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Inquiry-Based Learning for the Arts, Humanities, and Social Sciences
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Inquiry-based learning (IBL) is a learner-centered and active learning environment where deep learning is cultivated by a process of inquiry owned by the learner. IBL has its roots in a constructivist educational philosophy and it is oriented around at least three components: 1) exploration and discovery (e.g. problem-based learning, open meaning-making), 2) authentic investigations using contextualized learning (e.g. field studies, case studies), and 3) research-based approach (e.g. research-based learning, project-based learning). IBL encourages more self-regulated learning because the primary responsibility is on the learners to determine the issues and research questions and the resources they need to address the questions. In this way, learning occurs across all learning domains (affective, cognitive, and social) because different types of knowledge are acquired though experience with complex, real-life problems. This volume serves as a conceptual and practical resource and guide for educators and offers practical examples of IBL in action and diverse strategies for how to implement IBL in different contexts.
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Developing Creative and Critical Thinking: An Integrated Approach
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Visual Thinking Strategies: Using Art to Deepen Learning Across School Disciplines
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"What's going on in this picture?" With this one question and a carefully chosen work of art, teachers can start their students down a path toward deeper learning and other skills now encouraged by the Common Core State Standards. The Visual Thinking Strategies (VTS) teaching method has been successfully implemented in schools, districts, and cultural institutions nationwide, including bilingual schools in California, West Orange Public Schools in New Jersey, and the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. It provides for open-ended yet highly structured discussions of visual art, and significantly increases students' critical thinking, language, and literacy skills along the way. Philip Yenawine, former education director of New York's Museum of Modern Art and cocreator of the VTS curriculum, writes engagingly about his years of experience with elementary school students in the classroom. He reveals how VTS was developed and demonstrates how teachers are using art--as well as poems, primary documents, and other visual artifacts--to increase a variety of skills, including writing, listening, and speaking, across a range of subjects. The book shows how VTS can be easily and effectively integrated into elementary classroom lessons in just ten hours of a school year to create learner-centered environments where students at all levels are involved in rich, absorbing discussions.
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Critical Theories of Mass Media: Then and Now
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"This is a welcome critical corrective to complacent mainstream accounts of the media's cultural impact". Prof. Slavoj Zizek, International Director of the Birkbeck Institute for the Humanities at Birkbeck, University of London "A powerful and highly engaging re-assessment of past critical thinkers (including those not normally thought of as critical) in the light of today's mediascape". Jorge Reina Schement, Distinguished Professor of Communications, Penn State University With the exception of occasional moral panics about the coarsening of public discourse, and the impact of advertising and television violence upon children, mass media tend to be viewed as a largely neutral or benign part of contemporary life. Even when criticisms are voiced, the media chooses how and when to discuss its own inadequacies. More radical external critiques are often excluded and media theorists are frequently more optimistic than realistic about the negative aspects of mass culture. This book reassesses this situation in the light of both early and contemporary critical scholarship and explores the intimate relationship between the mass media and the dis-empowering nature of commodity culture. The authors cast a fresh perspective on contemporary mass culture by comparing past and present critiques. They: Outline the key criticisms of mass culture from past critical thinkers Reassess past critical thought in the changed circumstances of today Evaluate the significance of new critical thinkers for today's mass culture The book begins by introducing the critical insights from major theorists from the past - Walter Benjamin, Siegfried Kracauer, Theodor Adorno, Marshall McLuhan and Guy Debord. Paul Taylor and Jan Harris then apply these insights to recent provocative writers such as Jean Baudrillard and Slavoj and discuss the links between such otherwise apparently unrelated contemporary events as the Iraqi Abu Ghraib controversy and the rise of reality television. Critical Theories of Mass Media is a key text for students of cultural studies, communications and media studies, and sociology.
Critical Thinking: Make Strategic Decisions with Confidence
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Solving problems. Evaluating options. Choosing direction. You need to be adept at critical thinking every day on the job. Learn how to tell the difference between effective and ineffective methods of thought. When you can show that your decisions are based on sound reasoning, you give yourself an unbeatable advantage as a leader or a rising star.
