Learning to Think Things Through: A Guide to Critical Thinking Across the Curriculum

This short, inexpensive guide is designed to help readers learn to think critically about any subject-matter. A combination of instruction and exercises shows them how to use critical thinking to more fully to appreciate the power of the discipline they are studying, to see its connections to other fields and to their day-to-day lives, to maintain an overview of the field so they can see the parts in terms of the whole, and to become active learners rather than passive recipients of information. Content is based on Richard Paul's model of critical thinking--the model used in workshops on critical thinking presented by the Foundation for Critical Thinking. What Is Critical Thinking? What Is Critical Thinking Within a Field or Discipline? The Elements of Reasoning. Standards of Critical Thinking. Using the Elements and Standards to Think Things Through. For anyone who wants to learn critical thinking skills applicable to any field.

DR. GERALD NOSICH has given more than 150 national and international workshops on all aspects of teaching for critical thinking. He's also worked for the U.S. Department of Education on a project for a National Assessment of Higher Order Thinking Skills and serves as the Assistant Director at the Center for Critical Thinking at Sonoma State University.

On a more personal note, he has at times exercised and not exercised good judgment: he has ridden a motorcycle to Baghdad (and to Ur of the Chaldees, the birthplace of Abraham); he has worked as a immigrant ditch-digger in Switzerland, been imprisoned by Communist authorities in Czechoslovakia, stowed away on a Sicilian ship to Algeria, sailed up the Nile with his family in a felucca, and lived with Maasai warriors in central Africa. He currently lives in New Orleans with his 22-year-old son.