Eleven Ways to Critique an Article

Abstract

Good critiquing requires insight, asking thoughtful questions and seeing behind the text. How can someone practice this art? This paper aims to provide some pointers. Having been involved with critiquing articles with systems·thinking Ph,D. candidates for a number of years. I have attempted to expand on the ancient, yet wonderful ques· tions, "What is their argumentlT and " Is their conclusion justified?", as a critiquing method using perspectives such as systems-thinking, evolution theory, picturing, dia­ lectic and the perspectival thinking. My approach to critiquing articles comes from trying to develop ways to appreciate, and research complex social problems, such as the design of a socio-technical system . Learning how to critique past actions is part of that. The approach taken in thi s paper aligns with C. West Churchman's advice that new knowledge can al so come from find­ ing new perspectives. which can give you more choices. I hope to suggest a few new perspectives on critiquing an article, and so provide a few new choices. But more importantly the intent is to encourage a habit of perspectival thinking. l11is paper will be presented in mo parts, each one describing different perspectives that can direct a critique . The eleven perspectives presented will begin with a very brief summary of the supporting literature , followed by a set of sample questions that may help you to adopt a particular perspective in your thinking about whatever article you wish to critique . Of course, critiquing others ' work is only the first step to writing your own articles. In Part 2 this ' flipping of the coin' from critique (0 writing will be discussed. I am not aware of many other authors who have provided an approach similar to that presented here. The closest I am aware of can be found at th e web site of The Writing Centre at Harvard University ,2 They, understandably, focus on extracting a justified argument, rather than including perspectival thinking. Why do I use the word ' critique?' I am not assuming [he word ' critique ' has an immoveable defmition . I am using it in the sense of ' constructive evaluation ' or ' literary review' , hoping to include concepts like , ' lessons learnt' and 'how it might be done differently next time ' . I have chosen itover words like 'review' , ' analyse' , ' evaluate' and ' discuss ', because I find them too vague or too mathematical. This paper is my explana­ tion of ' critique' by rai sing questions from an expl icit perspective. In tenns of process, I am assuming that undertaking a critique involves reading an article , using the questions listed in this paper to think of an overall argument you wish to make, and writing it into a ' critique essay' which itself has a very explicit, well­ justified, conclusion (the argument).