The Critical Thinking Toolkit: Spark Your Team's Creativity with 35 Problem Solving Activities
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Unimaginative. Risk-adverse. Prone to group-think. These are not just empty complaints about today's employees. A recent article in Newsweek found solid data that proves a "creativity crisis" is plaguing America. Yet critical thinking, the ability to approach a problem both analytically and creatively, is the bedrock of success for companies and their people. Fortunately, it's a skill that can be learned. The Critical Thinking Tool Kit aims to get employees thinking better and faster with 35 hands-on activities and ready-to-use assessments. Team members work on challenging assumptions, brainstorming divergent ideas, and then pinpointing the ones that best benefit an organization. And they'll learn to do it in real-life speed--quickly! The training exercises in The Critical Thinking Tool Kit offer an invigorating departure from the everyday--with the potential for big payoffs in the form of enhanced "on-your-feet" thinking, innovative problem-solving, and profitable idea generation from everyone on the team.
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The Skeptical Business Searcher: The Information Advisor's Guide to Evaluating Web Data, Sites, and Sources
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Offering business information users strategies for identifying and evaluating no-cost online information sources, this guide emphasizes techniques for recognizing biased and untrustworthy web sites. Information users are directed to the most useful and targeted sources of company histories and overviews. These include corporate sales and earnings data, SEC filings and stockholder reports, public records, market research studies, competitive intelligence, industry analyses, staff directories, executive biographies, statistics, survey/poll results, conference proceedings, press releases, news stories, and hard-to-find information about small businesses and niche markets. Demonstrated are concepts such as precision searching, which enables business searchers to quickly find the specific information they need. Also discussed are critical-thinking skills and the art of asking the right question. A 10-point checklist that allows users to systematically evaluate web site reliability is included.
Thinking Skills for Professionals
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This book gives professionals and business people the essential tools to become better thinkers and decision-makers. It sets out simple methods and techniques to avoid poor decision making by developing our conceptual, creative and critical thinking skills, along with ways of incorporating them within our daily lives.
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Engineering a Safer World: Systems Thinking Applied to Safety
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Engineering has experienced a technological revolution, but the basic engineering techniques applied in safety and reliability engineering, created in a simpler, analog world, have changed very little over the years. In this groundbreaking book, Nancy Leveson proposes a new approach to safety -- more suited to today's complex, sociotechnical, software-intensive world -- based on modern systems thinking and systems theory. Revisiting and updating ideas pioneered by 1950s aerospace engineers in their System Safety concept, and testing her new model extensively on real-world examples, Leveson has created a new approach to safety that is more effective, less expensive, and easier to use than current techniques. Arguing that traditional models of causality are inadequate, Leveson presents a new, extended model of causation (Systems-Theoretic Accident Model and Processes, or STAMP), then then shows how the new model can be used to create techniques for system safety engineering, including accident analysis, hazard analysis, system design, safety in operations, and management of safety-critical systems. She applies the new techniques to real-world events including the friendly-fire loss of a U.S. Blackhawk helicopter in the first Gulf War; the Vioxx recall; the U.S. Navy SUBSAFE program; and the bacterial contamination of a public water supply in a Canadian town. Leveson's approach is relevant even beyond safety engineering, offering techniques for "reengineering" any large sociotechnical system to improve safety and manage risk.
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The Shallows: What the Internet is Doing to Our Brains
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"Is Google making us stupid?" When Nicholas Carr posed that question, in a celebrated Atlantic Monthly cover story, he tapped into a well of anxiety about how the Internet is changing us. He also crystallized one of the most important debates of our time: As we enjoy the Net's bounties, are we sacrificing our ability to read and think deeply? Now, Carr expands his argument into the most compelling exploration of the Internet's intellectual and cultural consequences yet published. As he describes how human thought has been shaped through the centuries by "tools of the mind"--from the alphabet to maps, to the printing press, the clock, and the computer--Carr interweaves a fascinating account of recent discoveries in neuroscience by such pioneers as Michael Merzenich and Eric Kandel. Our brains, the historical and scientific evidence reveals, change in response to our experiences. The technologies we use to find, store, and share information can literally reroute our neural pathways. Building on the insights of thinkers from Plato to McLuhan, Carr makes a convincing case that every information technology carries an intellectual ethic--a set of assumptions about the nature of knowledge and intelligence. He explains how the printed book served to focus our attention, promoting deep and creative thought. In stark contrast, the Internet encourages the rapid, distracted sampling of small bits of information from many sources. Its ethic is that of the industrialist, an ethic of speed and efficiency, of optimized production and consumption--and now the Net is remaking us in its own image. We are becoming ever more adept at scanning and skimming, but what we are losing is our capacity for concentration, contemplation, and reflection. Part intellectual history, part popular science, and part cultural criticism, The Shallows sparkles with memorable vignettes--Friedrich Nietzsche wrestling with a typewriter, Sigmund Freud dissecting the brains of sea creatures, Nathaniel Hawthorne contemplating the thunderous approach of a steam locomotive--even as it plumbs profound questions about the state of our modern psyche. This is a book that will forever alter the way we think about media and our minds.
