| The University will be closed in observance of Memorial Day on Monday, May 27th. |
| The University will be closed in observance of Memorial Day on Monday, May 27th. |
An a to Z of Critical Thinking by
Critical thinking is becoming increasingly prominent as an academic discipline taught and examined in schools and universities, as well as a crucial skill for everyday life. To be a successful critical thinker it is vital to understand how the different concepts and terms are defined and used. The terminology often presents a stumbling block for the beginner, since much of it is used imprecisely in everyday language. This definitive A to Z guide provides precise definitions for over 130 terms and concepts used in critical thinking. Each entry presents a short definition followed by a more detailed explanation and authoritative clarification. Armed with the tools and knowledge provided in these pages, the reader will be able to distinguish an assertion from an argument, a flaw from a fallacy, a correlation from a cause and a fact from an opinion. The book is an invaluable resource for teachers and students of critical thinking, providing all the tools necessary to effectively analyse, evaluate, question and reason for yourself.
Breaking Open the Box: A Guide for Creative Techniques to Improve Academic Writing and Generate Critical Thinking by
What do David Foster Wallace's essay on wars over usage and Pico Iyer's comma personification have to do with improving students' academic writing? Everything. For all of the attention supposedly paid to Bloom's Taxonomy-with creativity at the top-educators tend to shy away from encouraging students' creative choices in areas where traditional analysis and the critic's style and tone have reigned. While we do not want our students to write inane or empty verbiage, we unintentionally set them up for this inevitability--or worse. The movement away from children's natural creative impulses in elementary school to a direction in which they literally fit their writing into preconfigured shapes is a gradual one. Although purportedly taught to instill academic structures, these boxes are also designed to facilitate the ease with which student product may be assessed. We need a more creative approach to teaching writing. A methodology incorporating creativity, as modeled by students in this text, demonstrates the kind of progress we are all seeking, offering an exciting challenge for young writers and educators alike.
Creativity and Critical Thinking by
What do we mean by creativity? What is the link between creativity and critical thinking? How can creativity and critical thinking be incorporated into classroom practice and what are the benefits for students? Creativity and critical thinking are central to effective teaching and learning and have a significant impact on students' attainment, engagement, attendance and behaviour. This book draws on recent research and policy to provide teachers with a clear framework for understanding creativity and critical thinking and practically demonstrates how they can be incorporated into classroom practice. Bringing together an expert team of contributors with a wide-range of experience of bringing creative approaches into the classroom the book includes: an analysis of the issues associated with creativity and critical thinking clear guidance on how schools can develop dynamic thinking and creative learning strategies and use them with all learners advice on using external agencies to bring the creative perspective into schools case studies alongside examples of current activities and practice in schools links to resources and organisations who can offer support. Providing clear guidance on the underpinning theory and policy and drawing upon current initiatives in schools, this book is essential reading for trainee and practising teachers that want to provide the best possible learning experience for their students.
Critical Thinking and Reasoning: Theory, Development, Instruction, and Assessment by
The Partnership for 21st Century Skills states that critical thinking encompasses skills that students and professionals will need to succeed in their careers, school, and life. The demand for critical thinkers will increase in the future to meet the demands of world-wide problems. Educators need to show students how to eliminate errors, such as biases in their reasoning, and to be effective decision makers. To do this, teachers and leaders in schools and businesses need to provide an atmosphere conducive to developing critical thinking skills and dispositions. Meeting this challenge is the goal of the chapters collected in Critical Thinking and Reasoning. This book begins with experts laying out their best current understanding of the skills and attitudes critical thinking requires. Next, the relationship between critical thinking and the psychology of development and learning is explored to understand better how to develop critical thinkers from childhood to adulthood. But how can we best teach for critical thinking? How can we incorporate into the classroom the challenges presented in the workplace? This book provides several extensive examples of current practices from the elementary level through the secondary level to the university level of how to stimulate critical thinking skills and dispositions.
The Critical Thinking Toolkit: Spark Your Team's Creativity with 35 Problem Solving Activities by
Critical thinking--the ability to approach a problem both analytically and creatively--is the bedrock of success for companies and their people. Fortunately, it's a skill that can be learned. The Critical Thinking Toolkit gets employees thinking better and faster with training exercises that offer an invigorating departure from the everyday and the potential for big payoffs in the form of enhanced "on-your-feet" thinking, innovative problem-solving, and profitable idea generation from everyone on the team. Using hands-on activities and ready-to-use assessments, team members will learn how to challenge assumptions, brainstorm divergent ideas, and then pinpoint the ones that best benefit your organization. And they'll learn to do it in a way that not only increases their work quality, but also their productivity. Unimaginative. Risk-adverse. Prone to groupthink. These are not just empty complaints about today's employees. American businesses are suffering from systemic burnout resulting in a widespread lack of creativity. But this unimaginative thinking doesn't need to plague your workplace. With The Critical Thinking Toolkit, you and your team have everything you need to think quickly, analytically, and creatively.
