Critical Thinking Resource Centers

Books | Guides | Media

Books, videos, and other resources are housed in the libraries on each campus or in Collegewide databases. Librarians assist in this effort and serve as managers of their campus critical thinking collection. Librarians also assist campus Student Activities Coordinators in identifying student-oriented resources for developing critical thinking skills suitable for use by student organizations, such as leadership training materials, games and simulations, and resources to support community service projects.

Books

Active Learning: Creating Excitement in the Classroom
Bonwell, J. and Eison, J. (1991)
This book covers the research on using active learning strategies, guidance on incorporating active learning in the classroom, including the use of modified lectures, discussions, and other individual and group strategies.

 

Asking the Right Questions: A Guide to Critical Thinking
Browne, M. Neil (2007)
This highly popular text helps students to bridge the gap between simply memorizing or blindly accepting information and the greater challenge of critical analysis and synthesis. It teaches them to respond to alternative points of view and develop a solid foundation for making personal choices about what to accept and what to reject. While the structure of this new edition remains the same, for the sake of currency and relevance about two-thirds of the practice passages are new, as well as many of the longer illustrations and the final critical thinking case. Also, this eighth edition has been revised to emphasize the positive value of critical thinking as a means to autonomy, curiousity, reasonableness, openness, and better decisions.

Blueprint for Learning
Richlin (2006)
This book familiarizes readers with course design elements; enables them to understand themselves as individuals and teachers; know their students; adapt to the learning environment; design courses that promote deep learning; and assess the impact of the teaching practices and design choices they have made. She provides tools to create a full syllabus, offers guidance on such issues as framing questions that encourage discussion, developing assignments with rubrics, and creating tests.

Classroom Assessment Techniques
Angelo & Cross (1993)
Classroom Assessment Techniques offers a host of in-class techniques for determining students' current understanding of the material. As many of the techniques use reflection, the mindful thinking on the part of students gets them thinking critically about their learning.

Collaborative Learning Techniques
Barkley, Cross, & Major (2004)
Collaborative Learning Techniques is a scholarly and well-written handbook that guides teachers through all aspects of group work, providing solid information on what to do, how to do it, and why it is important to student learning. Synthesizing the relevant research and good practice literature, the authors present detailed procedures for thirty collaborative learning techniques (CoLTs) and offer practical suggestions on a wide range of topics, including how to form groups, assign roles, build team spirit, solve problems, and evaluate and grade student participation.

The Course Portfolio
Hutchings & Shulman (1998)
The volume covers defining features and functions, steps in development, audiences and occasions for use, and the course portfolio's place in the development of a scholarship of teaching and learning. It also includes nine case studies by faculty in a range of disciplines who have developed and used course portfolios, as well as an annotated resource list.

 

Creating Significant Learning Experiences
Fink (2003)
Fink provides several conceptual and procedural tools that will be invaluable for all teachers when designing instruction. He takes important existing ideas in the literature on college teaching (active learning, educative assessment), adds some new ideas (a taxonomy of significant learning, the concept of a teaching strategy), and shows how to systematically combine these in a way that results in powerful learning experiences for students.

Critical Thinking for Multiple Learning Styles
Karen M. Streeter (2005)
Westminster, CA: Teacher Created Resources, Inc.

 

 

Critical Thinking: How to Prepare Students for a Rapidly Changing World
Paul, R. (1995)
Richard Paul, one of the founding members of the Foundation for Critical Thinking is advocating that instructors put critical thinking at the core of their instruction. This book covers both critical thinking theory and teaching for critical thinking in depth.

Critical Thinking: Tools for Taking Charge of Your Learning and Your Life
Paul, Richard; Elder, Linda (2006)
Critical Thinkingis about becoming a better thinker in every aspect of your life: in your career, and as a consumer, citizen, friend, parent, and lover. Discover the core skills of effective thinking; then analyze your own thought processes, identify weaknesses, and overcome them. Learn how to translate more effective thinking into better decisions, less frustration, more wealth Ntilde; and above all, greater confidence to pursue and achieve your most important goals in life.

Critical Thinking: Unfinished Business
Christine M. McMahon, editor (2005)
San Francisco: Jossey-Bass

 

 

Current Issues and Enduring Questions: A Guide to Critical Thinking and Argument with Readings
Barnet, Sylvan; Bedau, Hugo (2005)
The unique collaborative effort of a distinguished interdisciplinary team — a professor of English and a professor of philosophy —Current Issues and Enduring Questionsis a balanced and flexible book that provides the benefit of the authors’ dual expertise in effective persuasive writingandrigorous critical thinking. Its comprehensive coverage of classic and contemporary approaches to argument includes Aristotle, Toulmin, and a range of alternative views, making it an extraordinarily versatile text. Readings on contemporary controversies (including the purpose of a college education, immigration, a peacetime draft, and obesity) and classic philosophical questions (such as, "How free is the will of the individual?") are sure to spark student interest and lively discussion and writing. Refined through seven widely adopted previous editions, it has been revised to address current student interests and trends in argument, research, and writing, and has been updated with compelling new topics and readings and more on analyzing visuals and presenting oral arguments. No other text and reader offers such an extensive resource for teaching argument.