Thinking in Systems: A Primer
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Thinking in Systems, is a concise and crucial book offering insight for problem solving on scales ranging from the personal to the global. Edited by the Sustainability Institute's Diana Wright, this essential primer brings systems thinking out of the realm of computers and equations and into the tangible world, showing readers how to develop the systems-thinking skills that thought leaders across the globe consider critical for 21st-century life. Some of the biggest problems facing the world--war, hunger, poverty, and environmental degradation--are essentially system failures. They cannot be solved by fixing one piece in isolation from the others, because even seemingly minor details have enormous power to undermine the best efforts of too-narrow thinking. While readers will learn the conceptual tools and methods of systems thinking, the heart of the book is grander than methodology. Donella Meadows was known as much for nurturing positive outcomes as she was for delving into the science behind global dilemmas. She reminds readers to pay attention to what is important, not just what is quantifiable, to stay humble, and to stay a learner. In a world growing ever more complicated, crowded, and interdependent, Thinking in Systems helps readers avoid confusion and helplessness, the first step toward finding proactive and effective solutions.
Thinking Skills for Professionals
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This book gives professionals and business people the essential tools to become better thinkers and decision-makers. It sets out simple methods and techniques to avoid poor decision making by developing our conceptual, creative and critical thinking skills, along with ways of incorporating them within our daily lives.
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Becoming a Critically Reflective Teacher
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A practical guide to the essential practice that builds better teachers. Becoming a Critically Reflective Teacher is the landmark guide to critical reflection, providing expert insight and practical tools to facilitate a journey of constructive self-critique. Stephen Brookfield shows how you can uncover and assess your assumptions about practice by viewing them through the lens of your students' eyes, your colleagues' perceptions, relevant theory and research, and your own personal experience. Practicing critical reflection will help you... Align your teaching with desired student outcomes See your practice from new perspectives Engage learners via multiple teaching formats Understand and manage classroom power dynamics Model critical thinking for your students Manage the complex rhythms of diverse classrooms This fully revised second edition features a wealth of new material, including new chapters on critical reflection in the context of social media, teaching race and racism, leadership in a critically reflective key, and team teaching as critical reflection. In addition, all chapters have been thoroughly updated and expanded to align with today's classrooms, whether online or face-to-face, in large lecture formats or small groups. In his own personal voice Stephen Brookfield draws from over 45 years of experience to illustrate the clear benefits of critical reflection. Assumptions guide practice and only when we base our actions on accurate assumptions will we achieve the results we want. Educators with the courage to challenge their own assumptions in an effort to improve learning are the invaluable role models our students need. Becoming a Critically Reflective Teacher provides the foundational information and practical tools that help teachers reach their true potential.
Creativity, Critical Thinking, and Communication : Strategies to Increase Students' Skills
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Creativity, Critical Thinking, and Communication contains research, strategies, and lesson plans that will help increase students' skill level in the 3 Cs: creativity, critical thinking, and communication. The strategies of the 3 Cs renew stale curricula and supports deeper learning of core concepts. This book provides parents and those interested in the education system a glimpse into how schools can be more efficient and effective by saving what works in education.
Critical Thinking Across the Curriculum: Developing Critical Thinking Skills, Literacy and Philosophy in the Primary Classroom
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Learning how to be critical and think for one's self are key development steps in the education process. Developing critical thinking is vital for supporting children to become independent learners. This fun, practical book is very easy to use in the classroom and is designed to help children: Understand key critical thinking concepts. Develop critical thinking skills. Understand different types of reasoning and knowledge in all areas of the curriculum. Draw on their natural wonder and curiosity to engage in philosophical discussion. Develop reasoning skills in relation to moral dilemmas and the choices of every day life. The authors present original beautifully illustrated children's stories that take abstract ideas, philosophical questions and critical skills as their central themes. They make the unfamiliar and complex ideas concrete and easily understandable. Drawing on the stories and additional photocopiable resources, each chapter then offers a wealth of learning activities. These are designed to help you develop children's critical thinking and practice relevant tools such as asking good questions, giving good reasons or categorising material. The activities and resources include both subject specific and cross-curricular links and are differentiated for Key Stage 1 and 2. There are also extension activities for enthusiastic, gifted and talented children.
