Critical Thinking, Analysis and Synthesis

Critical Thinking

At University you will often hear your lecturers talk about criticality, but what does this mean? Applying criticality to your work does not involve being negative, rather it involves weighing up the arguments and evidence for and against, in order to form a judgement. Critical thinking is a core academic skill that teaches you to question and reflect on evidence. It is key to learning and achieving academic success. As a student you need to develop critical skills so that you are equipped to judge material in an informed and analytical manner.

Critical thinking and critical writing moves beyond passively describing our reading, and critically engaging with our sources. This means analysing and synthesing our information, to provide a deeper insight and understanding. While description will always be required to put our information into context, analysis and synthesis is where the marks lie in our assignments. All assessment rubrics will require a level of analysis and synthesis.

Your marker will be looking for:

A discussion of theoretical concepts
Use, analysis and synthesise of supporting evidence to illustrate points
Well referenced information from reliable, credible sources
Demonstration of independent research
An introduction that clearly and concisely articulates your argument
An assignment that shows understanding and provides a convincing and logical argument
An easily navigated argument that provides structure, cohesion and coherence.

Critical Analysis and Evaluation

Critical analysis essentially involves reading and thinking widely about an issue in order to develop a deeper understanding of the topic. It is the detailed examination and evaluation of another persons ideas or work. It is subjective, as it expresses your interpretation and analysis of the work by breaking down and studying its parts.

Evaluation is the process of examining the strength and limitation of the research findings, reflecting on the validity, relevance, and usefulness of the research findings and making a reasoned judgement on its quality.

Evidence Synthesis

As part of your reading, you will have been making critical notes to summarise information sources. Now, we bring everything together into a cohesive piece, a process called synthesising. You take ideas from various sources, which may be contradictory or supportive, and combine them with your own thoughts and assumptions to present a unified argument.

Critical Thinking Model

Thinking critically means asking questions instead of just accepting what you read, see or hear at face value.

In order to help you develop your critical thinking, you can use the critical thinking model, developed by Plymouth University (2006).

The model is does not need to be used in a linear way, or as a prescriptive set of instructions.

It should be used to trigger and encourage a questioning approach to your studies.

It can be applied to many different academic scenarios, such as interpreting assignment briefs, reading sources, developing arguments and problem solving.

Description
To be descriptive is an essential first step.
Description is the narrative that shows your understanding of key points, assumptions, arguments and evidence.
Your description should be brief. It will help you understand the background and context.
This involves asking questions such as:
- What?
- Where?
- Who?
- When?
Who is involved? What is it about? Who is it by? If you were reading a journal article you might ask questions such as:
- Who wrote this?
- What is it about?
- When was it written?
- What is the aim of the article?
Analysis & Evaluation
Analysis is the foundation of critical thinking.
It examines how components relate to each other.
When analysing sources check for sweeping generalisations, bias or personal views.
Explain why something matters, how it is different.
Explain implications, applications and uses.
These questions help you examine methods and processes, reasons and causes and alternative options. This involves asking questions such as:
- Why?
- How?
- What if?
Why is this significant? How else and where else can it be applied? Why was this done? How does one factor affect another? What are its strengths and limitations? What are the implications of these similarities and differences? What are the alternatives?
For example with the journal article you might ask:
- How was the research conducted?
- Why are these particular theories discussed?
- What are the alternative methods and theories?
This helps develop more analytical answers and deeper thinking.
Evaluation requires you to consider the possible implications, meaning and significance of any findings or recommendations and to justify your position. This involves asking questions such as:
- So what?
- What Next?
What can be learned? What are the implications? What needs to be done next? Is it convincing?
Synthesis

This third level component is when you bring together your analysis of different sources to serve your argument or line of reasoning.
Make logical connections between the sources, and demonstrate how they help you shape and support your ideas.
Applying the model
Read the news article below and use the critical thinking model to ask relevant questions.
You can read the full article at: 'Sleeping on it' really does help and four other recent sleep research breakthroughs.
Your questions might include:
Description
- Who has made this statement?
- When was it made?
- What are the key issues associated with sleep?
- How are these measured?
Analysis
- How are the main issues around sleep measured and monitored?
- How were the studies conducted and who by (any bias or hidden agenda?)
- What reasons are given for the claims? Is the evidence robust?
- In comparison what do we still not know about sleep?
- What are the benefits of the research?
- Is there any other research to compare/consider?
- What is the outcomes of knowing so much about sleep?
Evaluation
- What is the impact of having this knowledge? who will it benefit?
- Is there a negative impact of this research?
You might have thought of completely different questions. There are no right or wrong question to ask. When it comes to your university assessments, the questions you ask will depend not only on your discipline, but also the type and purpose of your assignment.