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Scholarship
March 29, 2017
Cultivating Judgment: A Sourcebook for Teaching Critical Thinking Across the Curriculum
- Author
- Nelson, John
- Publisher
- New Forums Press, Stillwater, OK
- ISBN
- 1581071124
- Table of Contents
-
Preface
Introduction: Thinking About Critical Thinking
Activities by Discipline
Section One: Problems and Puzzles
Activity 1: Thinking on Another Planet (Testing Critical Thinking)
Activity 2: Who Killed Harry Skank? (Solving Problems and Puzzles)
Activity 2: Handout: Murder Mystery
Activity 3: Do Bees Build It Best? (Solving Mathematical Problems)
Section Two: Analyses and Critiques
Activity 4: Is the Earth Hollow? (Distinguishing Fact from Opinion)
Activity 4: Handout: Fact vs. Opinion
Activity 5: From the Known to the Unknown (Making Inferences)
Activity 6: I’m Taking Medication—You’re on Drugs (Detecting Slanting)
Activity 6: Handout on Evaluating Internet Sources
Activity 7: For the Semantically Challenged (Deciphering Euphemisms)
Activity 8: Weighing the Evidence (Evaluating Evidence and Statistics)
Activity 8: Handout: Evaluating Evidence
Activity 9: Eyewitness (Observing, Remembering, Describing)
Activity 10: Asking the Right Questions (Asking Questions, Getting Information)
Activity 11: The Guiding Light (Using Study Guides Collaboratively)
Activity 11: Handout: Study Guide to When She Was Bad
Activity 11: Handout: Study Guide to "Ode to a Nightingale"
Activity 12: What Do Men Want? (Comparing Student Opinions)
Activity 13: At First Blush (Analyzing Behavior)
Activity 14: The State vs. Rumpelstiltskin (Using Evidence, Applying Principles)
Activity 15: It’s a Bird, It’s a Bootie Bird (Defining Terms, Applying Definitions)
Activity 16: The Pecking Order (Applying Concepts, Using Examples)
Activity 17: Incident Report (Reporting Events, Making Decisions)
Activity 18: Who Fired the First Shot? (Analyzing Historical Accounts)
Activity 19: You Write Like a Girl (Analyzing Literature, Detecting Stereotypes)
Activity 20: Can Shakespeare Be Trusted? (Writing Critically about Literature)
Activity 21: The Prisoner’s Dilemma (Using Cost-Benefit Analysis)
Activity 22: Just Because (Using Causal Analysis)
Activity 23: Dissecting Words Instead of Frogs (Analyzing Scientific Articles)
Activity 24: What Did That Prove? (Analyzing Experiments)
Section Three: Opinions, Decisions, Values
Activity 25: Coping 101 (Using Critical Thinking in Self-examination)
Activity 26: Tracing the Family Tree (Examining Family and Cultural Heritage)
Activity 27: A Personal Declaration of Independence (Making Decisions)
Activity 28: Dealing with the Devil (Examining Personal Values)
Activity 29: Defending the Indefensible (Examining the Vocabulary of Motive)
Activity 30: Crimes and Punishments (Making Judgments, Defining Consequences)
Activity 31: Who’s the Worst Offender? (Making Ethical Judgments)
Activity 32: How Will We Be Judged? (Making Historical Judgments)
Activity 33: In This Writer’s Opinion (Presenting Opinions Persuasively)
Activity 34: The Devil’s Advocate (Analyzing Arguments, Responding to Criticisms)
Activity 34 Handout: Paraphrasing Exercise
Activity 35: It’s Debatable (Debating Issues, Refuting Arguments)
Activity 36: What Are the Alternatives? (Solving Problems, Comparing Solutions)
Section Four: Projects, Experiments, Adventures
Activity 37: Does a Dog Know Its Name? (Testing Hypotheses)
Activity 38: Anthropology Comes Home (Interpreting Cultural Rituals)
Activity 39: If I Had My Way (Creating Models)
Activity 40: Making the Case (Students as Consultants: The Case Method)
Activity 41: Trying Jekyll for the Crimes of Hyde (Conducting Mock Trials)
Activity 42: Suddenly You’re Old (Students as Actors: Playing Roles)
Activity 43: Playing with Literature (Students as Collaborators: Playing with Texts)
Activity 44: Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain (Students as Artists)
Activity 45: Thinking Online and Off (Using Technology to teach Critical Thinking)
Activity 46: My Aquatic Uncle (Bringing the Disciplines Together)
Section Five: Student as Teacher, Teacher as Student
Activity 47: Seminaring (Students as Collaborative Teachers)
Activity 48: Back to the Classroom (Teachers as Students)
Activity 49: Time to Take Inventory (Student Self-Inventory)
Activity 50: What’s Missing from this Course? (Student Evaluations)
Activity 50 Handout: Student Feedback Survey
Appendix / Selected Critical Thinking Websites Bibliography
This fine sourcebook provides college and university teachers, across the curriculum, with specific classroom-tested activities and assignments to stimulate and develop student critical thinking.