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Critical Lessons: What Our Schools Should Teach
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Critical Lessons concentrates on the critical, reflective thinking that should be taught in high schools. Taking seriously the Socratic advice, 'know thyself', it focuses on topics that will help students to understand the forces - good and bad - that work to socialize them. This book argues why critical thinking is necessary in schools because it requires the discussion of critical issues: how we learn, the psychology of war, what it means to make a home, advertising and propaganda, choosing an occupation, gender, and religion.
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Anthem Critical Thinking and Writing Skills: An Introductory Guide
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'Anthem Critical Thinking and Writing Skills: An Introductory Guide' helps readers in the process of critical thinking and persuasive speaking and writing. The concepts of critical thinking and evaluation are presented in a clear, easy-to-understand format. Students learn how to form a proposition, identify issues, gather evidence, and process an argument. Logic games, puzzles, and real life examples ask students to evaluate how we evaluate, analyze, and decide. Then a more formal look at induction and deduction challenges students to practice higher-level thinking skills, such as the use of analogies for evaluation, and working through syllogisms to process ideas. Instruction is included on processing a formal persuasive paper. Readers can have some literary logic fun by analyzing old standards like 'Love is a Fallacy' and the persuasive love poem 'The Passionate Shepherd'. Short chapters and clear practice exercises make the book easy to use as a basic or supplemental text.
Breaking Open the Box: A Guide for Creative Techniques to Improve Academic Writing and Generate Critical Thinking
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What do David Foster Wallace's essay on wars over usage and Pico Iyer's comma personification have to do with improving students' academic writing? Everything. For all of the attention supposedly paid to Bloom's Taxonomy-with creativity at the top-educators tend to shy away from encouraging students' creative choices in areas where traditional analysis and the critic's style and tone have reigned. While we do not want our students to write inane or empty verbiage, we unintentionally set them up for this inevitability--or worse. The movement away from children's natural creative impulses in elementary school to a direction in which they literally fit their writing into preconfigured shapes is a gradual one. Although purportedly taught to instill academic structures, these boxes are also designed to facilitate the ease with which student product may be assessed. We need a more creative approach to teaching writing. A methodology incorporating creativity, as modeled by students in this text, demonstrates the kind of progress we are all seeking, offering an exciting challenge for young writers and educators alike.
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The Art of Critical Reading: Brushing Up on Your Reading, Thinking, and Study Skills
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The Art of Critical Reading uses the theme of art to create an exciting and engaging approach to reading and learning. Integrating art themes through reading selections, visuals, and exercises, the new edition offers a wealth of updated exercises and reading selections drawn from a variety of sources (college textbooks, newspapers, magazines, and classic and contemporary literature) to inspire students to read with passion and care.
Critical Thinking: A Guide to Interpreting Literary Texts
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An attempt to provide students of literature with an introduction to literary analysis this seeks to involve the student in the process of thinking about literature, showing how to start with one idea and move on to further insights. To do this, several methods - such as using close textual analysis, finding connections, making comparisons, and looking for structures, are described and variously illustrated in action. Works used to illustrate the text include those by Shakespeare, Pope, Chaucer, James, Jonson, Woolf, Fielding, Milton, Hardy, Swift and Melville.
Discovering Arguments: An Introduction to Critical Thinking and Writing, With Readings
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This book uses logos, pathos, and ethos in critical thinking, active reading, and persuasive writing. Accessible and stimulating, the versatile manual can be used as a rhetoric, a reader, a guide on research writing, and a guide on style. Through its chapters, users learn to excel at what they say; through our style interchapters users earn to excel at how they say it. Cheating, conservation, race, politics, male/female communication styles, gun control, abortion, same-sex marriage, stem cell research, many diverse and mature readings on these subjects engage readers and writers in analytical thinking and stimulate them to react with thoughtful discussions and compositions. For individuals who want to communicate clearly, argue persuasively, and analyze and evaluate what they read.
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Critical Thinking for Helping Professionals : A Skills-Based Workbook
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Critical thinking values, knowledge and skills are integral to evidence-based practice in the helping professions. Those working in this area must be able to think clearly, on a daily basis, about decisions that may have a major impact on their clients' lives. For students in social work, nursing, counseling, and psychology, this new edition of a unique workbook is a fun and thought-provoking way to sharpen and maximize their decision-making skills so that they can provide their clients with the best care possible.
