eBooks are accessible online, and many are available for download or 2 week check out.
Critical Thinking: A Beginner's Guide
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We are bombarded daily with vast amounts of information, much of it using faulty logic. From adverts to blogs, television to newspapers, knowing what to believe is a daunting task. Critical Thinking: A Beginner's Guide teaches you how to analyze people's arguments and explains the main "fallacies" that are used to deceive and confuse. With a wealth of real life examples, a glossary, and plenty of diagrams, this is an invaluable tool for both students wanting to improve their grades and general readers in search of clarity.
Critical Thinking and Learning
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By introducing current debates in the field of critical thinking and posing new questions from contributing scholars, Critical Thinking and Learning examines the received wisdom in the field of critical thinking and learning. Examines the different perspectives in the field of critical thinking and learning Provides insights into critical thinking by posing new questions from contributing authors Introduces cross-cultural viewpoints into the dominant western'-based educational viewpoint Highlights differences among a variety of thinkers in the field.
Critical Thinking Skills for Your Nursing Degree
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Critical Thinking Skills for your Nursing Degree provides you with a sound knowledge and understanding of: the nature of critical thinking, and of its relevance and importance in HE how to adopt a critical approach to all aspects of your nursing study the importance of active, critical reading, and how it allows you an efficient, principled, effective assessment of the literature in your field the need to adopt a critical approach to writing, characterized by analytical and evaluative use of sources and the development of your own 'voice' If you are embarking on a university nursing or midwifery degree, the books in this series will help you acquire and develop the knowledge, skills and strategies you need to achieve your goals. They provide support in all areas important for university study, including institutional and disciplinary policy and practice, self-management, and research and communication. Tasks and activities are designed to foster aspects of learning which are valued in higher education, including learner autonomy and critical thinking, and to guide you towards reflective practice in your study and work life.
The Critical Thinking Toolkit
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The Critical Thinking Toolkit is a comprehensive compendium that equips readers with the essential knowledge and methods for clear, analytical, logical thinking and critique in a range of scholarly contexts and everyday situations. Takes an expansive approach to critical thinking by exploring concepts from other disciplines, including evidence and justification from philosophy, cognitive biases and errors from psychology, race and gender from sociology and political science, and tropes and symbols from rhetoric Follows the proven format of The Philosopher's Toolkit and The Ethics Toolkit with concise, easily digestible entries, "see also" recommendations that connect topics, and recommended reading lists Allows readers to apply new critical thinking and reasoning skills with exercises and real life examples at the end of each chapter Written in an accessible way, it leads readers through terrain too often cluttered with jargon Ideal for beginning to advanced students, as well as general readers, looking for a sophisticated yet accessible introduction to critical thinking.
Introduction to Logic and Critical Thinking
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This is an introductory textbook in logic and critical thinking. The goal of the textbook is to provide the reader with a set of tools and skills that will enable them to identify and evaluate arguments. The book is intended for an introductory course that covers both formal and informal logic. As such, it is nota formal logic textbook, but is closer to what one would find marketed as a critical thinking textbook.
Think Smarter: Critical Thinking to Improve Problem-Solving and Decision-Making Skills
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Train your brain for better decisions, problem solving, and innovation Think Smarter: Critical Thinking to Improve Problem-Solving and Decision-Making Skills is the comprehensive guide to training your brain to do more for you. Written by a critical thinking trainer and coach, the book presents a pragmatic set of tools to apply critical thinking techniques to everyday business issues. Think Smarter is filled with real world examples that demonstrate how the tools work in action, in addition to dozens of practice exercises applicable across industries and functions, Think Smarter is a versatile resource for individuals, managers, students, and corporate training programs. Thinking is the foundation of everything you do, but we rely largely on automatic thinking to process information, often resulting in misunderstandings and errors. Shifting over to critical thinking means thinking purposefully using a framework and toolset, enabling thought processes that lead to better decisions, faster problem solving, and creative innovation. Think Smarter provides clear, actionable steps toward improving your critical thinking skills, plus exercises that clarify complex concepts by putting theory into practice. Features include: A comprehensive critical thinking framework Over twenty-five "tools" to help you think more critically Critical thinking implementation for functions and activities Examples of the real-world use of each tool Learn what questions to ask, how to uncover the real problem to solve, and mistakes to avoid. Recognize assumptions your can rely on versus those without merit, and train your brain to tick through your mental toolbox to arrive at more innovative solutions. Critical thinking is the top skill on the wish list in the business world, and sharpening your ability can have profound affects throughout all facets of life. Think Smarter: Critical Thinking to Improve Problem-Solving and Decision-Making Skills provides a roadmap to more effective and productive thought.
