Asking the Right Questions: A Guide to Critical Thinking - Neil Browne

"I have assigned ASKING THE RIGHT QUESTIONS to a wide range of students in a wide range of courses over my fourteen years as a college professor. First-year college students have used the book to analyze and evaluate arguments about contemporary business issues. College juniors and seniors have used the book to analyze and evaluate legal arguments, and issues related to race and gender. ... Many of my students tell me the book has changed the way they read, write, and argue." - Andrea Giampetro-Meyer, J.D., Loyola College in Maryland "I think ASKING THE RIGHT QUESTIONS is one of the most valuable resources currently available for higher education courses as well as for other contexts... Virtually any course could benefit from the addition of this book and the integration of the authors' approach to critical thinking. I myself have used the book for several years in a variety of courses and know that it has truly enhanced my students' rational thinking processes." - Norrine L. Ostrowski, Ph.D., University of Minnesota-Morris "As an instructor I like the approach ASKING THE RIGHT QUESTIONS takes. It is practical and uses a cross-disciplinary approach. Asking the "right" questions is a technique that can be used in any discipline at any level."- Valeri Farmer-Dougan, Illinois State University

The habits and attitudes associated with critical thinking are transferable to consumer, medical, legal, and general ethical choices. When our surgeon says surgery is needed, it can be life sustaining to seek answers to the critical questions encouraged in Asking the Right Questions This popular book helps bridge the gap between simply memorizing or blindly accepting information, and the greater challenge of critical analysing the things we are told and read. It gives strategies for responding to alternative points of view and will help readers develop a solid foundation for making personal choices about what to accept and what to reject.

http://www.amazon.com/Asking-Right-Questions-Critical-Thinking/dp/0132203049/ref=pd_sim_b_2

Critical Thinking - Alec Fisher

In this book, Alec Fisher aims to teach directly an important range of thinking skills. The skills are fundamental critical (and creative) thinking skills, and they are taught in a way which expressly aims to facilitate their transfer to other subjects and other contexts. The method is to use 'thinking maps' which help improve thinking by asking key questions of students when they are faced with different types of problems. Alec Fisher explains the language of reasoning, how to understand different kinds of arguments and how to ask the right question. Other topics include: different patterns of reasoning and standards which apply in different contexts, how to clarify and interpret ideas, how to judge the credibility of claims, and how to decide whether a person really justifies their conclusions, given their audience. Particular attention is given to understanding casual explanations and evaluating decisions. THe book includes many examples and exercises which give extensive practice in developing critico-creative thinking skills.

http://www.amazon.com/Critical-Thinking-Alec-Fisher/dp/0521009847/ref=pd_sim_b_1

Critical thinking

Critical thinking is the careful, deliberate determination of whether we should accept, reject, or suspend judgment about a claim and the degree of confidence with which we accept or reject it.[1] It is a purposeful and reflective judgment about what to believe or what to do in response to observations, experience, verbal or written expressions, or arguments. Critical thinking might involve determining the meaning and significance of what is observed or expressed, or, concerning a given inference or argument, determining whether there is adequate justification to accept the conclusion as true. Hence, Fisher & Scriven define critical thinking as "Skilled, active, interpretation and evaluation of observations, communications, information, and argumentation."[2]

Critical thinking gives due consideration to the evidence, the context of judgment, the relevant criteria for making the judgment well, the applicable methods or techniques for forming the judgment, and the applicable theoretical constructs for understanding the nature of the problem and the question at hand. Critical thinking employs not only logic but broad intellectual criteria such as clarity, credibility, accuracy, precision, relevance, depth, breadth, significance and fairness.

In contemporary usage "critical" has the connotation of expressing disapproval,[3] which is not always true of critical thinking. A critical evaluation of an argument, for example, might conclude that it is good.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Critical_thinking