Essential Studies Goal:

Thinking and Reasoning

You should be able to use a variety of thinking and reasoning skills, apply these skills as appropriate in various situations, and move among them depending on purpose.

Rationale: The ability to call on a variety of thinking and reasoning skills and choose among them in order to accomplish a range of civic, professional, and personal tasks is a core hallmark of an educated person. By the time you complete your ES courses, you will have encountered opportunities to practice various kinds of thinking and reasoning skills, including  critical thinking, quantitative reasoning, and creative thinking.

You will improve your critical thinking skills when your ES courses ask you to do the following:

• Synthesize and analyze texts, issues, or problems.
• Evaluate the logic, validity, and relevance of arguments.
• Come to reasoned conclusions or resolutions to problems that includes foreseeing ethical ramifications of choices, broader implications of actions, and alternative solutions.

You will improve your quantitative reasoning skills when your ES courses ask you to do the following:

• Apply empirical data to a special problem or issue.
• Draw conclusions based on quantitative information.
• Analyze graphical information and use it to solve problems.

You will improve your creative thinking skills when your ES courses ask you to do the following:

• Explore alternate and potentially divergent perspectives on an idea, process, experience, or object.
• Discover ways to confront complex or ambiguous problems, make new connections, and see how things could be otherwise.
• Engage in creative practice as a means to develop aesthetic understanding.