International Break - Critical thinking and Fantasy Football
This week's promised meditation on Critical Thinking turned into a 2k+ post - so I've also included as a PDF attachment.
I hope many of you will take the time to read this - and if not, then that bodes well for the FF Managers who do.......
EHUBS Fantasy Football - Critical Thinking - Intl Wk Sept.pdf
GW# International Break - What can Fantasy Football teach us about critical thinking?
Last week, I sent the GW3 update with a commitment to look at how this FF league can help us understand critical thinking. As we have the international break, and no Premier League football this week, I thought this would be a good time to examine how we can derive some educational benefit from our EHU Business School Fantasy Football League.
The term “critical thinking” is a frustrating and often elusive concept – and there is a not a clear definition that everyone agrees on. Many people assume it means to “criticize”, but this is not always true. Being “critical” in the sense of critical thinking doesn’t mean aggressively destroying another person’s argument. The purpose of critical thinking is to improve understanding, get closer to the truth and help us understand and appreciate the complexities of the world we live in.
Yet, “critical thinking” it is also a term which all students are familiar with. This might be because you hear us (your lecturers and professors) banging on about “critical thinking”, or because you’ve received feedback on an assignment that highlights the lack of critical thinking. Unfortunately, where we don’t have a clear and shared understanding of what critical thinking entails, students can come away feeling confused, demotivated and frustrated – with potential negative impact on their academic performance and overall experience at university.
With that in mind, what follows aims to help us all by clarifying this term, what it means, what it entails, and how developing your critical thinking abilities is crucial for success at university and in business. Oh. And Fantasy Football.
It is also essential at this point to emphasize – everyone already has critical thinking abilities and uses them everyday. This includes you. What we want you to focus on is becoming conscious of your critical thinking abilities and to refine them, improve them, and to benefit from them.
Critical Thinking: Reframing our Understanding
First of all, it really helps if we understand that university is different from high school. A key element of this distinction is the emphasis on critical thinking, which prioritizes an education that is less concerned with “what” to think, and more focused on enhancing “how” to think.
Critical Thinking: A Disposition or a Skill?
While critical thinking - defined as a “metacognitive process” (Dwyer et al, 2016) - requires you to develop skills, those skills are perhaps not as important as your dispositions. Having said that, without those skills, you won’t be able to demonstrate critical thinking. So its useful to think about it like this:
Critical Thinking Ability = (Disposition + Skills)
The table that follows aims to identify the most central of these dispositions and skills:
Figure 1 - Critical Thinking: Key Dispositions and Key Skills
Dispositions | Skills | ||
Inquisitive | An inclination to ask questions, and want to understand further. | Identification | Identify a range of positions on a particular issue. Compare and contrast opposing views. |
Open-Minded | To be able to defend our own argument *but* also recognise that our current understanding may be wrong, and be willing to change own views based on new reasoning and evidence presented. | Judgement | Judge the credibility of the sources. Is there any bias, prejudice or self-interest? Who are you citing? What motivations, conflicts of interests do they have? How does this affect the validity of their arguments? |
Reflexive | An inclination to reflect and be mindful of your own attitudes, opinions, prior beliefs, and potential sources of bias you may have. | Analysis | Analyse (meaning “to break-down”) an argument and evaluate its main points. What are the main points of the information you’re analysing |
Sceptical | A healthy scepticism which involves withholding judgement on an issue until you’re persuaded by sufficient reasoning and evidence. | Synthesis | To synthesize (meaning to “put together”) multiple analyses into a single argument. |
Self-Efficacy | The tendency to be confident and trust in your own judgements. | Conclude and Present | Form a persuasive argument of your own based on the analysis conducted – and present this clearly. |
Adapted from: Edinburgh University (2021); Dwyer et al (2016)
Critical Thinking: Critical for Business
What everyone should now be realizing is that, while we (your business school lecturers and professors) will not shut up about critical thinking, there are very good reasons for this. As graduates, you will be forging careers in the world of business, applying for well-paid graduate schemes and securing positions with leading companies (Milkround, 2021). Some of you will be setting up your own companies as entrepreneurs, freelancing on projects or acting as consultants for multiple clients simultaneously. Every single day will involve you applying critical thinking in order to sell products/services, develop pitches to secure contracts, determine a strategic direction for your business, or make difficult decisions that impact you, your company, your colleagues and other business stakeholders.