Fact vs. Fiction: Teaching Critical Thinking Skills in the Age of Fake News by
Help students discern fact from fiction in the information they access not only at school but in the devices they carry in their pockets and backpacks. The advent of the 24-hour news cycle, citizen journalism and an increased reliance on social media as a trusted news source have had a profound effect not only on how we get our news, but also on how we evaluate sources of information, share that information and interact with others in online communities. When these issues are coupled with the "fake news" industry that intentionally spreads false stories designed to go viral, educators are left facing a new and challenging landscape. This book will help them address these new realities, providing strategies and support to help students develop the skills needed to effectively evaluate information they encounter online. The book includes: Instructional strategies for combating fake news, including models for evaluating news stories with links to resources on how to include lessons on fake news in your curricula. Examples from prominent educators who demonstrate how to tackle fake news with students and colleagues. A fake news self-assessment with a digital component to help readers evaluate their skills in detecting and managing fake news. A downloadable infographic with mobile media literacy tips. The companion jump start guide based on this book is Fighting Fake News: Tools and Strategies for Teaching Media Literacy. Audience: K-12 educators
Making Media Matter: Critical Literacy, Popular Culture, and Creative Production by
This book is an essential resource for media educators working to promote critical thinking, creativity, and civic engagement through their teaching. Connecting theory and research with creative projects and analyses of pop culture, it models an integrated and practical approach to media education. In order to prepare learners to successfully navigate rapid shifts in digital technology and popular culture, media educators in both secondary and university settings need to develop fresh, innovative approaches. Integrating concepts and practices from the fields of media studies, media arts, and media literacy, this book prepares teachers to help their students make connections between their studies, uses of media, creative expression, and political participation. As educators implement the strategies in this book in their curricula and pedagogy, they will be empowered to help their students more thoughtfully engage with media culture and use their intelligence and imagination to address pressing challenges facing our world today. Making Media Matter is an engaging and accessible read for educators and scholars in the areas of media literacy, media and cultural studies, media arts, and communication studies. The Open Access version of this book, available at http://www.taylorfrancis.com, has been made available under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives 4.0 license.
Partial Truths : How Fractions Distort Our Thinking by
"Yogi Berra once went into a restaurant and ordered a pizza. When the cook behind the counter asked him if he wanted it cut into four or six pieces, he answered, "you better cut the pizza into four pieces because I'm not hungry enough to eat six." On a more serious note, in 1979, a student at Michigan State University disappeared; a potential suicide note was found in his room but his body was not. The student happened to be an avid Dungeons & Dragons player. Much media hype chalked his apparent suicide up to the role playing game and wondered if there could be a causal link: a string of other adolescent suicides and homicides occurred in the 1980s among D&D players. However, the rate of suicides among American teenagers at that time was about 28 per 1 million. The rate of the same among D&D players was just over 9 per 1 million. Ultimately, the number of suicides among D&D players was actually much lower than the national average, so the alarm about the dangers of D&D was unreasonable. In this book, James Zimring explores a specific kind of error in human thinking that we make when we're looking at, for example, risks and odds, probabilities, rates, percentages, and frequencies. These circumstances have one thing in common: they can all be represented as fractions. It is hard to navigate modern life without encountering and using these concepts. Exploring how fractions work and how we understand (and misunderstand) them can allow us to see why many of our deep seated intuitive thought processes, however they work neurologically, are susceptible to errors. It can also show us that what are errors in some settings can be great advantages in others. Overall, it can help us understand ourselves. As an aside, for anyone wondering: the MSU student described in the first paragraph called detectives about a month after his disappearance from the oil field where he was working in Louisiana and asked to be retrieved"-- Provided by publisher.
The Problem with Rules: Essays on the Meaning and Value of Liberal Education by
There is a constant drumbeat of commentary claiming that STEM subjects--science, technology, engineering, and math--are far more valuable in today's economy than traditional liberal arts courses such as philosophy or history. Many even claim that the liberal arts are "under siege" by neoliberal politicians and cost-conscious university administrators. In a forceful response, The Problem with Rules establishes the essential value of the liberal arts as the pedagogical pathway to critical thinking and moral character and argues for more not less emphasis in higher education. John Churchill asserts that the liberal arts are more than decorative frills. Drawing from the philosophy of Wittgenstein to craft a cogent, inspired argument, Churchill insists on the liberal arts' indispensable role, providing in this book a clarion call to politicians, university administrators, and all Americans to recognize and actively support and nurture the liberal arts.
