Management

   Calvary University

 The Faculty in which you take this course

Critical Thinking
    Tools for Taking Charge
        of Your Learning and Your Life

The following real book is purely used as an example:

Book Cover

Edition 5

Richard Paul, Linda Elder
0-13-086972-4
Paperback
428 pages
2001


Brief Description

Appropriate for one or two semester courses in Critical Thinking or Student Success.

This text approaches critical thinking as a process by which one takes charge of, and responsibility for, one's thinking. It provides both a holistic theme that runs through-out and practical analytic and evaluative tools that can be used to target and improve specific dimensions of thinking. It is designed to foster the development of critical thinking skills and abilities as well as intellectual dispositions such as fair-mindedness, intellectual humility, and intellectual integrity. Based on 20 years of teaching and research with the Center For Critical Thinking, the approach is an eminently practical one. It is filled with Think-For-Yourself activities and examples from everyday life. It shows the reader how to use critical thinking to achieve deep and significant learning in all disciplines and subjects.

Features

  • Informal, student-oriented, easy to understand style.
    Helps the students translate intellectual ideas into meanings that make sense to them.
  • Focus on thinking across the disciplines.
    Helps students to think within the various disciplines, rather than memorizing facts. Students are taught to learn to think like an historian, like a scientist, like a psychologist, etc.
  • Critical thinking is treated as a way of life—Not just a set of skills to be occasionally used.
    Helps students recognize the significance of critical thinking in every context of their lives.
  • “Think for yourself” activities—Provided after each major theoretical point throughout the text.
    Gives students immediate opportunities to internalize the concepts and relate them to their learning and/or to their life.
  • The importance of and interrelationship between the intellectual virtues that must be cultivated in students if they are to develop as critical thinkers is emphasized—Explores the need to learn emotionally as well as intellectually.
    Helps students recognize the significance of critical thinking in their personal values and emotional lives.
  • Practical strategies for intellectual development.
    Helps students formulate strategies that they can effectively use to improve their thinking and their lives.
  • Numerous examples and illustrations.
    Helps define the stages of development as a thinker.
  • Students are challenged to take responsibility for their learning and for extending academic principles to their daily life.
    Students are encouraged to design their own learning, to be responsible for mastering the content of their courses, and to evaluate their learning.
  • Intellectual standards—Utilized throughout the text.
    Teaches students to take thinking apart and assess it.
  • Importance of understanding the relationship between thoughts, feelings, and desires in developing as a critical thinker is emphasized.
    Helps students integrate their thoughts, feelings, and desires (and thus deal with their inner contradictions and fragmentation).
  • Focus on the inherent problems caused by egocentrism and sociocentrism in human life—Simultaneously arguing for critical thinking as the necessary corrective for these flawed modes of thinking.
    Helps students overcome the “blocks” to critical thinking that are rooted in their personal egocentrism and social indoctrination.
  • “Thinking like a professional” .
    Highlights the importance of the responsible use of knowledge.
  • The importance of making a plan for self-improvement is stressed.
    Students are continually challenged to “think about their thinking” as a method of self-improvement. They are encouraged to apply the concepts they are learning in the text to the problems they face in their lives.
  • Guidelines—Include taking thinking apart, entering the point of view of others, gathering and evaluating information & evidence, monitoring inferences, checking assumptions, clarifying and deepening thinking, using thinking to transform feeling and desire, and using feelings to reveal subconscious thinking.
    These guidelines are given to students to improve their thinking.
  • The concept that critical thinking has the power to transform character is emphasized—The authors consider various traits of the mind, including: intellectual humility, autonomy, perseverance, integrity, and empathy.
    Students are encouraged to take charge of their irrational tendencies and to improve their decision making and problem solving through strong ethical and analytical reasoning.

Contents

Introduction.

  1. Becoming a Fair-Minded Thinker.
  2. The First Four Stages of Development.
  3. Self-Understanding.
  4. The Parts of Thinking.
  5. The Standards for Thinking.
  6. Asking Questions That Lead to Good Thinking.
  7. Master the Thinking, Master the Content.
  8. Designing Your Own Learning.
  9. Evaluating Your Own Learning.
  10. Making Decisions.
  11. Solving Problems.
  12. Taking Charge of Your Irrational Tendencies.
  13. Monitoring Your Sociocentric Tendencies.
  14. Developing as an Ethical Reasoner.
  15. Learning & Using Information Critically & Ethically: Part One.
  16. Learning & Using Information Critically & Ethically: Part Two.
  17. Strategic Thinking, Part One.
  18. Strategic Thinking, Part Two.
  19. Becoming an Advanced Thinker.

Appendices:
A. Critical Questions about Critical Thinking.
B. Sample Analyses of “The Logic Of…”
C. Article: “Iraq Is a Pediatrician's Hell: No Way to Stop the Dying.”

Glossary.
References.
Index.

Companion Website:

http://www.prenhall.com/paul

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