University is a three-year investment you make in yourself. Your tuition buys you access to the university, to specific programmes, and to a wealth of resources and opportunities to help you develop. Enhancing your critical thinking abilities is a pillar of this experience, and your objective whilst at university should be to transform yourself into someone primed for success on your chosen career path. Critical thinking is perhaps the most valued form of cultural capital you can accumulate while you are here; the single ability that employers value most which can help you stand out from the crowd (Plummer, 2019).
Fantasy Critical Thinking
If you’ve got this far, then that’s encouraging. It also demonstrates at least a few of the dispositions and skills listed above.
We now need to have a little more fun with this – and think about critical thinking in relation to our wonderful fantasy football league. In doing so, I hope it will enhance our understanding of critical thinking in relation to our academic and professional careers.
So let’s start with a a question (*the* question) that a lot of us are thinking about:
Q: Do we get Cristiano Ronaldo into our team for GW4?
There are some of you here who support Manchester United. Those who do will have been in primary school when CR7 scored (then missed his penalty) in the Champion’s League Final in 2008.
But is getting him in a good idea. Let’s imagine we’ve got two Man Utd supporting managers both considering this move: one uncritical, one critical. How would they approach this decision?
The Uncritical Manager
This manager can wheel off stats about CR7, keeps saying “CR7. GOAT” whenever anyone mentions his name, and shudders if anyone says “Whatevs. Messi’s the Greatest Of All Time”. This manager has already made their decision: partly motivated by an infatuation with CR7; partly due to excitement at the prospect of seeing him back at Old Trafford, and partly due to CR7’s consistent performance in over 15yrs in the Premier League, La Liga and Serie A. There’s no doubt. CR7 is a great player.
But while this manager might be able to reel off a ream of stats - and form some kind of argument about why CR7 is a good idea – this is not critical thinking. It exhibits what we call confirmation bias (Encyclopaedia Britannica, 2021), whereby we select information that confirms our prior beliefs. Another key giveaway of a lack of criticality: nothing you say will convince this manager to change their mind.
We’re all affected by bias, and confirmation bias isn’t always a problem *if* you’re aware you’re doing it and can reflect on your decision. For example, I have Digne and Richarlison in my team, and did for most of last season too. I don’t take them out because I’m convinced this week they’ll score massive points and I often focus on information that helps me make the decision I want to make, despite the evidence keeping these guys is a bad idea. As long as I’m willing to accept the opportunity cost of having Digne and Richarlison in my team, there’s no problem.
The Critical Manager
This manager also loves Man Utd. They also idolize CR7. But they’re sceptical. An inquisitive and reflective scepticism that makes them ask themselves: “why am I making this decision? Is this the best course of action?”.
Sure, the stats all indicate that CR7 is a good pick. The stats don’t lie.
EHUBS Fantasy Football - Critical Thinking - Intl Wk Sept.pdf
Team | Games | Goals | Assists |
Real Madrid | 438 | 450 | 132 |
Man Utd | 292 | 118 | 69 |
Juventus | 134 | 101 | 22 |
Sporting CP | 31 | 5 | 6 |
But stats are historical data. Extrapolation – where past trends are considered a reliable indicator of future performance – don’t really apply in football or to a footballer’s performances. There are too many other variables to consider. This is also the reason that when you turn up to that lecture on finance and investment strategy, you usually find a Professor ready and waiting to teach your class. If extrapolation worked to predict future performance, that Professor would very likely be ensconced in the Presidential Suite at the Grand Hyatt in the Seychelles, dining exclusively on lobster and truffles, and drinking only the finest wines known to humanity. We cannot predict the future. But we can mitigate the risk of making bad decisions.
This Critical Manager will ask questions: is CR7 likely to start against Newcastle next week? If so, where will they play? Centre Forward or as an inside forward? On the left or right? Who will be alongside him? Given most of Ronaldo’s 29 goals for Juve last season were inside the penalty box – with 7 of his 29 goals (24%) scored via headers – does this mean Bruno and Pogba might be less effective than Shaw or Sancho in unleashing CR7? Will Solskjaer change formation to get the best out of CR7? Are their better options in other fixtures? Salah? Lukaku? Kane?