Critical Thinking in Health and Social Care
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Critical Thinking in Health & Social Care is designed to equip practitioners with the knowledge and tools they need to critically examine practice in their own workplace. The book presents a range of different approaches, which have particular relevance in the context of health and social care. Each approach is explained and grounded in practice using case studies, problem-solving scenarios and workplace examples. The practical tools which form the core of the book are contextualized by an exploration of what constitutes knowledge and evidence and the types of assumptions which are commonly held and which have a bearing on practice. This is an essential text for advanced graduate health and social care students, and for those who are moving into more senior and strategic roles. Critical Thinking in Health & Social Care provides an array of tools which can be used to challenge and change existing practice and to solve problems. Stella Jones-Devitt is Head of Subject for Health Studies and Community Engagement at York St John University, U.K. Liz Smith is Programme Leader for Health Professional Studies, Faculty of Health and Social Care, University of Hull, U.K.
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.
Research Success: A Q & A Review Applying Critical Thinking to Test Taking
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Here's all of the crucial coverage you need to succeed in class and confidently prepare for your classroom exams and the NCLEX. Master must-know content From an introduction to basic research concepts through design of quantitative and qualitative studies and data collection and analysis, you'll review all aspects of nursing research and its application to real-world practice. Practice, practice, practice. More than 700 NCLEX-style questions (including alternate format) in the text and online at DavisPlus offer test-taking tips and rationales for correct and incorrect answers. Critical-thinking facilitators and research study questions support learning and enhance critical thinking. What instructors and students are saying about the Success Series: "We have used your products for students to help increase critical thinking skills, prepare for NCLEX and course exams, and for review of nursing content. We recommend students purchase the Success Series and review the content and questions for remediation and to enhance nursing knowledge. The terminology at the beginning of each chapter provide key terms for the students to review before answering questions. The books are all encompassing in regards to what students need to review across the curriculum. We love them!!" - Louise Outlaw, Instructor at Brown Mackie College, St. Louis "The Success books have been an absolute lifeline for me. My "Success" proves it! It doesn't matter if you get the question right or wrong because you get so much out of the rationale- and then you can apply that information to your next exam, clinical rotation, or the NCLEX." --Corrie Cyre, President, Student Nurses Association Hillsborough Community College Southshore Hillsborough, FL Access more online Redeem the Plus Code inside to unlock two, 100-question exams online at DavisPlus.
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Concept Mapping: A Critical Thinking Approach to Care Planning
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Looking for an easier path to care planning? Create a map! Concept mapping is a clear, visual, and systematic model for gathering and categorizing relevant assessment data, identifying patient problems, and developing patient goals, interventions, and outcomes for each nursing diagnosis. A concept map is your guide to nursing care in any clinical setting. You'll also find a wealth of care planning resources, including a concept map generator, online at Davis's Care Planning & Nursing Diagnosis Resource Center. (Click on the Preview tab to view.)
Conquer Medical Coding: A Critical Thinking Approach With Coding Simulations
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Learn. Practice. Apply. Conquer Medical Coding and Medical Coding Lab work together to create a complete learning experience that develops the critical-thinking and investigative skills you need to launch a successful career. Interactive exercises and realistic coding simulations guide you every step of the way, making the coding process easier to learn, practice, and apply. Text Conquer Medical Coding A Critical-Thinking Approach with Coding Simulations Take a real-world approach to coding that prepares you for the AAPC or AHIMA certification exams and for professional practice in any health care setting. The book is also a handy resource you can turn to throughout your career. Unique decision trees show you how to logically assign a code. It's the only text that breaks down the decision-making process into a visual and repeatable process! You'll learn exactly how to select the correct ICD-10, CPT, and HCPCS codes. Each section parallels the Official Coding Guidelines, with a special emphasis on commonly used codes. A wealth of learning tools and tips, along with critical-thinking exercises and real-life case studies, provide the practice you need to master coding. Brief reviews of A&P and pathophysiology put the codes into perfect context. MedicalCodingLab.com This interactive online program guides you step by step through an immersive multimedia experience that tracks your progress until you've mastered the concepts and are ready to apply them in practice. It's your path to medical coding success. An access code inside new, printed texts unlocks Medical Coding Lab. Learn more. Visit www.MedicalCodingLab.com.
