that you need in your organization.
In critical thinking, just like in football, you have to know the rules, introduce core skills and have lots of time to practice. In football the core skills are when to pass, seeing the angle on the run and knowing how to play good defense. Your critical thinking team needs the core skills of reflective decision-making: analysis, evaluation, drawing good inferences and supplying sound reasons for decisions.
Of course athletes must be able to put the skills together to win games; teams win games because they have the work habits, drive, persistence, confidence and trust in their team mates. Athletes are successful because of their hard work, dedication, physical training and mental conditioning. The same approach applies to critical thinking on your team: expertise comes from practice and the desire to continue perfecting your skills—and good coaching. Strong thinkers must not only have strong reasoning skills; they also develop and practice the habits of mind that motivate them to use those skills in reflective decision-making. Skills and dispositions are mutually reinforcing.
In sports there’s a clear definition of success: you win or you lose and you can assess your record. But how do you document if your critical thinking team can think well? Contact Insight Assessment to learn how you can get valid and reliable measurements to document the skills and dispositions of individuals and groups.
Characteristics of Strong Critical Thinkers
- inquisitiveness with regard to a wide range of issues
- concern to become and remain well-informed
- alertness to opportunities to use critical thinking
- self-confidence in one’s own abilities to reason
- open-mindedness regarding divergent world views
- flexibility in considering alternatives and opinions
- understanding of the opinions of other people
- fair-mindedness in appraising reasoning
- honesty in facing one’s own biases, prejudices, stereotypes, or egocentric tendencies
- prudence in suspending, making or altering judgments
- willingness to reconsider and revise views where honest reflection suggests that change is warranted
Based on the APA Expert Consensus Delphi Report description of strong critical thinkers.