Engaging the Online Learner
Conrad (2004)
Engaging the Online Learner includes an innovative framework—the Phases of Engagement—that helps instructors become more involved as knowledge generators and cofacilitators of a course. The book also provides specific ideas for tested activities (collected from experienced online instructors across the nation) that can go a long way to improving online learning.

 

The International Critical Thinking Reading and Writing Test: How to Assess Close Reading and Substantive Writing
Paul, Richard (2006)
Dillion Beach, CA: Foundation for Critical thinking

 

Learning to Think Things Through: A Guide to Critical Thinking Across the Curriculum
Nosich (2008)
This book is intended as a guidebook for learning to think critically in a discipline, a subject matter, an area, or a field of study.

 

Medical-Surgical Nursing: Critical Thinking in Client Care
LeMone, Priscilla; Burke, Karen (2008)
Readers will love this book's organization and clear presentation of patient care, with its consistent format and multiple methodologies--narrative text, boxes, tables, graphics, photographs. It is built around functional health patterns, with a focus on developing decision-making skills through an abundance of case studies and examples. Includes new topics such as diseases specific to bioterrorism, information on diversity, and focused assessments with information specific to the older adult. Covers new concepts such as health promotion, home care with resources, and complementary therapies. Features "Applying the Nursing Process: A Case Study Approach to the Nursing Process," in which a Case Study is presented for each disease process and the reader is given an outline of the nursing process actions. Offers a comprehensive technology package to helpprepare readers for the computerized NCLEX exam; includes a Companion Website and Study Wizard CD-ROM. The perfect reference for registered nurses and licensed practical nurses in acute and home care settings.

A Miniature Guide for Those Who Teach on How to Improve Student Learning: 30 Practical Ideas
Paul, Richard (2006)
Dillon Beach, CA: Foundation for Critical Thinking

Teaching at its Best: A Research-Based Resource for College Instructors
Nilson, L. (2003)
Teaching at its best has hundreds of practical strategies and classroom activities, including many that teach for critical thinking, such as teaching problem-solving, using course portfolios, and getting students to do the readings.

 

Team-Based Learning
Michaelsen, Knight, & Fink (2004)
This book describes team-based learning (TBL), an unusually powerful and versatile teaching strategy that enables teachers to take small group learning to a whole new level of effectiveness. It is the only pedagogical use of small groups that is based on a recognition of the critical difference between "groups" and "teams", and intentionally employs specific procedures to transform newly-formed groups into high performance learning teams.

The Thinker's Guide to the Art of Socratic Questioning
Paul, Richard (2006)
Dillon Beach, CA: Foundation for Critical Thinking

 

The Thinker's Guide to Understanding the Foundations of Ethical Reasoning
Paul, Richard (2006)
Dillon Beach, CA: Foundation for Critical Thinking

 

What matters in America: Reading and Writing about Contemporary Culture
Gary Goshgarian (2006)
What Matters in America invites you to consider these and other questions about the culture of contemporary America. The readings and visuals in What Matters in America pick up on and explore issues and events that you hear and read about in the news every day. What Matters in America encourages you to take what you know about American culture and ask questions, explore other points of view, and become more aware of your own place in this diverse and ever-changing culture.

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Guides

Set of 20 Thinker's Guides from the Foundation for Critical Thinking (2006)

1. Active and Cooperative Learning
2. Analytic Thinking
3. Art of Socratic Questioning
4. Critical & Creative Thinking
5. Critical Thinking Competency Standards
6. Critical Thinking Reading & Writing Test
7. Critical Thinking, Concepts & Tools
8. Engineering Reasoning
9. Ethical Reasoning
10. Fallacies: The Art of Mental Trickery
11. How to Detect Media Bias & Propaganda
12. How to Improve Student Learning
13. How to Read a Paragraph
14. How to Study & Learn
15. How to Write a Paragraph
16. Intellectual Standards
17. Scientific Thinking
18. Taking Charge of the Human Mind
19. The Art of Asking Essential Questions
20. A Critical Thinker's Guide to Educational Fads

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Media

Communicating with Clients and Colleagues from Different Dultures [videorecording]
Mosby; Samuel Merritt College, Studio Three Productions. [St. Louis, Mo.]: Mosby-Year Book, c1995. Audio/Visual Mat Videorecording VHS 1 videocassette (26 min., 7 sec.): sd., color ; 1/2 in. + 1 guide (7 pages).

Critical Thinking: How to Evaluate Information and Draw Conclusions [videorecording]
Written, produced, and directed by John Hopkins. Mount Kisco, N.Y.: Center for Humanities, 1987. Audio/Visual Material Videorecording VHS 1 videocassette: sd., color ; 1/2 in. + 1 program guide.

Media Truth or Fiction: What Can You Believe? [videorecording]
Written and narrated by Jeffrey Schrank. Lake Zurich, Ill.: Learning Seed, c1997. Audio/Visual Material Videorecording VHS 1 videocassette (23 min.): sd., color ; 1/2 in. + 1 study guide (12 pages ; 22 centimeters)

Why Ads Work: The Power of Self-Deception [videorecording]
Lake Zurich, IL: The Learning Seed, c1996. Audio/Visual Material Videorecording VHS 1 videocassette (23 min.): sd., color; 1/2 in. + 1 study guide.

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