Conversations in Critical Thinking and Clinical Judgment
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Conversational in style, this book is designed to present the many facets of critical thinking in a dynamic question/answer format, answering the practical, down-to-earth questions that challenge nurses on a daily basis. The conversational-style format of Conversations in Critical Thinking and Clinical Judgment mirrors the basic tenets of critical thinking, addressing topics from many angles, instead of in a compartmental or linear fashion. This book invites readers to be thoughtful participants as (some of the most) knowledgeable and experienced nurse authors offer practical advice for how to develop and promote critical thinking skills, how to work creatively within teams, and even how to attract, develop, and retain the best critical thinkers on their team. Whether in practice, education, leadership, quality improvement, or research, nurses will find content that challenges and inspires.
Critical Thinking Tactics for Nurses: Achieving the IOM Competencies
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Awarded Second Place in the 2014 AJN Book of the Year Awards in the Nursing Education/Continuing Education category! Critical Thinking TACTICS for Nurses: Achieving IOM Competencies, Third Edition is a user-friendly and practical manual focusing on the day-to-day realities of doing, learning, and evaluating critical thinking in nursing. With clear examples of both the parts and the whole of this complex process, each chapter includes action learning activities to promote critical thinking: Tracking, Assessing, and Cultivating Thinking to Improve Competency-based Strategies or TACTICS. Issues addressed include critical thinking language and awareness enhancement, the impact of critical thinking on quality care, mentoring the critical thinking of staff and students, and designing performance criteria for critical thinking. Based on the authors' research in both defining and assessing critical thinking in nursing, this text also draws from their years of refining critical thinking teaching and learning methods. Completely updated and revised, the new edition offers critical thinking components combined with the Institute of Medicine's (IOM) five core competencies: patient-centered care, interdisciplinary team work, evidence-based practice, informatics, and quality improvement. New to this edition are updated case studies, new illustrations, new content on how to facilitate synthesis of high level critical thinking, additional content on critical thinking within the nursing process, increased TACTICS, and new appendices to assist with the assessment of critical thinking.
Med-Surg Success: A Q&A Review Applying Critical Thinking to Test-Taking
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TWO BOOKS IN ONE! Course review now. NCLEX®-prep later. Assure your mastery of medical-surgical nursing knowledge while honing your critical thinking and test-taking skills. The 3rd Edition of this popular resource features over 2,300 questions (including 550 alternate-format questions) that reflect the latest advances in medical-surgical nursing and the latest NCLEX-RN® test plan. They organize the seemingly huge volume of information you must master into manageable sections divided by body systems and specific diseases. Each chapter is a self-contained unit. For each practice question, you'll find the answer, rationales for correct and incorrect responses, and a test-taking tip. The comprehensive exam at the end of each chapter assesses your strengths and weaknesses, identifying areas for further study. Online at DavisPlus you'll find two, 75-question final exams.
See what students are saying... A must buy for nursing school students! "I am currently in nursing school and my rotation is on a medical surgical unit, as well as my theory class covers a lot of medical surgical topics. I heard about these books to help with practice questions and boost test grades. These books are absolutely amazing. The questions are very thought out with rationales at the end of each question when you're checking your answers. There are questions for nearly every subject matter and it really has helped bump up my test grades and my knowledge. An absolute must!" The Med-Surg bible. "Want do well in Med-Surg? BUY THIS BOOK. The rationales are great and so are the questions. Hundreds of questions per topic." This book saved my life! After using this book to study for my next exam I was so happy to see that I got a 94%! That being said, I really recommend this book to anyone who is currently taking Med-surge, or preparing for the NCLEX®-RN." A must for every student in the nursing field. "I noticed that if you can answer the majority of those questions correctly, it will not only give you a better understanding of the topic, but YOU WILL PASS THE TEST in your class. Honestly, if you can only afford one extra book from your text book, this will be the one to take." "My first HESI exam in Med-Surg I nearly failed. Thereafter, I seem to be unstoppable thanks to the Success Series. I've gotten all "A"s in my nursing courses getting mostly above 90% on exams after using your products. I'm a tutor on campus so I recommend it to everyone! If you need further explanation or testimony I would gladly provide it." - Ann Voss
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Critical Thinking, Science, and Pseudoscience: Why We Can't Trust Our Brains