Teaching for Deeper Learning by
Far too often, our students attain only a superficial level of knowledge that fails to prepare them for deeper challenges in school and beyond. In Teaching for Deeper Learning, renowned educators and best-selling authors Jay McTighe and Harvey F. Silver propose a solution: teaching students to make meaning for themselves. Contending that the ability to ""earn"" understanding will equip students to thrive in school, at work, and in life, the authors highlight seven higher-order thinking skills that facilitate students' acquisition of information for greater retention, retrieval, and transfer. These skills, which cut across content areas and grade levels and are deeply embedded in current academic standards, separate high achievers from their low-performing peers. Drawing on their deep well of research and experience, the authors: Explore what kind of content is worth having students make meaning about. Provide practical tools and strategies to help teachers target each of the seven thinking skills in the classroom. Explain how teachers can incorporate the thinking skills and tools into lesson and unit design. Show how teachers can build students' capacity to use the strategies independently. If our goal is to prepare students to meet the rigorous demands of school, college, and career, then we must foster their ability to respond to such challenges. This comprehensive, practical guide will enable teachers to engage students in the kind of learning that yields enduring understanding and valuable skills that they can use throughout their lives.
Teaching Students to Decode the World: Media Literacy and Critical Thinking Across the Curriculum by
In our media-saturated environment, how can we teach students to distinguish true statements from those that are false, misleading, or manipulative? How can we help them develop the skills needed to identify biases and stereotypes, determine credibility of sources, and analyze their own thinking and its effect on their perceptions? In Teaching Students to Decode the World, authors Chris Sperry and Cyndy Scheibe tackle these questions as they introduce readers to constructivist media decoding (CMD), a specific way to lead students through a question-based analysis of media materials--including print and digital documents, videos and films, social media posts, advertisements, and other formats--with an emphasis on critical thinking and collaboration. Drawing from their decades of experience as teachers, consultants, and media literacy advocates, the authors explain how to * Develop and facilitate CMD activities in the classroom and in virtual teaching environments; * Implement CMD across the curriculum, at all grade levels; * Connect CMD with educational approaches such as project-based learning, social-emotional learning, and antiracist education; * Incorporate CMD into assessments; and * Promote CMD as a districtwide initiative. This comprehensive guide explains the theoretical foundations for CMD and offers dozens of real-life examples of its implementation and its powerful impact on students and teachers. Equipped with CMD skills, students will be better able to navigate a complex media landscape, participate in a democratic society, and become productive citizens of the world.
The Thinking Teacher's Toolkit: Critical Thinking, Thinking Skills and Global Perspectives by
Designed to provide a complete guide for teachers of thinking skills, reasoning and critical thinking to 14-19 age groups, everything you could need to be a thinking teacher is packed into The Thinking Teacher's Toolkit, including: * an introduction to what thinking skills are, why you are equipped to teach them and how you can apply your previous experience * clear approaches to preparing to teach, whether you are a coordinator seeking guidance on setting up a thinking skills course from scratch, a thinking teacher putting together thought-provoking lesson plans or a subject teacher looking for ideas on integrating critical thinking skills across the curriculum; and * advice on how to handle assessment, including information on a variety of qualifications available internationally. In addition, there is a companion website containing tools for developing your professional expertise, answers to frequently asked questions, handouts for pupils and PowerPoint's to use in the sample lessons. This is the ultimate toolkit for any teacher wanting to improve their students reasoning and problem-solving skills.
Transcending Modernity with Relational Thinking by
The Open Access version of this book, available at http://www.taylorfrancis.com/books/e/9781003146698, has been made available under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives 4.0 license. This book explores the ways in which social relations are profoundly changing modern society, arguing that, constituting a reality of their own, social relations will ultimately lead to a new form of society: an aftermodern or relational society. Drawing on the thought of Simmel, it extends the idea that society consists essentially of social relations, in order to make sense of the operation of dichotomous forces in society and to examine the emergence of a "third" in the morphogenetic processes. Through a realist and critical relational sociology, which allows for the fact that human beings are both internal and external to social relations, and therefore to society, the author shows how we are moving towards a new, trans-modern society - one that calls into question the guiding ideas of Western modernity, such as the notion of linear progression, that science and technology are the decisive factors of human development, and that culture can entirely supplant nature. As such, it will appeal to sociologists, social theorists, economists, political scientists, and social philosophers with interests in relational thought, critical realism, and social transformation.
Subject search terms: Critical thinking, critical thinking AND creative thinking, reflective thinking