Critical Thinking: Tools for Taking Charge of Your Learning and Your Life

by Richard Paul and Linda Elder

Book Overview

This title is about becoming a better thinker in every aspect of your life: in your career, and as a consumer, citizen, friend, parent, and lover. Discover the core skills of effective thinking; then... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0131149628
• ISBN13: 9780131149625
• Release Date: July 2005
• Publisher: Prentice Hall
• Length: 514 Pages
• Weight: 1.85 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.1" x 7.5" x 9.1"

Customer Reviews

Should be required reading - Very good information

I love this book, great insights and full of practical, useful tools to help anyone improve the thinking process. Perfect introduction to Critical Thinking and how it can improve not only your academic career but your life in general.

Quick Delivery

The book I ordered was perfect and was received within a couple of days. No need to go to the book store when the online service is so quick and easy.

Very good book.

This book makes clear that there are no shortcuts to critical thinking. It gives many thoughtful and insightful suggestions that will help the student reach his/her goals.

Critical Thinking: Tools for Taking Charge of Your Learning

Critical Thinking: Tools for Taking Charge of Your Learning and Your Life is a real eye opener.This is where integrity begins. I consider Tools to be one of the most significant exposes on the human condition ever written.Whether you are a teacher, a student, a parent, a professional developer, a curriculum designer, a lawyer, a scientist, a politician, a reporter, a business person, or a citizen at large, understanding the intellectual standards and best practices by which quality integration of ideas, concepts, and principles come together -- in teaching, in learning, in life -- is the fundamental prerequisite for all other information processing, understanding, problem solving and decision making. This foundation for learning is also pivotal to understanding, updating, reconciling, and validating individual belief system. Our intellectual integrity defines not only our beliefs but also our character as learners, integrators, visionaries, leaders, followers and doers throughout life. Tools is the best place I've found to start this journey of discovering and validating what I think as I think.Dr Elder and Dr Paul have provided us with a masterful anthology of thought. Tools dissects, defines and lays out the fundamentals for self-examination as a basis for overcoming our irrational tendencies. It explains the stages of development, elements of thinking, universal intellectual standards that govern quality constructs for critical thought within which all ideas, concepts, beliefs, positions, and decisions are examined, understood, and validated and reconciled. It emphasizes the inherent humility, openness and independence of the critical thinking process as it leads readers through a matrix of self examination, demonstrating techniques for self-evaluation, for asking essential questions, for assessing their learning, and for ultimately taking charge of their irrational tendencies. This is also a book of discovering - clearly - the components of thought and for examining everything one thinks they think and believe. As ambiguity and self-deception clouds what we believe, critical thought clarifies, elevates, and leverages our ability to learn better, deeper, and faster. Personal integrity demands critical examination of clear, accurate, diverse, ideas and dialectic constructs. Left to the consequences of our natural, human, non-critical tendencies, we all have a lot to learn. In my opinion, there is really no better place to start than here. I recommend Tools to anyone and everyone with a conscience. I will tell you, this is the one book that everybody -- no matter who they may be -- needs to read next.

Take charge of your life.

Caught in the maelstrom of life? Looking for a way to make sense of the chaos enmeshing you? Critical Thinking: Tools for Taking Charge of Your Professional and Personal Life provides a method for unraveling the complexities of life and reweaving them into an integrated tapestry which gives meaning and purpose to the life of the individual and his/her relation to others.This book is a natural correlative of a previous book by Paul: Critical Thinking: What Every Person Needs to Survive in a Rapidly Changing World. However, the current book is not about 'survival' but about 'taking charge'. It deals with the fundamentals of critical thinking and their necessity and applicability in making the decisions which give direction to one's life. It's a book of questions, not answers,-- questions about one's thinking which as Paul and Elder state in a graphic, pg. 45, "your thinking controls your emmotions and your decisions". This book not only presents a mirror in which to see oneself through questions, but also presents the challenge to look honestly into the mirror with a view to improving the image.Critical Thinking: Tools for Taking Charge of Your Professional and Personal Life is written in a readily understandable and easily readable style. This a book for Everyman. It is a book to be not only read, but lived.