Learning goal: Critical thinking

Critical thinking skills development is a significant factor in classroom, college, and career success. Help your students develop these essential critical thinking skills using the FutureFit resources collected under the “Investigate” domain. Skills highlighted in this domain include inquisitiveness, information literacy, data synthesis, and pattern recognition.

At the practical level, Investigate focuses on skills and abilities that blend well with both core academic concepts and broader social-emotional learning goals articulated by standards organizations, states, and researchers. We’ve meshed the best and most relevant concepts and approaches into an accessible list of skills that is easy to understand and articulate to students, including:

• Information literacy: The ability to quickly and effectively determine what information is needed, where to find it, and how to evaluate, apply and communicate it
• Data synthesis: The ability to quickly and effectively evaluate data from various sources and use it to provide actionable insight
• Pattern recognition: The ability to quickly and effectively discern patterns in data, information, processes, etc. and model those patterns to produce solutions to disparate or tangential problems
• Bias awareness: The ability to honestly perceive one's own biases, stereotypes, and prejudices when developing information, patterns, models, tropes or solutions
• Inquisitiveness: The ability - rooted in an eagerness for knowledge - to objectively and broadly ask questions purely to satisfy curiosity