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1. Inquiry: Critical Thinking Across the Disciplines: Volume > 33 > Issue: 1
Jaime Grinberg

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2. Inquiry: Critical Thinking Across the Disciplines: Volume > 33 > Issue: 1
Desirae Embree, Claire Katz

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In June 2016, Texas A&M University hosted its inaugural philosophy camp for teens. In this article, we address how running a philosophy camp for pre-college students can have a positive impact on both the campers and the staff, which included philosophy faculty, graduate students (Philosophy and English), and undergraduates. We designed the week-long (Monday through Friday, 9 a.m.–4 p.m.) philosophy camp with three aims: to introduce pre-college students to philosophical thinking and dialogue; to develop an intellectual community among the campers; and to provide a space in which young people could engage as equal partners in a series of spirited philosophical discussions. Drawing chiefly from our local community, we enrolled a diverse group of campers. We organized the week around themes that we thought would be of particular interest to pre-college students while also providing a broad view of the discipline. What we did not anticipate was the intense friendships that were formed, based on a shared love of philosophical ideas.

3. Inquiry: Critical Thinking Across the Disciplines: Volume > 33 > Issue: 1
Jeff Buechner

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This paper examines relationships between teaching critical thinking and teaching philosophy to adolescents (ages 12–17). The focus is on argumentation, especially on the method used to determine how well the premises of an argument support its conclusion. The method is the method of counterexamples. This article describes the results of teaching this method to adolescents (ages 12–17) who were participants in a summer enrichment program at Rutgers University-Newark, the Rutgers-Merck Summer Bioethics Institute. The participants were to learn about the philosophical ideas underlying current biomedical technologies. The article discusses the basic ideas of argumentation and the method of counterexamples for determining the support that premises give to conclusion for a given argument, and it discusses teaching this method to adolescents. The article describes how to assess that they have properly learned it, and, finally, it closes with a discussion of the cognitive skills adolescents acquire in learning philosophy. Teaching a reliable method of determining argument support for a conclusion prior to teaching philosophy to adolescents results in their achieving a deeper understanding of philosophy.

4. Inquiry: Critical Thinking Across the Disciplines: Volume > 33 > Issue: 1
Johanna Hawken

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When critical thinking occurs in a collective context such as a Philosophy for Children workshop, it cannot be considered simply as an intellectual exercise, insofar as it depends on social interactions in the philosophical dialogue. This is why, in line with the works of Matthew Lipman, critical thinking should be taught and practiced as an exercise based on the development of caring thinking among children. Furthermore, open-mindedness, defined as the ability of the child to welcome intellectually and ethically divergent ideas, may constitute the very fundamental precondition for critical thinking as it permits the meticulous, analytic and authentic discovery of the idea.

5. Inquiry: Critical Thinking Across the Disciplines: Volume > 33 > Issue: 1
Paul A. Wagner

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Matthew Lipman befriended me at an APA meeting in 1974. Through more than twenty years of phone calls, I got to chat with, consult with, and learn from Matt the details and challenges of developing philosophy for children. He acknowledged that I convinced him that the program needed “branding,” lest anyone present similar-sounding programs—some of which might be good and others not. He got a snippet of a video of my teaching troubled sixth-graders with his book Harry Stottlemeier’s Discovery on the Today Show with Bryant Gumbel. That did much to shape my future, as did branding for sustaining Matt’s program. Lipman and I spoke by phone several times every year from 1976 until the mid-1990s.

6. Inquiry: Critical Thinking Across the Disciplines: Volume > 33 > Issue: 1
Donald Hatcher, Orcid-ID Molly Ireland Orcid-ID

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Some researchers have claimed that there is no significant correlation between students’ majors and their performance on standardized critical thinking tests. This paper provides both evidence and arguments that that claim may well be false. Besides arguments based on the correlation between students’ majors and other standardized tests, data from Baker University’s Critical Thinking and Writing Program show large differences in effect size gains relative to students’ majors.