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This unique text for undergraduate courses teaches students to apply critical thinking skills across all academic disciplines by examining popular pseudoscientific claims through a multidisciplinary lens. Rather than merely focusing on critical thinking, the text incorporates the perspectives of psychology, biology, physics, medicine, and other disciplines to reinforce different categories of rational explanation. Accessible and engaging, it describes what critical thinking is, why it is important, and how to learn and apply skills that promote it. The text also examines why critical thinking can be difficult to engage in and explores the psychological and social reasons why people are drawn to and find credence in extraordinary claims. From alien abductions and psychic phenomena to strange creatures and unsupported alternative medical treatments, the text uses examples from a wide range of pseudoscientific fields and brings evidence from diverse disciplines to critically examine erroneous claims. Particularly timely is the text's examination of how, using the narrative of today' s ' culture wars, ' religion and culture impact science. The authors focus on how the human brain, rife with natural biases, does not process information in a rational fashion, and the social factors that prevent individuals from gaining an unbiased, critical perspective on information. Authored by a psychologist and a philosopher who have extensive experience teaching and writing on critical thinking and skeptical inquiry, this work will help students to strengthen their skills in reasoning and debate, become intelligent consumers of research, and make well-informed choices as citizens. KEY FEATURES: Addresses the foundations of critical thinking and how to apply it through the popular activity of examining pseudoscience Explains why humans are vulnerable to pseudoscientific claims and how critical thinking can overcome fallacies and biases Reinforces critical thinking through multidisciplinary analyses of pseudoscience Enlightens using an engaging, entertaining approach Features teaching resources including an Instructor' s Guide and PowerPoint slides
Science Stories : Using Case Studies to Teach Critical Thinking
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In Science Stories, the authors have organized case studies into categories such as historical cases, science and the media, and ethics and the scientific process. College-level educators and high school teachers will find that this compilation of case studies will allow students to make connections between the classroom and everyday life.
Why Cats Land on Their Feet: And 76 Other Physical Paradoxes and Puzzles
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Here readers can test their critical-thinking skills against a whole assortment of puzzles and paradoxes involving floating and diving, sailing and gliding, gymnastics, bike riding, outer space, throwing a ball from a moving car, centrifugal force, gyroscopic motion, and, of course, falling cats. Want to figure out how to open a wine bottle with a book? Or how to compute the square root of a number using a tennis shoe and a watch? Why Cats Land on Their Feet shows you how, and all that's required is a familiarity with basic high-school mathematics. This lively collection also features an appendix that explains all physical concepts used in the book, from Newton's laws to the fundamental theorem of calculus.
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Lies, Damned Lies, and Science: How to Sort Through the Noise Around Global Warming, The Latest Health Claims, and Other Scientific Controversies
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Don't get hoodwinked: make sense of news...and make smarter decisions for yourself, your family, and the world! Objective, balanced techniques for thinking about everything from diet and drugs to climate change. Identifying and getting past the biases of politicians, lobbyists, marketers...and even some scientific and medical professionals. By scientist Dr. Sherry Seethaler, one of the world's most respected and innovative science educators.
Thinking in Systems: A Primer
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Thinking in Systems, is a concise and crucial book offering insight for problem solving on scales ranging from the personal to the global. Edited by the Sustainability Institute's Diana Wright, this essential primer brings systems thinking out of the realm of computers and equations and into the tangible world, showing readers how to develop the systems-thinking skills that thought leaders across the globe consider critical for 21st-century life. Some of the biggest problems facing the world--war, hunger, poverty, and environmental degradation--are essentially system failures. They cannot be solved by fixing one piece in isolation from the others, because even seemingly minor details have enormous power to undermine the best efforts of too-narrow thinking. While readers will learn the conceptual tools and methods of systems thinking, the heart of the book is grander than methodology. Donella Meadows was known as much for nurturing positive outcomes as she was for delving into the science behind global dilemmas. She reminds readers to pay attention to what is important, not just what is quantifiable, to stay humble, and to stay a learner. In a world growing ever more complicated, crowded, and interdependent, Thinking in Systems helps readers avoid confusion and helplessness, the first step toward finding proactive and effective solutions.
E-Books
eBooks are accessible online, and many are available for download or 2 week check out.
Critical Thinking and Informal Logic
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This book will familiarize the reader with the basics of critical thinking and informal logic deductive and inductive arguments, form and content, fallacies, and complex arguments. Following a brief introduction, Chapter 1 outlines the basic concepts and principles of informal logic. Chapters 2 and 3 focus on deductive and inductive reasoning (analogical and statistical) and include a discussion of validity, soundness and cogency. Chapter 4 presents rhetorical devices and informal fallacies. Chapter 5 discusses strategies and tactics for the evaluation of complex argumentation. Chapter 6 provides an overview that includes a guide to good critical thinking habits, a discussion of the composition and development of argumentative essays, and an introduction to information literacy. Appendices include a synopsis of categorical logic and resources for additional study. The book includes diagrams and external hyperlinks.
