This guide presents 30 instructional ideas based on the goal of teaching all subjects so that, as a consequence, students take ownership of the most basic principles and concepts of the subject. Most of our suggestions represent possible teaching strategies. They are based on a vision of instruction implied by critical thinking and an analysis of the weaknesses typically found in most traditional didactic lecture/quiz/test formats of instruction. Students should master fundamental concepts and principles before they attempt to learn more advanced concepts. If class time is focused on helping students perform well on these foundational activities, we feel confident that the goals of most instruction will be achieved. Our goal is not to dictate to you, but to provide you with possible strategies with which to experiment. The specific suggestions we recommend represent methods and strategies we have developed and tested with our students. Judge for yourself their plausibility. Test them for their practicality. Those that work (i.e., improve instruction) keep; those that do not work, abandon or re-design.

A Miniature Guide For Those Who Teach On How to Improve Student Learning

Business & Money

Dr. Linda Elder

Dr. Richard Paul

Education & Reference

Foundation on Critical Thinking

Designed to give the reader insight into the basic functions of the human mind and how knowledge of these functions (and their interrelations) can enable one to use one's intellect and emotions more effectively

The Miniature Guide to Taking Charge of the Human Mind

Education & Teaching

Schools & Teaching

Foundation for Critical Thinki

The essence of critical thinking concepts and tools written in language accessible to children. This mini-guide is designed for K-6 classroom use. It explains basic critical thinking principles to children using cartoon characters. It focuses on the concepts of fairmindedness and selfishness, the elements of reasoning, intellectual standards, and intellectual virtues.

The Miniature Guide to Critical Thinking for Children

This guide is designed principally for instructors. It is also useful for those interested in a serious study of history. It presents history as a mode of thinking rather than a list of disconnected dates and names and places. We recommend that it be used in conjunction with the student guide: Understanding Critical Thinking as the Key to Historical Thinking. Both guides are based on the idea that history, like all subjects, must be understood in terms of the reasoning that is embedded in it. In other words, these guides begin with the premise that all historians ask historical questions, formulate historical purposes, begin with historical assumptions, develop historical concepts and theories, reason from historical perspectives, and think through historical implications.

Historical Thinking: Bringing critical thinking explicitly into the heart of historical study

Dr. Meg Gorzycki

Foundation for Critical Thinking Press

This thinker's guide is designed for administrators, faculty, and students. It contains the essence of engineering reasoning concepts and tools. For faculty it provides a shared concept and vocabulary. For students it is a thinking supplement to any textbook for any engineering course. Faculty can use it to design engineering instruction, assignments, and tests. Students can use it to improve their perspective in any domain of their engineering studies. Generic engineering thinking skills apply to all technological disciplines. For example, engineering thinkers are clear as to the purpose at hand and the question at issue. We question information, conclusions, and points of view. We strive to be accurate, precise, and relevant. We seek to think beneath the surface, to be logical, and objective. We apply these skills to our reading and writing as well as to our speaking and listening. We apply them in professional and personal life. Engineers and scientists are quite comfortable working within the context of conceptual models. We employ thermodynamic models, electrical models, mathematical models, computer models or even physical models fashioned from wood or clay. Here we apply a model of the way in which we think, an architecture whose purpose aids the analysis and evaluation of thought, that we might improve our thought. It is important for the field of engineering to be understood as systems of overlapping and interrelated ideas, rather than isolated and different fields of knowledge. Moreover, it is important to recognize and effectively deal with the multiple environmental, social and ethical aspects that complicate responsible engineering. Accordingly, it is time for engineering educators to realize that effective engineering instruction cannot be based in memorization or technical calculation alone.

The Thinker's Guide to Engineering Reasoning

Dr. Robert Niewoehner