The book consists of fifty modules, each containing:
* A description of a critical thinking assignment,
* An explanation of the assignment's purposes and benefits,
* A discussion of ways to use or modify the assignment in the classroom, and
* Suggested related activities, including relevant bibliographical sources.
Most modules were developed by the author; in other cases, the author shaped, refined, and expanded on material that has been developed and used by colleagues. Some modules are discipline-specific, some are suitable for a number of disciplines; and many can easily be modified for use in a wide variety of fields. The assignments vary in scope, difficulty and complexity. Some are deigned for introductory freshman courses, while others have been used in graduate courses but could be adapted for lower level courses.
Each module stands alone, but the modules are loosely grouped into five sections:
(1) Problems and Puzzles
(2) Analyses and Critiques
(3) Opinions, Decisions, Values
(4) Projects, Experiments, Adventures
(5) Student as Teacher, Teacher as Student.
The sourcebook also includes an introductory chapter on the nature and importance of critical thinking, a cross-referencing of all activities by discipline, and a wide-ranging bibliography. Cultivating Judgment has been extensively tested in college classrooms, then revised, expanded and significantly improved. The author has conducted extensive research on the teaching of thinking skills, and discovered that discovered that no existing source filled the need for a book that spells out and demonstrates how to teach critical thinking in virtually any discipline, from liberal arts to more specialized career programs.
You will find Cultivating Judgment to be an engaging book, and one that combines intellectual rigor with a playful, creative spirit – and, one that can be used as a textbook in a general course on critical thinking, or as a resource for teachers across the curriculum! (From the Publisher)
The book consists of fifty modules, each containing:
* A description of a critical thinking assignment,
* An explanation of the assignment's purposes and benefits,
* A discussion of ways to use or modify the assignment in the classroom, and
* Suggested related activities, including relevant bibliographical sources.
Most modules were developed by the author; in other cases, the author shaped, refined, and expanded on material that has been developed and used by colleagues. Some modules are discipline-specific, some are suitable for a number of disciplines; and many can easily be modified for use in a wide variety of fields. The assignments vary in scope, difficulty and complexity. Some are deigned for introductory freshman courses, while others have been used in graduate courses but could be adapted for lower level courses.
Each module stands alone, but the modules are loosely grouped into five sections:
(1) Problems and Puzzles
(2) Analyses and Critiques
(3) Opinions, Decisions, Values
(4) Projects, Experiments, Adventures
(5) Student as Teacher, Teacher as Student.
The sourcebook also includes an introductory chapter on the nature and importance of critical thinking, a cross-referencing of all activities by discipline, and a wide-ranging bibliography. Cultivating Judgment has been extensively tested in college classrooms, then revised, expanded and significantly improved. The author has conducted extensive research on the teaching of thinking skills, and discovered that discovered that no existing source filled the need for a book that spells out and demonstrates how to teach critical thinking in virtually any discipline, from liberal arts to more specialized career programs.
You will find Cultivating Judgment to be an engaging book, and one that combines intellectual rigor with a playful, creative spirit – and, one that can be used as a textbook in a general course on critical thinking, or as a resource for teachers across the curriculum! (From the Publisher)