7. Inquiry: Critical Thinking Across the Disciplines: Volume > 33 > Issue: 1
Helena Hollis, Orcid-ID Marina Rachitskiy, Orcid-ID Leslie van der Leer, Orcid-ID Linda Elder

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This study assessed the International Critical Thinking Essay Test (ICTET-A) for inter-rater reliability, internal reliability, and criterion validity. A self-selecting sample of participants (N = 100) completed the ICTET-A and a comparison test online. We found the ICTET-A items to have moderate to good levels of inter-rater reliability, and overall excellent inter-rater consistency for total test scores. The test had good internal reliability. There was a strong correlation between scores on the ICTET-A and the comparison test. Factor analysis showed that scores were best explained with one factor, suggesting the test measures a single construct. The ICTET-A can therefore be considered a valid measure of critical thinking. Additionally, we propose a short form of the test.

introduction

8. Inquiry: Critical Thinking Across the Disciplines: Volume > 32 > Issue: 1
Thomas J. Brommage

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articles

9. Inquiry: Critical Thinking Across the Disciplines: Volume > 32 > Issue: 1
John D. Eigenauer

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book review

10. Inquiry: Critical Thinking Across the Disciplines: Volume > 32 > Issue: 1
John D. Eigenauer

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articles

11. Inquiry: Critical Thinking Across the Disciplines: Volume > 32 > Issue: 1
Erik Goldner

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This article presents both practical tips for, and explores theoretical considerations related to, teaching the Enlightenment in the twenty-first century college classroom. It begins by reviewing some of the many resources instructors today can use as they guide their students through the Enlightenment. It then explores how scholars’ understanding of the period has changed over time, before examining what students learn about the Enlightenment before they come to college, and then considers the politics of teaching the Enlightenment today. The article then pivots back to the practical and explores the many things we can do with our students as we engage with the Enlightenment. However the Enlightenment may be conceived—whether as one or many, reformist or revolutionary, a movement or a series of debates—this article argues it is vital we keep teaching it in these times.
12. Inquiry: Critical Thinking Across the Disciplines: Volume > 32 > Issue: 1
Laura Talamante, Jasmine Abang

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Until the late seventeenth-century, French women had limited access to education. This article explores the openings that the Enlightenment provided for reconceptualizing women’s education, and how women used their roles as salonnières and novelists to challenge gendered educational limits. Using the lenses of education and gender norms, we highlight women’s intellectual contributions to the French Enlightenment and the history of ideas and emphasize the role of critical thinking in creating gender equality. With this scholarship, we encourage students to reflect on the history of the Enlightenment and the importance of reading, writing, and critical thinking for tackling present issues of discrimination. Furthermore, for educators, we challenge them to see the benefits of centering marginalized voices in the history of the Enlightenment for what those voices offer, engaging students in critical thinking and education and addressing equity and social justice for both individuals and society at large.
13. Inquiry: Critical Thinking Across the Disciplines: Volume > 32 > Issue: 1
Adrian O'Connor

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Ideas about education and its power to transform people’s intellectual, social, political, and personal lives were central to Enlightenment thought. They were also central to the Enlightenment belief that new ways of thinking engendered new ways of living (and vice versa). Taken together, these points placed education at the heart of early modern debates over the constitution of society, the organization and administration of the polity, the nature and purpose of civil society, and the relations that govern everyday life. To understand this view of education and the Enlightenment debates to which it gave rise, this essay highlights the role of skepticism and uncertainty in Enlightenment thought, the philosophes’ interest in education as an instrument of moral and social improvement, and their commitment to the idea that both individual and collective progress stemmed from critical forms of social intercourse. As a result, we see that the Enlightenment’s educational legacy is not a particular platform or pedagogy, but an ongoing experiment in how the critical and collective pursuit of useful knowledge might reform or remake human society.
14. Inquiry: Critical Thinking Across the Disciplines: Volume > 32 > Issue: 1
G. K. Noyer

