Full Description
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.
Contents
Preface
Acknowledgements
List of Figures and Tables
Notes on Contributors
Introduction
Daniel Fasko, Jr. and Frank Fair
PART 1: Theories of Critical Thinking
1 Seven Philosophical Conceptions of Critical Thinking: Themes, Variations, Implications
David Hitchcock
2 Inquiry: Teaching for Reasoned Judgment
Sharon Bailin and Mark Battersby
3 Focusing the Relational Lens on Critical Thinking: How Can Relational Reasoning Support Critical and Analytic Thinking?
Denis Dumas and Yixiao Dong
4 Commentary: Theories of Critical Thinking from a Philosopher of Education
Barbara J. Thayer-Bacon
PART 2: Development and Learning
5 The Semantic Retrieval Model and Divergent Thinking as Critical to Understanding Logical Reasoning in Children
Henry Markovits and Pier-Luc de Chantal
6 Adolescent Reasoning and Rationality
David Moshman
7 Critical Thinking and Learning in Adults: A Case Study in Transformative Learning on White Supremacy and White Racial Identity
Stephen Brookfield
8 Commentary: Perspectives on Development and Learning with a Connection to Philosophy for Children
Steven Trickey
PART 3: Curriculum and Instruction
9 Critical Thinking in the Elementary School: Practical Guidance for Building a Culture of Thinking
Paul Cleghorn
10 The Good Thinker's Tool Kit: How to Engage Critical Thinking and Reasoning in Secondary Education
Amber Strong Makaiau
11 Equipping Students for Success in College and Beyond: Placing Critical Thinking Instruction at the Heart of a General Education Program
Amanda L. Hiner
12 Commentary: Critical Thinking - Effusively Touted, But so Rarely Pursued
M. Neil Browne
PART 4: Assessment
13 Observations from a Long-term Effort to Assess and Improve Critical Thinking
Ada Haynes and Barry Stein
14 Assessing Critical Thinking: Challenges, Opportunities, and Empirical Evidence
Heather A. Butler
15 What the Data Tell Us about Human Reasoning
Peter A. Facione, Noreen C. Facione and Carol Ann Gittens
16 Commentary: Thinking Critically about Critical-Thinking Assessment
Donald Hatcher and Kevin Possin
Epilogue
Frank Fair and Daniel Fasko, Jr.
Index
