Can Higher Order Thinking Be Tested?

Short Description:
This second edition of CRITICAL THINKING EDUCATION AND ASSESSMENT: Can Higher Order Thinking be Tested? contains a series of important papers from the first edition and a new Introduction by Jan Sobocan. The essays are an important read for anyone interested in the issues raised by the teaching of critical thinking and consequent attempts to test its success.

Long Description:
This second edition of CRITICAL THINKING EDUCATION AND ASSESSMENT: Can Higher Order Thinking be Tested? contains a series of important papers from the first edition and a new Introduction by Jan Sobocan. The essays are an important read for anyone interested in the issues raised by the teaching of critical thinking and consequent attempts to test its success. They discuss attempts to use testing to ensure educational accountability, the politics of testing regimes, and the shortcomings and the strengths of standard tests used to teach and assess students, courses, programs, and the tests themselves. The ebook can serve as a useful introduction to the questions that this raises, at the same time that it provides answers to these questions from the perspective of many different trends within contemporary argumentation theory.

This anthology’s contributors include many leading figures in the fields of informal logic, critical thinking, testing, argumentation theory, and educational theory: Carol Ann Giancarlo, Leo Groarke, Ralph H. Johnson, Robert H. Ennis, William Hare, Jan Sobocan, Roland Case, Gerald Nosich, Donald L. Hatcher, Frans H. van Eemeren, Bart Garssen, J. Anthony Blair, Linda Kaser, and Sharon Murphy.

Word Count: 90589

ISBN: 978-0-920233-97-9

(Note: This resource's metadata has been created automatically by reformatting and/or combining the information that the author initially provided as part of a bulk import process.)

Long Description:
This volume reflects the development and theoretical foundation of a new paradigm for critical thinking based on inquiry. The field of critical thinking, as manifested in the Informal Logic movement, developed primarily as a response to the inadequacies of formalism to represent actual argumentative practice and to provide useful argumentative skills to students. Because of this, the primary focus of the field has been on informal arguments rather than formal reasoning. Yet the formalist history of the field is still evident in its emphasis, with respect to both theory and pedagogy, on the structure and evaluation of individual, de-contextualized arguments. It is our view that such a view of critical thinking is excessively narrow and limited, failing to provide an understanding of argumentation as largely a matter of comparative evaluation of a variety of contending positions and arguments with the goal of reaching a reasoned judgment on an issue. As a consequence, traditional critical thinking instruction is problematic in failing to provide the reasoning skills that students need in order to accomplish this goal. Instead, the goal of critical thinking instruction has been seen largely as a defensive one: of learning to not fall prey to invalid, inadequate, or fallacious arguments.

Word Count: 116090

ISBN: 978-0-920233-85-6

(Note: This resource's metadata has been created automatically by reformatting and/or combining the information that the author initially provided as part of a bulk import process.)

Windsor Studies in Argumentation Volume 6

Short Description:
We are pleased to publish this WSIA edition of Trudy’s Govier’s seminal volume, Problems in Argument Analysis and Evaluation. Originally published in 1987 by Foris Publications, this was a pioneering work that played a major role in establishing argumentation theory as a discipline. Today, it is as relevant to the field as when it first appeared, with discussions of questions and issues that remain central to the study of argument. It has defined the main approaches to many of those issues and guided the ways in which we might respond to them. From this foundation, it sets the stage for further investigations and emerging research.

Long Description:
We are pleased to publish this WSIA edition of Trudy’s Govier’s seminal volume, Problems in Argument Analysis and Evaluation. Originally published in 1987 by Foris Publications, this was a pioneering work that played a major role in establishing argumentation theory as a discipline. Today, it is as relevant to the field as when it first appeared, with discussions of questions and issues that remain central to the study of argument. It has defined the main approaches to many of those issues and guided the ways in which we might respond to them. From this foundation, it sets the stage for further investigations and emerging research.

This is a second edition of the book that is corrected and updated by the author, with new prefaces to each chapter.

Word Count: 140275

(Note: This resource's metadata has been created automatically by reformatting and/or combining the information that the author initially provided as part of a bulk import process.)