B.3 To Enhance Critical Thinking Skills

A third goal is to enhance critical thinking skills. A number of home problems have been included that are designed for this purpose. Socratic questioning is at the heart of critical thinking, and a number of homework problems draw from R. W. Paul’s six types of Socratic questions,2 shown in Table P-1.

Table P-1. Six Types of Socratic Questions Used in Critical Thinking

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Scheffer and Rubenfeld3,4 expand on the practice of critical thinking skills discussed by R. W. Paul by using the activities, statements, and questions shown in Table P-2. The reader should try to practice using some or all of these actions every day, as well as asking the critical thinking questions in Table P-1.

Table P-2. Critical Thinking Actions5

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I have found that the best way to develop and practice critical thinking skills is to use Tables P-1 and P-2 to help students write a question on any assigned homework problem and then to explain why the question involves critical thinking.

More information on critical thinking can be found on the DVD-ROM in the section on Problem Solving.

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