Critical Reading Across the Curriculum : Social and Natural Sciences

Provides educators with practical strategies, tools, and techniques for teaching critical reading skills to students in the social and natural sciences.

Strong critical reading skills are an essential part of any student’s academic success. Teaching these vital skills requires educators to develop and implement effective teaching strategies, often based on their own critical reading practices. Critical Reading Across the Curriculum, Volume 2: Social and Natural Sciences provides educators with expert insights, real-world methods, and proven strategies to build critical reading skills in students across disciplines. Drawing from the experience of seasoned classroom practitioners, this book presents a dozen essays that offer various applications of critical reading best practices in fields such as anthropology, biology, economics, engineering, political science, and sociology. 

Clear, jargon-free chapters identify, explain, and illustrate best teaching practices for critical reading. Containing numerous practical examples and demonstrations, essays written by experts in their respective fields explain what critical reading requires for their discipline, as well as how to teach those skills in the classroom. Every essay includes a host of pedagogical activities, assignments, and projects that can be used directly or adapted for diverse teaching applications. This valuable book helps educators:

• Develop the skills students need to ask the right questions, consider sources, assess evidence, evaluate arguments, and reason critically
• Encourage students to practice critical reading skills with engaging exercises and activities
• Teach students to establish context and identify contextual connections
• Explain how to read for arguments, including content-based and conceptual arguments
• Adapt and apply teaching strategies to various curricula and disciplines

Critical Reading Across the Curriculum, Volume 2: Social and Natural Sciences is an ideal resource for educators in a wide range of areas, such as college and high school instructors in science and social science disciplines and instructors of graduate education courses.

ANTON BORST, PHD, is an instructional consultant and faculty developer at NYU's center for teaching and learning, and has taught literature and writing at Hunter College, Baruch College, and Pace University. He is co-editor with Robert DiYanni of??Critical Reading Across the Curriculum, Volume I: Humanities.

ROBERT DiYANNI, PHD, is a professor of Humanities at New York University and an instructional consultant at NYU's center for teaching and learning. He is author of Critical and Creative Thinking: A Brief Guide for Teachers and co-editor with Anton Borst of Critical Reading Across the Curriculum, Volume I: Humanities.