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An A to Z of Critical Thinking
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Critical thinking is becoming increasingly prominent as an academic discipline taught and examined in schools and universities, as well as a crucial skill for everyday life. To be a successful critical thinker it is vital to understand how the different concepts and terms are defined and used. The terminology often presents a stumbling block for the beginner, since much of it is used imprecisely in everyday language. This definitive A to Z guide provides precise definitions for over 130 terms and concepts used in critical thinking. Each entry presents a short definition followed by a more detailed explanation and authoritative clarification. Armed with the tools and knowledge provided in these pages, the reader will be able to distinguish an assertion from an argument, a flaw from a fallacy, a correlation from a cause and a fact from an opinion. The book is an invaluable resource for teachers and students of critical thinking, providing all the tools necessary to effectively analyse, evaluate, question and reason for yourself.
Critical Thinking and Learning: An Encyclopedia for Parents and Teachers
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The editors of this book employ social, cognitive, linguistic, and political theoretical innovations to develop a new conception of critical thinking. They examine how such a construct might be taught in a variety of social settings and disciplines. Using a host of previously neglected perspectives--sociocognition, issues of political economy, complexity theory, and critical theoretical notions of epistemology and power theory--the editors and authors present a conceptually sophisticated yet accessible compendium on critical thinking. The introduction guides readers through the reconceptualization process. Specific entries focus on particular dimensions of the challenges to old-style critical thinking. In this context, readers can choose entries that discuss various means of engaging students in the critical complex perspective of critical thinking. The encyclopedia is aware of both theoretical concerns and the everyday realities of schooling in the 21st century. As such, it rounded in a respectful view of teachers that assumes they are capable of levels of expertise unacknowledged by many contemporary articulations of school reform. The educational, cognitive, and professional vision developed in the encyclopedia offers a profound alternative to the top-down impositional models now sweeping the nation's school districts.
Circulating books may be checked out in 3 week intervals.
Better Living Through Criticism: How to Think About Art, Pleasure, Beauty, and Truth
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The New York Times film critic shows why we need criticism now more than ever Few could explain, let alone seek out, a career in criticism. Yet what A.O. Scott shows in Better Living Through Criticism is that we are, in fact, all critics: because critical thinking informs almost every aspect of artistic creation, of civil action, of interpersonal life. With penetrating insight and warm humor, Scott shows that while individual critics--himself included--can make mistakes and find flaws where they shouldn't, criticism as a discipline is one of the noblest, most creative, and urgent activities of modern existence. Using his own film criticism as a starting point--everything from his infamous dismissal of the international blockbuster The Avengers to his intense affection for Pixar's animated Ratatouille--Scott expands outward, easily guiding readers through the complexities of Rilke and Shelley, the origins of Chuck Berry and the Rolling Stones, the power of Marina Abramovich and 'Ode on a Grecian Urn.' Drawing on the long tradition of criticism from Aristotle to Susan Sontag, Scott shows that real criticism was and always will be the breath of fresh air that allows true creativity to thrive. "The time for criticism is always now," Scott explains, "because the imperative to think clearly, to insist on the necessary balance of reason and passion, never goes away."
