Critical thinking is deciding rationally what to or what not to believe."
Norris, Stephen P. "Synthesis of Research on Critical Thinking. Educational Leadership, v 42 n 8 May 1985. 40-45.

This is a basic yet accurate definition of the term 'critical thinking'. It simply implies reading information, analyzing it, and then deciding which information is useful and which information is not. It is a fairly straightforward definition. The main point is that in many pieces of writing there is a fair amount of information, but critical thinking is required to isolate the information that will provide useful to the task at hand.



"The purpose of critical thinking is, therefore, to achieve understanding, evaluate view points, and solve problems. Since all three areas involve the asking of questions, we can say that critical thinking is the questioning or inquiry we engage in when we seek to understand, evaluate, or resolve."
Maiorana, Victor P. Critical Thinking Across the Curriculum: Building the Analytical Classroom. 1992.

This definition is a bit more complex, yet similar to the first one. It focuses more on why critical thinking is essential, as opposed to simply what critical thinking is. The idea of asking questions to gain a truer and deeper meaning of a piece of literature is heavily stressed in this definition. Critical thinking must be the result of curiosity and desire to comprehend a proposed thought or idea.


"Broadly speaking, critical thinking is concerned with reason, intellectual honesty, and open-mindedness, as opposed too emotionalism, intellectual laziness, and closed-mindedness. Thus, critical thinking involves: following evidence where it leads; considering all possibilities; relying on reason rather than emotion; being precise; considering a variety of possible viewpoints and explanations; weighing the effects of motives and biases; being concerned more with finding the truth than with being right; not rejecting unpopular views out of hand; being aware of one's own prejudices and biases, and not allowing them to sway one's judgment."

Kurland, Daniel J. I Know What It Says . . . What does it Mean? 1995.

This definition of critical thinking focuses on having a specific viewpoint while keeping an open mind towards other opinions. It also stresses the significance of abandoning emotional opinions while analyzing a possibly controversial subject. Emotion and personal opinion is okay to recognize, as long as they do not affect the final judgment.

Critical thinking is different when hypertext is involved. When reading hypertext, critical thinking is extremely important because reading hypertext involves scanning information and afterward decide which information is worth retaining, which is not the same method used by most researchers when using other media for research. In terms of writing hypertext, it is essential to have the ability to write with heavily concentrated information without sacrificing reader interest. Critical thinking plays a vital role in the creating and obtaining any type of media, but one could argue that critical thinking skills are especially vital in the creating and obtaining of hypertext.

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