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The eighteenth century French Enlightenment writers—Voltaire and Montesquieu especially—were cited in American textbooks as the thinkers who most influenced the founding generation of America until at least the 1970s. They still are, throughout much of the world. And rightly so, as studies of colonial periodicals and pamphlets have largely shown. When and why did they disappear from our high school textbooks? When Voltaire is mentioned at all, it is only as the author of Candide. This essay focuses on Voltaire as a sort of “missing link” in our understanding of American history and government. It includes discussions of his other works, considered far more consequential in his own day, and of his ubiquitous use of critical thinking. The case of Voltaire closely parallels the more recent efforts to erase Thomas Jefferson from U.S. schoolbooks: the author of the first bill for religious freedom and its leading champion in America.

15. Inquiry: Critical Thinking Across the Disciplines: Volume > 31 > Issue: 3
David Wright

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16. Inquiry: Critical Thinking Across the Disciplines: Volume > 31 > Issue: 3
David Botting

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In this paper I will defend a logical conception of refutations and fallacies against objections that are meant to show that a dialectical conception of refutations or fallacies is necessary. I will show that there is only one dialectical concept—not that of a thesis, as those favouring a dialectical analysis argue, but that of a concession—that may need to be added to a logical conception for such a conception to be adequate.

17. Inquiry: Critical Thinking Across the Disciplines: Volume > 31 > Issue: 3
Stefan Sellbjer

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Using the perspective of those who have already successfully developed such skills, the aim of this article is to examine the types of seminars that may foster critical thinking. Professors and associate professors could be said to be among this group as they have progressed through the academic system to attain a certain level of achievement. Also under investigation is the extent to which such competencies lead to generic skills. In order to understand the context of this empirical study, a short account of a master’s program in pedagogy at the University of Southern Sweden will be outlined. The empirical investigation consists of open-ended informal and conversational interviews carried through as a dialogue. The result is analyzed by three different methods, with focus on two theoretical approaches, i.e. the development of logical traits and the encouragement of transformations. Fifteen of a total of twenty-two exercises are characterized as more suitable for developing logical traits, and nine are categorized as transformative. Perhaps a mix of these two types of seminars would be most effective in promoting generic skills. The results suggest that attitudes play an important role. Two of the keys to promoting generic skills are for lecturers, associate professors and professors to believe in the generic qualities of the exercises and to utilize them themselves.

18. Inquiry: Critical Thinking Across the Disciplines: Volume > 31 > Issue: 3
Jeffrey Maynes

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In The Enigma of Reason, Hugo Mercier and Dan Sperber (2017) defend the proposal that reason is a specialized module which produces intuitions about reasons. Reason serves two functions: for individuals to justify their own judgments and actions to themselves and others, and to persuade others. In this review, I briefly summarize the central claims of the book, critically examine Mercier and Sperber’s arguments that reason is not a general faculty underlying our inferential abilities, and explore the pedagogical implications of their work.

19. Inquiry: Critical Thinking Across the Disciplines: Volume > 31 > Issue: 2
David Wright

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20. Inquiry: Critical Thinking Across the Disciplines: Volume > 31 > Issue: 2
Marcus Gillespie, Steven D. Koether, Michelle L. Lewis

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Virtually all faculty members agree that teaching their students the ability and disposition to think critically is fundamentally important, and most believe that their pedagogical approaches enhance both. Unfortunately, recent research has shown that college students often fail to substantively improve their critical thinking skills. Other research regarding the public’s perception of certain science topics reveals that a significant proportion of the American public rejects scientific information, i.e., information that is based on both critical thinking and empiricism. This state of affairs limits the ability of individuals and society to make rational decisions. This article describes the results of a novel general education science course designed specifically to address these issues. The six-year study, involving more than 1,400 students, showed that the pedagogical approaches used in the course were successful in enhancing students’ critical thinking, their disposition to think critically, and their willingness to use scientific information when making decisions