A Field Guide to Lies: Critical Thinking in the Information Age
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From The New York Times bestselling author of The Organized Mind and This is Your Brain on Music, a primer to the critical thinking that is more necessary now than ever. We are bombarded with more information each day than our brains can process--especially in election season. It's raining bad data, half-truths, and even outright lies. New York Times bestselling author Daniel J. Levitin shows how to recognize misleading announcements, statistics, graphs, and written reports revealing the ways lying weasels can use them. It's becoming harder to separate the wheat from the digital chaff. How do we distinguish misinformation, pseudo-facts, distortions, and outright lies from reliable information? Levitin groups his field guide into two categories--statistical information and faulty arguments--ultimately showing how science is the bedrock of critical thinking. Info literacy means understanding that there are hierarchies of source quality and bias that variously distort our information feeds via every media channel, including social media. We may expect newspapers, bloggers, the government, and Wikipedia to be factually and logically correct, but they so often aren't. We need to think critically about the words and numbers we encounter if we want to be successful at work, at play, and in making the most of our lives. This means checking the plausibility and reasoning--not passively accepting information, repeating it, and making decisions based on it. Readers learn to avoid the extremes of passive gullibility and cynical rejection. Levitin's charming, entertaining, accessible guide can help anyone wake up to a whole lot of things that aren't so. And catch some lying weasels in their tracks!
How to Think About Weird Things: Critical Thinking for a New Age
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This concise and engaging text teaches the basic principles of good reasoning through an examination of widely held beliefs about the paranormal, the supernatural, and the mysterious. By explaining what distinguishes knowledge from opinion, science from pseudoscience, and evidence from hearsay, How to Think about Weird Things helps the reader develop the skills needed to tell the true from the false and the reasonable from the unreasonable. Instructors and students can now access their course content through the Connect digital learning platform by purchasing either standalone Connect access or a bundle of print and Connect access. McGraw-Hill Connect® is a subscription-based learning service accessible online through your personal computer or tablet. Choose this option if your instructor will require Connect to be used in the course. Your subscription to Connect includes the following: * SmartBook® - an adaptive digital version of the course textbook that personalizes your reading experience based on how well you are learning the content. * Access to your instructor's homework assignments, quizzes, syllabus, notes, reminders, and other important files for the course. * Progress dashboards that quickly show how you are performing on your assignments and tips for improvement. * The option to purchase (for a small fee) a print version of the book. This binder-ready, loose-leaf version includes free shipping. Complete system requirements to use Connect can be found here: http://www.mheducation.com/highered/platforms/connect/training-support-students.html
Learning to Think Things Through: A Guide to Critical Thinking Across the Curriculum
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How important is critical thinking in all areas of the curriculum? This short, inexpensive guide is designed to help students learn to think critically in any subject-matter course. A combination of instruction and exercises shows them how to use critical thinking to more fully 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. The model of critical thinking (used throughout the book) is in terms of the elements of reasoning, standards, and critical thinking processes. This model is well-suited to thinking through any problem or question.
The Pocket Guide to Critical Thinking
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This handy book is a summary and guide to the art of reasoning well in academic pursuits and in everyday life. The Second Edition of Epstein's comprehensive text, CRITICAL THINKING, set a new standard of pedagogical excellence and provided a well-integrated approach to the subject. This brief pocket guide provides the same benefits in a trimmed-down fashion, covering the essentials. This latest edition includes revised examples that are more inter-disciplinary in scope.
Truth: How the Many Sides to Every Story Shape Our Reality
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"In a time when truth is under assault, Hector Macdonald is here to defend it. He offers clear-eyed, compelling guidelines for becoming a more accurate consumer and producer of information."--Adam Grant, author of Give and Take, Originals, and Option B with Sheryl Sandberg. For fans of Nudge, Sway, and The Art of Thinking Clearly, a fascinating dive into the many ways in which "competing truths" shape our opinions, behaviors, and beliefs. True or false? It's rarely that simple. There is more than one truth about most things. The Internet disseminates knowledge but it also spreads hatred. Eating meat is nutritious but it's also damaging to the environment. When we communicate we naturally select the truths that are most helpful to our agenda. We can select truths constructively to inspire organizations, encourage children, and drive progressive change. Or we can select truths that give a false impression of reality, misleading people without actually lying. Others can do the same, motivating or deceiving us with the truth. Truths are neutral but highly versatile tools that we can use for good or ill. In Truth: How the Many Sides to Every Story Shape Our Reality, Hector Macdonald explores how truth is used and abused in politics, business, the media and everyday life. He shows how a clearer understanding of truth's many faces renders us better able to navigate our world and more influential within it. Combining great storytelling with practical takeaways and a litany of fascinating, funny, and insightful case studies, Truth is a sobering and engaging read about how profoundly our mindsets and actions are influenced by the truths that those around us choose to tell.
