Over the last few weeks, you have read and heard a lot about critical thinking, identified barriers to critical thinking in your life, assessed your communication style, and identified your stage of development as a critical thinker. You’ve accomplished quite a bit in this course so far.
In the 1980’s, a popular cartoon series, G.I. Joe, ended every episode with a lesson concluding, “Now you know. And knowing is half the battle.” What you know is really important, but knowing isn’t enough.
In this assignment, you’re going to consider the barriers to critical thinking again, and this time, you will figure out how you might overcome them. Overcoming barriers to critical thinking may not always be possible, but you should be able to use different strategies to reduce the barriers you face, and in that way reduce their impact on you. Thinking up strategies might sound intimidating at first, but you can think of it simply as “How can I think through this situation or problem?” As you become more adept at identifying barriers to your critical thinking, you’ll more easily apply a strategy to deal with them, and eventually, go through this process quickly.
USE THESE BARRIERS:
Barriers in the text are: “Barriers include narrow-mindedness, such as absolutism, egocentrism, anthropocentrism, and ethnocentrism, as well as the habitual use of resistance, such as fear of a challenge, stress, avoidance, anger, cliches, denial, ignorance, conformity, rationalization, and distractions (Boss, 2021, p. 74).
