Critical Thinking
www.criticalthinking.org This is a must visit site for teachers and students on critical thinking.
Sumner's Definition of Critical Thinking
What is Critical Thinking?
William Graham Sumner (1906)
[Critical thinking is]...the examination and test of propositions of any kind which are offered for acceptance, in order to find out whether they correspond to reality or not. The critical faculty is a product of education and training. It is a mental habit and power. It is a prime condition of human welfare that men and women should be trained in it. It is our only guarantee against delusion, deception, superstition, and misapprehension of ourselves and our earthly circumstances.
Education is good just so far as it produces well-developed critical faculty....A teacher of any subject who insists on accuracy and a rational control of all processes and methods, and who holds everything open to unlimited verification and revision is cultivating that method as a habit in the pupils. Men educated in it cannot be stampeded...They are slow to believe. They can hold things as possible or probable in all degrees, without certainty and without pain. They can wait for evidence and weigh evidence...They can resist appeals to their dearest prejudices. Education in the critical faculty is the only education of which it can be truly said that it makes good citizens.
{Sumner, W. G. (1940). Folkways: A Study of the Sociological Importance of Usages, Manners, Customs, Mores, and Morals, New York: Ginn and Co., pp. 632, 633.}
Dartmouth College - www.dartmouth.edu/~writing/index.shtmlAn Excellent site for teachers and students in developing critical thinking skills and writing skills
Writing: Considering Structure & Organization
Writing: Considering Structure & Organization
Outlining Your Argument
Constructing Paragraphs
Writing the Topic Sentence
Developing Your Argument: EvidenceConclusions
Developing Your Thesis
Critical Thinking - Some comments
Critical thinking is essential if we are to get to the root of our problems and develop reasonable solutions. After all, the quality of everything we do is determined by the quality of our thinking.
Instructional guides and lesson plans to help educators implement Critical Thinking in every aspect of their teaching. Created by The Centre for Critical Thinking
Resources
An Overview of How to Design Instruction
Current Educational Issues Video Series