Explaining Society: An Introduction to Critical Realism in the Social Sciences
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This book will be immensely valuable for students and researchers in social science, sociology and philosophy in that it connects methodology, theory and empirical research. It provides an innovative picture of what society and social science is, along with the methods used to study and explain social phenomena.
Teaching Critical Thinking in Psychology : A Handbook of Best Practices
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Teaching Critical Thinking in Psychology features current scholarship on effectively teaching critical thinking skills at all levels of psychology. Offers novel, nontraditional approaches to teaching critical thinking, including strategies, tactics, diversity issues, service learning, and the use of case studies Provides new course delivery formats by which faculty can create online course materials to foster critical thinking within a diverse student audience Places specific emphasis on how to both teach and assess critical thinking in the classroom, as well as issues of wider program assessment Discusses ways to use critical thinking in courses ranging from introductory level to upper-level, including statistics and research methods courses, cognitive psychology, and capstone offerings.
Team-Based Learning in the Social Sciences and Humanities: Group Work That Works to Generate Critical Thinking and Engagement
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Team-Based Learning (TBL) is a unique, powerful, and proven form of small-group learning that is being increasingly adopted in higher education. Teachers who use TBL report high levels of engagement, critical thinking, and retention among their students. TBL has been used successfully in both small and large classes, in computer-supported and online classes; and because it is group work that works, it has been implemented in nearly every discipline and in countries around the world. This book introduces the elements of TBL and how to apply them in the social sciences and humanities. It describes the four essential elements of TBL - readiness assurance, design of application exercises, permanent teams, peer evaluation - and pays particular attention to the specification of learning outcomes, which can be a unique challenge in these fields. The core of the book consists of examples of how TBL has been incorporated into the cultures of disciplines as varied as economics, education, literature, politics, psychology, and theatre. The authors explain why they felt a need to change how they taught and why they chose TBL. Furthermore, each chapter provides examples of the assignments and exercises they use to help their students achieve the specific learning outcomes of their courses. At a time of increasing course sizes, and emphasis on learning outcomes, TBL offers the means to meet such demands while connecting students to their coursework, and stimulating their intellectual engagement.
Circulating Print Books
Circulating books may be checked out in 3 week intervals.
Critical Reasoning in Ethics
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Critical Reasoning in Ethics is an accessible introduction that will enable students, through practical exercises, to develop their own skills in reasoning about ethical issues such as: * analyzing and evaluating arguments used in discussions of ethical issues * analyzing and evaluating ethical concepts, such as utilitarianism * making decisions on ethical issues * learning how to approach ethical issues in a fair minded way Ethical issues discussed include the arguments about abortion, euthanasia, capital punishment, animal rights, the environment and war. The book will be essential reading for philosophy, health, social work and nursing courses.
More Damned Lies and Statistics: How Numbers Confuse Public Issues
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In this sequel to the acclaimed Damned Lies and Statistics, which the Boston Globe said "deserves a place next to the dictionary on every school, media, and home-office desk," Joel Best continues his straightforward, lively, and humorous account of how statistics are produced, used, and misused by everyone from researchers to journalists. Underlining the importance of critical thinking in all matters numerical, Best illustrates his points with examples of good and bad statistics about such contemporary concerns as school shootings, fatal hospital errors, bullying, teen suicides, deaths at the World Trade Center, college ratings, the risks of divorce, racial profiling, and fatalities caused by falling coconuts. More Damned Lies and Statistics encourages all of us to think in a more sophisticated and skeptical manner about how statistics are used to promote causes, create fear, and advance particular points of view. Best identifies different sorts of numbers that shape how we think about public issues: missing numbers are relevant but overlooked; confusing numbers bewilder when they should inform; scary numbers play to our fears about the present and the future; authoritative numbers demand respect they don't deserve; magical numbers promise unrealistic, simple solutions to complex problems; and contentious numbers become the focus of data duels and stat wars. The author's use of pertinent, socially important examples documents the life-altering consequences of understanding or misunderstanding statistical information. He demystifies statistical measures by explaining in straightforward prose how decisions are made about what to count and what not to count, what assumptions get made, and which figures are brought to our attention. Best identifies different sorts of numbers that shape how we think about public issues. Entertaining, enlightening, and very timely, this book offers a basis for critical thinking about the numbers we encounter and a reminder that when it comes to the news, people count--in more ways than one.
