My reflections proposed by Stella Cottrell in her book "What is critical thinking?"

My reflections proposed by Stella Cottrell in her book "What is critical thinking?" 

Emotional self-management

For me, the emotions that most difficult to manage when others disagree with me are: that others people think way different from what I think. It sometimes makes me feel annoyed with others because it might hurt my feelings when the issues concerned are about topics like: social justices, machism, racism or poverty and the others think that this is not their problems (not on their business) so they do not worry about or do not do anything about it or even worse they start judging these people suffering from social inequality. Fortunately, I deal with these by: relaxing and try to stop taking things too personal and stop worrying about what others say start thinking about any backgrounds that these people might have had in their pasts that makes them think the way they think.


Influences of my thinking: 

For me, the influences in my own thinking that I need to be most aware of so that they don't prejudice my thinking are: thinking about both sides of any issue. What I mean by that is that I have to consider the positive and negative features of any topic so that I can not let any influences influence my own thinking. That is why it is important to do research about any topic that I am going to talk to others or to think about it and I deal with these by: validate the information that I research for, it could be anywhere on the internet or in the newspaper or going to the library for book where I can validate that information with real information.

Challenging opinions

For me, the things I find most difficult about challenging the opinions of other people are that I might hurt other people's feelings by saying the wrong words or using unappropriate expressions that might let people get another perspective of what I am trying to say. So, I believe that when speaking or expressing ourselves, we should first be aware of what words or expressions we are going to use in our speech, in such manner we must look for the information and vocabulary to subtle our speeches. I deal with these by looking for vocabulary and search for the topic before I talk about it.

Reflection: 

Do you recognise anything of yourself in Bodner's description of students? What effect would the approach he suggests have on your learning and understanding?
I do recognise Bodner's description in myself because I have had notice in my courses back in high school. I remember my chemistry classes when my teacher used to tell us about standard chemistry calculations and also, it happened with the math classes (calculation stuff) and they made us remember those ones by heart which I found as very old fashioned classes because anytime I would ask him about why did we have to learn those things by heart rahter than using those in our real lives. Any of them would never answer me with strong arguments but they used to say that it was meant to be learnt at the end of each term. So, that is one of the reasons why I hate chemistry or maths because of the lack of innovative activities to teach.


Reflection: 

Consider what you could do to manage these barriers in the next few months.

One of the biggest barriers I have when thinking critically is that I am very used to think that critical means going or creating arguments that go against any reason other people are giving. So, a way to manage this misunderstanding is to stat taking into account both positive and negative aspects about any issue in general.