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Teaching Critical Thinking in Psychology features currentscholarship on effectively teaching critical thinking skills at alllevels of psychology. Offers novel, nontraditional approaches to teaching criticalthinking, including strategies, tactics, diversity issues, servicelearning, and the use of case studies Provides new course delivery formats by which faculty cancreate online course materials to foster critical thinking within adiverse student audience Places specific emphasis on how to both teach and assesscritical thinking in the classroom, as well as issues of widerprogram assessment Discusses ways to use critical thinking in courses ranging fromintroductory level to upper-level, including statistics andresearch methods courses, cognitive psychology, and capstoneofferings
Featuring an informal writing style throughout, this text uses a question-and-answer format to explore some of the most common questions students ask about psychology - which are often stumbling blocks in their introduction to the discipline. Topics are keyed to chapters of typical introductory psychology texts, focus on issues that are personally relevant to students, feature many everyday examples, and include exercises that encourage students to think critically and to relate the material to their own lives.
Are people basically selfish? Can psychotherapists help people recover memories of sexual abuse that they have not recalled for decades? Can the moon cause people to go crazy or commit crimes? What do we actually "know" about the world through our senses? These are but a few of the fascinating questions that are addressed in D. Alan Bensley's engaging new book, Critical Thinking in Psychology: A Unified Schools Approach. With each question illustrating the need for critical thinking, Bensley piques student interest and inspires them to think more effectively and critically about both the common and uncommon. Without telling readers what to think, Bensley helps them learn how to think critically about the issues often raised in psychology. And while obtaining answers to the above questions is important, Bensley shows readers how the process of drawing sound conclusions to these queries is even more important.
I have found that the greatest obstacle to learning critical thinking skills in psychology is the illusion of knowledge. Learners come with life experience, pop beliefs, and smatterings of pseudoscientific information including many myths and misconceptions. For development in thinking to occur, questioning about preexisting knowledge must take place. It is the illusion of certain knowledge that may impede learning. How to gently create doubt about misinformation and open up learners or seekers to empirically based information? A frontal assaut on learners' current beliefs may not be the best approach. It may only further convince the believers in psychics, horoscope, alternate healers, and unbounded self improvement that empirical psychology holds nothing for them. It may have the same discouraging effect on those who are struggling in other ways with the inevitable problems that human beings have. In the war between the forces of organized irrationality and the methods of science, this book holds a unique place. Through a series of ten interconnected narratives or 'fables', it explores the cognitive processes that make us vulnerable to irrationality and provides a world view based on psychological science. The topics of the fables parallel the organization of standard introductory psychology texts. For example, the first five fables deal with critical thinking, sensation and perception, consciousness, learning, and memory. The fables illustrate how illusory correlation, confirmation bias, hindsight bias, mental sets, selective attention and memory as well as other social cognitive processes lead to the adoption and maintenance of common misconceptions. The fables promote comprehension and application of basic psychological principles. Use of these particular fables in learning and teaching has been shown to reduce beliefs in the paranormal. The fables and accompanying discussion and assignment guides provide an actice, engaging, and memorable way to learn.
THE CHAPTERS and discussions in the volume integrate the various perspectives on critical thinking and stimulate new thinking about thinking. Chapters in the first section present several issues that concern critical thinking, and discuss the lack of core concepts and structures in the field of teaching and critical thinking. Chapter 4 describes Sternberg's theory on how people think. The next three chapters focus on the learning and development of critical thinking and reasoning. Chapters 10 to 12 focus on the teaching of critical thinking, and Chapters 14 though 16 focus on the assessment of critical thinking. The epilogue discusses neglected issues in critical thinking.
This book consists of two titles, which are the following: Book 1: Many people don’t understand what critical thinking is. Moreover, not all the ones that do, apply it in their daily lives. Politics, the media, and so many other aspects of society show how small the number is of people who use their brains. Critical thinking means, among others, that you look at multiple sides of a controversial topic, that you can stay objective and put away your biases until you have reached a firm conclusion based on verifiable facts. This skill is highly valuable in job interviews, relationships, and everyday life. In order to improve your critical thinking skills, it would be best to adopt the best practices that help you accomplish this task. In other words, some things help you develop this skill, others are a waste of time and effort, or even worse, go against it and cause a degeneration of your intellect and open-minded attitude. Book 2: What makes someone a critical thinker? The attributes of such a person are elaborately described in this book. Alongside with that, the book highlights the many benefits of critical thinking, an often-neglected brain skills society needs to improve on. However, most of the book is focused on relevant and irrelevant reasoning. So often, we attribute certain consequences to the wrong causes. We jump to conclusions based on limited information, emotions, or generalizations. This book will clear all that up by giving you new insights to determine what is relevant and what is not.
This best-selling textbook, written by award-winning educator and past president of the American Psychological Association, Diane F. Halpern, applies theory and research from the learning sciences to teach students the thinking skills they need to succeed in today's world. This new edition retains features from earlier editions that have helped its readers become better thinkers. A rigorous academic grounding based in cognitive psychology is presented in a clear writing style with a humorous tone and supported by numerous practical examples and anecdotes. Thought and Knowledge, Fifth Edition has been revised to help students meet the challenges of a global neighborhood and make meaningful conclusions from the overwhelming quantity of information now available at the click of a mouse. The skills learned with this text will help students learn more efficiently, research more productively, and present logical, informed arguments. Thought and Knowledge, Fifth Edition is appropriate for use as a textbook in critical thinking courses offered in departments of psychology, philosophy, English, humanities, or as a supplement in any course where critical thinking is emphasized.
Critical Thinking in Psychology and Everyday Life shows how a scientific, critical thinking approach can be effective in addressing psychological questions, and discusses other questions that straddle the boundary between science and non-science. While scientific, critical thinking can be effective in addressing psychological questions, this textbook is a guide for how to separate fact from speculation and true claims from misconceptions and misinformation. Covering a wide range of topics, this book seeks to engage students in a serious search for answers, using what psychologists and other scientists know about how to think effectively. What does science have to say about whether some people have special psychic abilities, such as being able to "see" the future? Can people use their minds to move objects without any physical aid? Does the mind actually leave the body during an out-of-body experience? You may be surprised to learn that we are tantalizingly close to a scientific answer to this last question (see Chapter 7).
