Assessing thinking is the first step to improve the quality of decision-making.
Individuals, small and large groups make progress when they make a commitment to improving thinking skills and mindset.
- People who cannot think as well as we need them to think, whether they are workers, parents, children, supervisors, teachers, soldiers or elders impact the success of our schools, businesses and society.
- When objective measures reveal weaknesses in reasoning skills and mindset, there are effective training and teaching techniques that can be used to strengthen those skills and to foster a more positive mindset toward thinking and reasoning.
There is probably no other attribute more worthy of measure than critical thinking.
- Successful performance in business, health care, government service, and education requires fair-minded decision making, anticipation of consequences, and the evaluation of options and actions. Studies have consistently shown that strength in critical thinking correlates with workplace and academic success, certification and licensure in the most valued professions, and survival of some of life’s most difficult challenges.
Although human reasoning and problem solving are highly complex processes—they are possible to analyze, measure and improve.
- Many people think it’s obvious who the best thinkers are in their team, but too often this impression is based on observation and hindsight. A measure of critical thinking that objectively describes an individual’s comparative strength in critical thinking is a valuable aid in determining a person’s capacity to benefit from educational training or to succeed in school or in their jobs.
Strength in reasoning means more than the possession of thinking skills.
- Some people fail to think well because they lack strong mental habits that encourage the use of thinking and reasoning to solve problems.
Equally important is the possession of the mindset that supports well-reasoned problem solving and decision making.
- Costly mistakes and poor judgments might be the result of deficient thinking skills, but an equally likely cause is a mindset that predisposes the decision-maker to biased, hasty or superficial analysis of the situation at hand. When a new opportunity or a problem situation is approached with closed-mindedness, resistance to new information, disregard for evidence, mistrust of thinking, indifference toward consequences, and little desire to attend to the complexities or subtleties, the result will be lost opportunities and the need for damage control.
As the world leader in the measurement of critical thinking, Insight Assessment provides valid and reliable instruments to assist our clients to know which of their people have the core skills and mindset to draw reasonable conclusions, evaluate arguments and explain their own points of view by providing good reasons and solid evidence. Insight Assessment multilingual measurement tools are used in business, health care, academic institutions and educational training programs for people of all ages. Contact us to get started.
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