Teaching and Learning Resources

In Teaching Critical Thinking, renowned cultural critic and progressive educator bell hooks addresses some of the most compelling issues facing teachers in and out of the classroom today. Addressing questions of race, gender, and class in this work, hooks discusses the complex balance that allows us to teach, value, and learn from works written by racist and sexist authors. Highlighting the importance of reading, she insists on the primacy of free speech, a democratic education of literacy. Throughout these essays, she celebrates the transformative power of critical thinking. This is a provocative, powerful, and joyful intellectual work. It is a must read for anyone who is at all interested in education today.

The Thinker's Guide to Fallacies introduces the concept of mental trickery and shows readers how to discern and see through forty-four different types of fallacies. Focusing on how human self-deception and manipulation lie behind fallacies, this guide builds reasoning skills and promotes fair-minded, logical thought, discussions, and debate.

In business, sports, laboratories, and at home, our learning is hobbled according to Dr. Langer, by seven pernicious myths, such as the necessity of delaying gratification or of "getting the basics down pat". Replacing these with her concept of mindful or conditional learning, she shows more effective approaches to such skills as CPR, investment analysis, or playing the piano.

The Critical Thinking Toolkit gets employees thinking better and faster with training exercises that offer an invigorating departure from the everyday and the potential for big payoffs in the form of enhanced “on-your-feet” thinking, innovative problem-solving, and profitable idea generation from everyone on the team. Using hands-on activities and ready-to-use assessments, team members will learn how to challenge assumptions, brainstorm divergent ideas, and then pinpoint the ones that best benefit your organization.

Starting with the building blocks of a good argument rather than with the pitfalls to avoid, this comprehensive new textbook offers a full course in critical thinking It includes chapters on the nature and structure of argument, the role of relevance, truth and generalizations, and the subtleties of verbal and visual language.