Smart Thinking

Smart Thinking

There is an inner logic, and we're taught to stay far from it

It is simple and elegant, but it's cruel and antithetic

And there's no effort to reveal it ...

What is smart thinking?

There are many words associated with what is, loosely, termed 'thinking'. We

are often told to 'think about the issues', to 'analyse in more depth', to 'use

reasoning', or to 'be rational'. Sometimes (perhaps with reference to computers,

or to the legendary Star Trek character Mr Spock) we are told to 'be logical'.

Often students are told that they must think 'critically' if they are to succeed.

When people write essays or reports, they are usually advised to make sure that

they have a good 'argument' or that they 'explain in detail'. But do students

(and lecturers) really know what these words and phrases mean? Can we

actually identify the key skills and underlying techniques that allow us to think

better?

The answer is yes. Smart thinking means.knowing how to:

• work out and express your main ideas

• plan your communication of ideas so that they can be clearly understood

• check to see if you have covered all the important parts of your topic

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2 SMART THINKING: SKILLS FOR CRITICAL UNDERSTANDING & WRITING

• establish a framework or structure in which your basic facts and evidence

make sense

• present ideas by linking them together to convince readers of your conclusion.

Moreover, we must also relate thinking to knowledge and information (what we

think about), and the processes of communicating our ideas, either in written or

oral form. Thinking is one aspect of an integrated process of finding, analysing, and

communicating information. Your thinking begins even when you are deciding

'what' to read and write about.

'Smart thinking' can assist you in:

• working out where and how to look for the information you need

• understanding that information in relation to your own work

• deciding which information is relevant to your topic and which is not

• identifying when you need to find out more information to make sense of a

problem.

Smart thinking can also improve your capacity to set your communication in

context. It alerts you to the importance of:

• your audience and their expectations of what you are doing

• the requirements upon you to communicate in a certain way in a certain

situation

• your own assumptions and biases, and the role of society in forming those

biases, which will need to be considered and explored through your

communication.

To think smart, you must use reasoning. Reasoning is the basis of much of our

thinking. It is often described simply as the process of thinking through and

communicating our reasons for holding certain views or conclusions. Reasoning is,

however, better defined as a process of understanding and exploring the relation�ships between the many events, objects, and ideas in our world. None of these

individual 'items' can be meaningful in and of itself. An item can only be

understood in relation to other ones. Reasoning enables us to get beyond a world

of innumerable separate events, objects, and ideas. Using reasoning, we see that all

these separate items are interconnected, and what we know about any particular

object depends on our knowledge of other objects. Sometimes the connections are

obvious; other times, they are much harder to see. Reasoning involves finding and

expressing these connections or relationships so that each individual event, object,

or idea is explicable in terms of other events, objects, or ideas.