There are so many uncertainties that the best option may be to wait. The Critical Manager aims to make a “good” decision, rather than the “correct” decision – which in most cases is impossible to do.
Yet what this manager does is exhibit some of those dispositions outlined above. They are open-minded, reflexive, sceptical, inquisitive, confident in their own judgement. They will make the best decision they can given the information available to them and will only make that decision (whatever it may be) once they can justify and defend that decision.
What’s the difference?
If both managers transfer in CR7 anyway, they will both benefit if CR7 scores lots of FF points – raising the question “well, what difference does it make to fantast football?”. Yet, if we consistently apply these approaches, and each manager makes *all* their decisions for the season the same way, who would we expect to perform better? Uncritical or Critical?
Again, it’s impossible to say, but we would expect that the Critical Manager would make better, more informed and stronger decisions over the course of the season. Critical thinkers mitigate the risk of poor decision making. Over the course of a full 38 games, that is going to give the Critical Manager a distinct advantage over the more impulsive manager.
Final Thoughts
This is a *very* simple example. But it demonstrates critical thinking quite clearly – and helps us understand what your lecturers, professors and future employers are all looking for: someone who knows *how to think*, not simply *what to think*.
The important take-aways here are:
- that you already know how to think critically. You’ve done it for years, possibly without being aware you’re doing it.
- You’ve also thought uncritically – and its this that you should aim to address by reflecting on your own biases and decision making processes.
- often – there are no “right” or “wrong” answers. But there are always “good” and “bad” answers.
- that you need to *show* critical thinking in your work – at university and once you graduate – and formulate persuasive arguments (in CW, exams, reports, sales pitches, presentations, job interviews).
I hope this has been helpful and, if so, please flag it in your email and come back to it – getting your head around Critical thinking and other concepts/theories can be a process. And please, if anyone has comments (ideas, feedback, suggestions) on the weekly content I’m sending out – please email me: gowm@edgehill.ac.uk
I look forward to GW4.
Mike Gow
Lecturer in Business and Management
Edge Hill University Business School
* - In the UK we use certain terms for academic rank: Lecturer, Senior Lecturer and Professor. Sometimes these ranks are referred to using US terms. Lecturer = Assistant Professor, Snr Lecturer = Associate Professor, Professor = Professor. The basic rule in the UK is – only Professors should be addressed as “Professor”. If you lecturer or snr lecturer has a PhD, address them as “Dr”. Using the correct form of address will make us very happy.
REFERENCES
DWYER, C.P., HOGAN, M.J., HARNEY, O.M., and KAVANAGH, C., 2016. Facilitating a student-educator conceptual model of dispositions towards critical thinking through interactive management. Educational Technology Research and Development. 65 (1), pp. 47–73.
EDINBURGH UNIVERSITY., 2021. Critical thinking. The University of Edinburgh [online]. Available from: https://www.ed.ac.uk/institute-academic-development/study-hub/learning-resources/critical [Accessed 6 Sep 2021].
ENCYCLOPAEDIA BRITANNICA, 2021. confirmation bias | Definition, Background, History, & Facts | Britannica. Encyclopædia Britannica [online]. Available from: https://www.britannica.com/science/confirmation-bas [Accessed 6 Sep 2021].
MARGINAL REVOLUTION UNIVERSITY, 2018. What Is Opportunity Cost? YouTube [online]. YouTube Video. Available from: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x-hYzRncxTc [Accessed 6 Sep 2021].
MILKROUND., 2021. What is a “graduate scheme”? | Milkround. Milkround [online]. Available from: https://www.milkround.com/advice/what-is-a-graduate-scheme [Accessed 6 Sep 2021].
PLUMMER, M., 2019. A Short Guide to Building Your Team’s Critical Thinking Skills. Harvard Business Review [online]. Available from: https://hbr.org/2019/10/a-short-guide-to-building-your-teams-critical-thinking-skills [Accessed 6 Sep 2021]
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