Prologue:  The FTCA has moved in a new direction recently.  That new direction is the creation of committees who will work for the benefit of the members of the FTCA and the chiropractic profession as a whole.  Each of these committees will be undertaking tasks and producing content that they themselves have felt is important to FTCA members.  They are all volunteer, they are using their own resourcefulness to accomplish these goals.  And they have my utter thanks and gratitude for stepping up.  This letter is an introduction to your CRITICAL THINKING COMMITTEE.  Having a foundation of critical thinking skills is a hallmark necessity for a Forward Thinking chiropractor.

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Introduction to the Critical Thinking Committee

Dear FTCA members,

This is our first post so we’d like to introduce ourselves and describe what we are about. Our committee members are: Ashley Dent, Garth Aamodt, Iperlitta Lolis, Jessica Eliason, Jillian Mlinarcik, Melissa MacDonald, Michael Lovich, Michael Raucci, Scott Bennington, Sean Gregory, Steve Pratt, Yannick Shultz, Leighia Wells, and myself, Andrew Shepherd as committee leader.

One of our main goals is to provide a new approach to engagement with our peers and the wider community through the use of critical thinking. A basic definition of this is described by Paul and Elder (2008):

“Critical thinking is the process of deliberate, systematic and logical thinking on any subject, while considering bias or assumptions that may affect your discussion. Critical thinking can be defined as, “the art of analyzing and evaluating thinking with a view to improving it”

This definition will be explored more thoroughly in future posts from us but suffice to say it is our intention to try and put this method of thinking into practice within our Facebook discussions between members to foster a more thoughtful and professional approach to our dialogue.

Another, more profound goal of the group is to begin to build a Forward Thinking philosophy. There are so many current explanations of what chiropractic philosophy is but many of these are not based in reality but rather in belief systems.

We would like to develop a true chiropractic philosophy, based on wisdom, intellectual culture and a search for knowledge using the method of science, which incorporates rational and critical thinking, healthy skepticism and ethics.

We hope that everyone will engage in this process and welcome all discussion on building both our critical thinking skills and a Forward Thinking Chiropractic philosophy.

Warm Regards,

The Critical Thinking Committee

References:

Richard Paul and Linda Elder, The Miniature Guide to Critical Thinking Concepts and Tools, Foundation for Critical Thinking Press, 2008