Critical Thinking

Politics & Social Sciences

Linda Elder

Richard, Paul

Philosophy

PRENTICE/HALL

The essence of critical thinking concepts and tools distilled into a 20-page pocket-size guide. It is a critical thinking supplement to any textbook or course. It is best used in conjunction with the Analytic Thinking Guide. Everyone thinks; it is our nature to do so. But much of our thinking, left to itself, is biased, distorted, partial, uninformed or down-right prejudiced. Yet the quality of our life and that of what we produce, make, or build depends precisely on the quality of our thought. Shoddy thinking is costly, both in money and in quality of life. Excellence in thought, however, must be systematically cultivated. Critical thinking is the art of analyzing and evaluating thinking with a view to improving it. Critical thinking is, self-directed, self-disciplined, self-monitored, and self-corrective thinking. It requires rigorous standards of excellence and mindful command of their use. It entails effective communication and problem solving abilities and a commitment to overcoming our native egocentrism and sociocentrism. This miniature guide focuses on of the essence of critical thinking concepts and tools distilled into pocket size. For faculty it provides a shared concept of critical thinking. For students it is a critical thinking supplement to any textbook for any course. Faculty can use it to design instruction, assignments, and tests in any subject. Students can use it to improve their learning in any content area. Its generic skills apply to all subjects. For example, critical thinkers are clear as to the purpose at hand and the question at issue. They question information, conclusions, and points of view. They strive to be clear, accurate, precise, and relevant. They seek to think beneath the surface, to be logical, and fair. They apply these skills to their reading and writing as well as to their speaking and listening. They apply them in history, science, math, philosophy, and the arts; in professional and personal life.

The Miniature Guide to Critical Thinking-Concepts and Tools

Crafts, Hobbies & Home

Crafts & Hobbies

Foundation for Critical Thinking

This thinker's guide contributes toward making intellectual work and deep learning more manageable, practical, and intuitive. Its goal is to foster lifelong learning and the traditional ideal of a liberally educated mind: a mind that questions, probes, and masters a variety of forms of knowledge, through command of itself, intellectual perseverance, and the tools of learning. In this guide we suggest a variety of strategies for becoming not just a better student but a master student.

The Thinker's Guide for Students on How to Study & Learn a Discipline

Business & Money

Education & Reference

This guide consists of the essence of scientific thinking concepts and tools. It can be used as a supplement to any science textbook, for any science class. The essence of scientific thinking concepts and tools. It focuses on the intellectual skills inherent in the well cultivated scientific thinker.

The Thinker's Guide to Scientific Thinking Based on Critical Thinking Concepts & Principles

Reference

Encyclopedias & Subject Guides

Skilled readers do not read blindly, but purposely. They have an agenda, goal, or objective. Their purpose, together with the nature of what they are reading, determines how they read. They read in different ways in different situations for different purposes. Of course, reading has a nearly universal purpose: to figure out what an author has to say on a given subject. How you read should be determined in part by what you read. Reflective readers read a textbook, for example, using a different mindset than they use when reading an article in a newspaper. Furthermore, reflective readers read a textbook in biology differently from the way they read a textbook in history. The reflective mind improves its thinking by reflectively thinking about it. Likewise, it improves its reading by reflectively thinking about how it is reading. It moves back and forth between the cognitive (thinking) and the meta-cognitive (thinking about thinking). It moves forward a bit, then loops back upon itself to check on its own operations. It checks its tracks. It makes good its ground. It rises above itself and exercises oversight on itself. One of the most important abilities that a thinker can have is the ability to monitor and assess his or her own thinking while processing the thinking of others. In reading, the reflective mind monitors how it is reading while it is reading. The foundation for this ability is knowledge of how the mind functions when reading well. Having recognized this, we should also recognize that there are core reading tools and skills for reading any substantive text. These tools and skills are the focus of this guide.

Thinker's Guide to How to Read a Paragraph: The Art of Close Reading

Education & Teaching

Schools & Teaching

The Thinker’s Guide to the Art of Socratic Questioning introduces readers to powerful methods of inquiry that pinpoint underlying beliefs and systems of logic. Bringing together the principles of critical thinking, Richard Paul and Linda Elder illuminate the practicality and accessibility of Socratic questioning for revealing and solving problems in thought. Teachers, students and professionals will find in this book essential questioning strategies for reasoning within any field of study or endeavor. As part of the Thinker’s Guide Library, this book advances the mission of the Foundation for Critical Thinking to promote fairminded critical societies through cultivating essential intellectual abilities and virtues across every field of study across world.

The Thinker's Guide to The Art of Socratic Questioning

The Foundation for Critical Thinking

This compendium of terms is testament to the fact that critical thinking entails a body of concepts and principles which, when internalized and practiced. enable people to raise their thinking to a higher level.

Glossary of Critical Thinking Terms and Concepts

Foundation for Critical Thinki

This is the story of Fairminded Fran and her experience in learning about community cats (also known as feral cats). On her journey Fran hopes to convince Selfish Sam to help with the cats. But Sam cares only for himself. She also askes Naive Nancy to get involved. But Nancy doesn't want to make waves, so she always goes along with the crowd. Join Fairminded Fran as she learns about cats that live outdoors and that can't usually be tamed. Learn important facts about community cats. Thank about how their numbers affect the earth. Think about how we can work together to humanely stop the spread of community cats and reduce suffering. Think along with Fairminded Fran.

Fairminded Fran and the three small black Community Cats

Children's Books

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

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

Robert Niewoehner

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Books by Linda Elder