Critical Thinking : Tools for Taking Charge of Your Learning and Your Life

This book uses an informal, easy to understand style to introduce critical thinking as a process by which one takes charge of, and responsibility for, one's thinking. Critical thinking is treated as a way of life—not just a set of skills to be occasionally used, to help readers translate intellectual ideas into meanings that make sense to them, and to recognize the significance of critical thinking in every context of their lives. The book is designed to promote not only the development of critical thinking skills and abilities, but also the intellectual dispositions such as fair-mindedness, intellectual humility, and intellectual integrity. Based on 20 years of teaching and research with the Center for Critical Thinking, the book's approach is a practical one—filled with Think-For-Yourself activities and examples from everyday life. It shows the reader how to use critical thinking to achieve deep and significant learning in all disciplines and subjects. Guidelines are given to students to improve their thinking, and include taking thinking apart, entering the point of view of others, gathering and evaluating information and evidence, monitoring inferences, checking assumptions, clarifying and deepening thinking, using thinking to transform feeling and desire, and using feelings to reveal subconscious thinking. For learners who want to have more success at school, in the workplace, and throughout their lives.

Widely sought as professional development leaders, Paul and Elder have conducted hundreds of workshops for university faculty all over the world. Their work speaks to the universal need to develop a sharp, open, and analytical mind. Tools that enable us to take charge of our learning and our lives are the very same tools that can help us all do more than merely survive in an economically and socially deprived environment. With them we can work independently or with others to produce positive changes.

Critical Thinking: Tools for Taking Charge of Your Learning and Your Life provides a holistic theme, approaching critical thinking as a process for taking charge of and responsibility for one's thinking. Designed to foster the development of critical thinking skills and abilities, fair-mindedness, intellectual humility, and intellectual integrity, the approach is an eminently practical one. Numerous meaningful, yet common examples coupled with related activities allow the reader to examine and chronicle his/her own understanding and growth, providing the foundation for the lifelong application of critical thinking skills.