Ok, it’s a long time since I did my academic bit. What is meant by the phrase “critically analyse” in an academic context?

A critical analysis is to

consider and evaluate the claims made by the theorists, “experts”, official bodies, journalists etc that you have read, asking yourself if the basis of these claims is sound and whether they apply or are relevant to the situation you are examining.

Consider and evaluate the claims made by the theory. In other works be sceptical.

#Edit – beaten to it 🙁

And if you want a good mark, make sure you put your own interpretation in there too.

God I’m glad I’ve finished with education.

Brilliant – thanks chaps

I remember in my masters finals, I had a similar question on Planning Theory, I got so fed up with bloody theory that my final sentence in summing up was ‘my overwhelming impression that this is just theorising for theorisings sake..’

To my surprise I got a cracking mark too.

Picking holes in other people’s logic. Spotting the assumptions and false assertions they deliberately ignored or just failed to notice.

Good, old fashioned, intellectual violence!

I used to treat that as “Destroy the article as completely as possible”. Basically a bit like posting on here.

it should be to use a framework to analyse the validity of the research question, the methodology used to assess it, the strength of the results and whether you think they’re useful. It’s not just about flaming an article, but reasoning why you think it is a good or bad piece of work.

There are lots of tools out there to help, the nhs recommend the CASP tool.

marp (currently writing up PhD and pulling out the remainder of my hair!)