This handout is a work in progress by Margaret Vaughan, Ph.D.

Critical Thinking and the Sociological Imagination

Introduction
Critical thinking is a skill that will serve you throughout your life in various
settings and situations. It also enables you to be a leader and a lead thinker. Many
definitions of critical thinking exist. Critical thinking generally means having
procedures and strategies for thinking through problems, solutions, and claims of
truth, as well as being aware of what those processes and strategies entail
(metacognitive thinking) and considering various perspectives and thinking
creatively. This handout combines the practice of critical thinking with sociological
thinking and the sociological imagination.

Critical Thinking Strategies in Sociology

Many strategies can help in thinking critically. These strategies include the
following:

• Using analogies to understand a problem or situation

• Using multiple perspectives to view different perspectives of a problem and
its solutions
• Using various theories to view multiple dimensions of a problem or issue
• Thinking in terms of racialization, ethnicity, social class, gender (masculine or
feminine), sexual orientation, sex (male or female or intersex), region,
linguistic diversity, and generation and age
• Being flexible in your thinking
• Being empathetic and thinking about how you emotionally respond to the
topics at hand
• Noticing how issues connect to other issues and the complexity that is
involved in understanding social issues
• Moving beyond “taken for granted” assumptions
• Developing conceptual maps of ideas, concepts, and theories that can be
always revised as your thinking changes and grows and you incorporate new
information
• Thinking of yourself as part of a community of learners, whether it is learning
and conversing with a book and its author or with a classmate or instructor
• Asking many questions: See this useful model:
http://www.criticalthinking.org/CTmodel/CTModel1.cfm

Developing Your Sociological Imagination

The term “sociological imagination” was coined by C. Wright Mills in 1959.
The sociological imagination entails viewing your life, life events, personal problems
(your microcosm) through larger world events, power relations, trends, and local,
national, and world histories (the macrocosm). Thinking with a sociological
imagination also means understanding your immediate social experiences through

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the lens of various sociological theories (explanations). This adds another level to
your critical thinking strategies.

Critical Thinking and “Thinking with your Hands”

A recent New York Times Magazine article is entitled, “The Case for Working
with Your Hands” by Matthew B. Crawford. This author with a Ph.D. left a “posh”
think tank job to become a motorcycle mechanic. He claims that he did not truly
practice “thinking” until he began working with his hands. He wrote describing his
new line of work,
…it frequently requires complex thinking. In fixing motorcycles you come up
with several imagined trains of cause and effect for manifest symptoms, and
you judge their likelihood before tearing anything down. This imagining relies
on a mental library that you develop. An internal combustion engine can
work in any number of ways, and different manufacturers have tried different
approaches. Each has its proclivities for failure. You also develop a library of
sounds and smells and feels. For example, the backfire of a too-lean fuel
mixture is subtly different from an ignition backfire. (Crawford, 2009, May 24,
p. 39).
Notice the multisensory dimension of critical thinking depicted in this quote. Senses
such as touch, olfactory, auditory, and the visual are involved in thinking and
problem-solving processes.
Crawford explained the need for a community of thinkers, or in this case a
community of motorcycle mechanics that one needs to be in touch with in order to
problem solve, especially for puzzling repairs. He also implied a pride and sense of
accomplishment develops from working with your hands. From this article, we can
think about how “working with our hands” on a variety of tasks also requires critical
thinking, attention to detail, theories about how things work, and the importance of
community, just as much as exclusively academic tasks (those traditionally
associated with thinking).

Emotional Processes and Learning (Moon, 2004, p. 53)

Western academics traditionally have attempted an emotion-free or “rational”
or “objective” approach to information and thinking. It is interesting to ponder that
“distancing” oneself (in order to gain rational and “unbiased” information) from
emotions may also be a form of emotion (maybe perceived as “cold” or “reserved”).
Through work in educational psychology, sociology, anthropology, and feminist
theory, emotion is discussed more and more in academics and remains relevant to
learning experiences in various manifestations. It is also important to remember
that emotions are culturally-shaped, and do not take the same forms for the same
interactions or situations among different cultures (or may even contain within-
group differences in one “culture”).
Moon (2004) explains various ways emotions may be part of learning: not
only in relation to emotional intelligence (skills with managing your own or
another’s emotions) or emotions as a topic about which to learn, but also how
This handout is a work in progress by Margaret Vaughan, Ph.D.

emotions impact learning and how learning impacts emotions.

• Emotions are part of cognition or thinking. “[F]eelings influence what we
actually know about something….What we know becomes associated with
feelings, though the associations do not need to be permanent….Feelings are
part of the internal experience that guides new learning….” (Moon, 2004, p.
48) These feelings can differ among learners.
• “When we try to recall something that has been forgotten, it is often the
experience of the associated feelings that occurs before the name or nature
of the object ‘comes to mind.’ Thus awareness of feeling may be a system
that operates more quickly than awareness of the knowledge object.” (Moon,
2004, p. 48)
• New information and feelings about that new information is compared to
already held information and associated feelings.
• New feelings may emerge during the learning process to replace the former
feelings associated with the topics being discussed.
• Feelings being experienced at a particular moment may impede or prevent
learning or aid in learning.
• Feelings about the setting in which the learning takes place (such as
comfort/discomfort or feelings of safety/lack of safety) may also impact the
learning process.
• The psychological state of reaching a sense of “flow” (being so fully absorbed
in a task of studying or learning that one loses track of time) also relates to
feelings and learning (Moon, 2004, p. 48).
• Attitudes and feelings toward one’s ability to learn also impacts actual
learning, as well.
• “Emotional insight” may occur in which learning creates a helpful change or a
new viewpoint in the person’s life (Moon, 2004, p. 52-53). For example,
thinking with the use of a sociological imagination may bring new insights
about a social problem or issue that is of personal significance.
So, emotional processes plays a part in learning processes. Being aware of the role
of emotional processes may be helpful in understanding how learning is taking
place, thinking with a sociological imagination, and in critical thinking.

More Thoughts
This is only a beginning to understanding critical thinking strategies and in
expanding the meaning of critical thinking to various situations, and providing
strategies of how to critically think. Critical thinking is an important skill to develop
all throughout life, not only within academics. It is a practice of an educated
person.

References

Crawford, M. B. (2009, May 24). The case for working with your hands. The New

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York Times
Magazine, pp. 36- 41.

Moon, J. A. (2004). A handbook of reflective and experiential learning: Theory and

practice. London &
New York: Taylor and Francis.