Critical thinking and criticality in writing

part 1
Dr Jennie Robinson, Leeds University Business
School
Associate Professor in Management Teaching
j.e.robinson@leeds.ac.uk
0113 343 4488
Firstly: WELCOME

• These sessions are here to help you understand your assignments at

Leeds and get the best marks possible

• You can submit questions for a session later in the week

• You can email me later on if you prefer
• j.e.robinson@leeds.ac.uk
So, what is criticality?
• Questioning
• Investigative
• To the point
• Including and accepting information we ourselves have ascertained to
be valid, not just accepting what we read without checking
• Rejecting that which is not valid
• Evidence based
• Strongly reliant on proper sources and references
What is a source?
• Anywhere that you get any thing that you put into your assignment

• The quality of sources is highly variable

• Nothing is banned, but you are expected to show that you understand
that they are not all equally reliable

• Do not treat them/use them all as facts – be circumspect about it

Examples of sources varying in reliability
[HIGH]
• Academic peer reviewed journals
https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.100
• Academic textbooks 2/csr.1393

• Normal books
• Wikipedia
• Newspapers
• Youtube videos http://www.healthista.com/6-clean-eating-reci
pes-from-instagrams-hottest-health-blogger/
• Random websites
• Bloggers
[LOW]
Are your sources credible? - checklist
• Is it from a peer reviewed journal or published book?

• Is it written by someone well qualified? Can you check? Watch out for former students publishing their
own dissertations

• Does that person write other articles on wildly varying subjects (i.e., is a journalist/author, not a scholar
or specialist?)

• Can you find the information in it elsewhere?

• Does your source cite its sources, and are they good?

Google scholar is the best search engine: can limit to recent articles from peer reviewed sources
https://scholar.google.co.uk/
Things to watch out for

• Sources with no obvious author

• Possible bias and/or commercial motive

• Opinion rather than evidence?

• Avoid websites as primary source

Criticality in what you put in/reject
• Don’t be tempted to include everything you have read just because
you read it – don’t put it in if it is a bad source, OR, if it does not fit
with the topic you are writing about

• The idea is that you read so widely that you can choose the best
sources, deciding which elements are relevant to the essay set

• Putting in something irrelevant either looks like you didn’t understand

the question, or haven’t done enough reading to pick the best
Session end: thank you for listening!

See you next time