Critical Thinking and Decision Making
...ions (Browne & Kelley, 1994, p. 119).? For instance in computer repair critical thinking is used. I would start by looking at when the problem occurred. This can tell me if the error occurred during the initial boot-up of the computer, which would be a hardware problem, or after the loading of Windows, which would be a software problem. From this point I would continue this process of observation and step-by-step trouble shooting to determine what is the exact cause of the problem. Once I have gone through the trouble shooting process and come to a conclusion on what has caused the error I must make a decision on what to do to repair the issue. Which brings us to the question. What is a decision? I believe a decision is the conclusion that is reached after the consideration of the available information. A good decision can only be made after the careful consideration, through the use of critical thinking, of all of the available facts. Browne and Kelley define a decision as, ?Decisions are streams of choices. While each choice might be treated as a discrete event and each subproblem might be considered a discrete problem, the choices accumulate either by design or happen-stance. At some point, the accumulation builds a momentum of its own that can sweep up even well-intentioned decision makers (1994, p. 119).? In the example above I made a decision on what caused the problem based on the information supplied and then must make a decision based on what will fix the problem. What should be quite evident at this point is that in orde...