4 tips for developing critical thinking skills | Steve Pearlman, Ph.D. | TEDxCapeMay

Tue May 6, 2025

“Critical thinking” increasingly stands as the most sought-after skill that has long been too fleeting to define. Employers rate it as a pinnacle skill, but one of which they see too little, and educators claim to teach it, but over half of Millennials recently failed a simple Mindedge critical thinking test. So, what is critical thinking? Analysis? Information literacy? Thinking outside the box? Informal logic? Problem-solving? Evaluating data? Decision science? What if all of our efforts to define critical thinking as above have been the core problem with teaching it?What if, instead of using our brains to devise conceptions of critical thinking, we eliminated the noise and revolutionized a way to teach people how to think better by tracing critical thinking back to its core evolutionary survival mechanisms?With over 35-years of experience in higher education, Steve founded the first academic office in higher education with a specialized focus on critical thinking. Author of America’s Critical Thinking Crisis, he has been featured on NPR, Fox News Radio, The Chronicle of Higher Education, The Atlanta Journal Constitution, CBS Atlanta, The Hill, and a plethora of podcasts. Steve founded The Critical Thinking Institute and is a keynote speaker on critical thinking for businesses, universities, conferences, and the U.S. military. With over 40-years of experience, Steve is also a sought-after martial arts instructor for his unique theoretical approach to training. Most of all, he’s a devoted father, an endeavor which stretches his own critical thinking most of all.This talk was given at a TEDx event using the TED conference format but independently organized by a local community. Learn more at https://www.ted.com/tedx

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