David Morrow and Anthony Weston build on Weston's acclaimed A Rulebook for Arguments to offer a complete textbook for a course in critical thinking or informal logic. Features of the book include: Homework exercises adapted from a wide range of actual arguments from newspapers, philosophical texts, literature, movies, YouTube videos, and other sources. Practical advice to help students succeed when applying the Rulebook 's rules. Suggestions for further practice that outline activities students can do by themselves or with classmates to improve their critical thinking skills. Detailed instructions for in-class activities and take-home assignments designed to engage students in critical thinking. An appendix on mapping arguments, a topic not included in the Rulebook , that introduces students to this vital skill in evaluating or constructing complex and multi-step arguments. Model responses to odd-numbered exercises, including commentaries on the strengths and weaknesses of selected model responses as well as further discussion of some of the substantive intellectual, philosophical, and ethical issues raised by the exercises. The third edition of Workbook contains the entire text of the recent fifth edition of the Rulebook , supplementing this core text with extensive further explanations and exercises. Updated and improved homework exercises ensure that the examples continue to resonate with today's students. Roughly one-third of the exercises have been replaced with updated or improved examples. A new chapter on engaging constructively in public debates -including five new sets of exercises-trains students to engage respectfully and constructively on controversial topics, an increasingly important skill in our hyper-partisan age. Three new critical thinking activities offer further opportunities to practice constructive dialogue.

From academic writing to personal and public discourse, the need for good arguments and better ways of arguing is greater than ever before. This timely fifth edition of A Rulebook for Arguments sharpens an already-classic text, adding updated examples and a new chapter on public debates that provides rules for the etiquette and ethics of sound public dialogue as well as clear and sound thinking in general.

College teachers all too often still play Sage on the Stage lecturing to rooms full of passive and supposedly absorbed students. The cutting-edge opposite is still supposed to be the Guide on the Side facilitating wherever students themselves are already going, mentoring and coaching them along the way. But who says that these are the only or the best alternatives? This book advances another and sharply different model: the Impresario with a Scenario, a teacher who serves as class mobilizer, improviser, and energizer, staging dramatic, often unexpected and self-unfolding learning challenges and adventures with students. In this book, the author argues that to pose a single alternative to lecturing is profoundly limiting. In fact, he says there is no reason to have to choose between ""student-centered"" and ""teacher-centered"" pedagogies. The best ways to teach and learn are both. The same applies to the false choice between ""active"" students and ""active"" teachers there can be more than enough activity for everyone. In particular, the author argues that we need a model in which the teacher is notably pro-active a kind of activity for which certain theatrical metaphors seem especially appropriate. Picture a college teacher who regularly sets up classroom scenarios challenging problems, unscripted dramas, role-plays, simulations, and the like such that the scenario itself frames and drives most of the action and learning that follows. For teaching as staging, the primary work of the teacher is staging such scenarios. The basic goal is to put students into an urgently engaging and self-unfolding scenario, trusting them to carry it forward, while being prepared to join in as needed. This book offers a conceptual and practical framework for Teaching as Staging, grounding the approach with illustrative and sometimes provocative narrative from the literature as well as the author's own practice. Teaching as the Art of Staging offers a visionary challenge to the prevailing models of pedagogy. The book presents a thoroughly practical model that opens up new possibilities for anyone interested in dramatic new directions in teaching and learning.

From academic writing to personal and public discourse, the need for good arguments and better ways of arguing is greater than ever before. This timely fifth edition of A Rulebook for Arguments sharpens an already-classic text, adding updated examples and a new chapter on public debates that provides rules for the etiquette and ethics of sound public dialogue as well as clear and sound thinking in general.

College teachers all too often still play Sage on the Stage lecturing to rooms full of passive and supposedly absorbed students. The cutting-edge opposite is still supposed to be the Guide on the Side facilitating wherever students themselves are already going, mentoring and coaching them along the way. But who says that these are the only or the best alternatives? This book advances another and sharply different model: the Impresario with a Scenario, a teacher who serves as class mobilizer, improviser, and energizer, staging dramatic, often unexpected and self-unfolding learning challenges and adventures with students. In this book, the author argues that to pose a single alternative to lecturing is profoundly limiting. In fact, he says there is no reason to have to choose between ""student-centered"" and ""teacher-centered"" pedagogies. The best ways to teach and learn are both. The same applies to the false choice between ""active"" students and ""active"" teachers there can be more than enough activity for everyone. In particular, the author argues that we need a model in which the teacher is notably pro-active a kind of activity for which certain theatrical metaphors seem especially appropriate. Picture a college teacher who regularly sets up classroom scenarios challenging problems, unscripted dramas, role-plays, simulations, and the like such that the scenario itself frames and drives most of the action and learning that follows. For teaching as staging, the primary work of the teacher is staging such scenarios. The basic goal is to put students into an urgently engaging and self-unfolding scenario, trusting them to carry it forward, while being prepared to join in as needed. This book offers a conceptual and practical framework for Teaching as Staging, grounding the approach with illustrative and sometimes provocative narrative from the literature as well as the author's own practice. Teaching as the Art of Staging offers a visionary challenge to the prevailing models of pedagogy. The book presents a thoroughly practical model that opens up new possibilities for anyone interested in dramatic new directions in teaching and learning.

A Practical Companion to Ethics, Fifth Edition, is a concise and accessible introduction to the basic attitudes and skills that make ethics work, like thinking for oneself, creative and integrative problem-solving, and keeping an open mind. This unique volume illuminates the broad kinds of practical intelligence required in moral judgment, complementing the narrower theoretical considerations that often dominate ethics courses. It offers practical instruction in problem-solving by demonstrating how to frame an ethical problem and deal effectively with ethical disagreements. The book also presents ethics as an ongoing learning experience, helping students to engage constructively with both the complexities of their individual lives and with the larger issues that exist in the world around them. The fifth edition retains the most popular features of the previous edition, including challenging and relevant end-of-chapter exercises and brief text boxes that define key terms and review core strategies. The optimistic tone and brisk pace of the narrative provide an entertaining and intelligent guide to "everyday" morality. Ideal for introductory courses in ethics and applied ethics, A Practical Companion to Ethics, Fifth Edition, can also be used in any course related to critical thinking.

Thinking Through Questions is an accessible and compact guide to the art of questioning, covering both the use and abuse of questions. Animated by wide-ranging and engaging exercises and examples, the book helps students deepen their understanding of how questions work and what questions do, and builds the skills needed to ask better questions. Cowritten by two of today's leading philosopher-teachers, Thinking Through Questions is specifically designed to complement, connect, and motivate today's standard curricula, especially for classes in critical thinking, philosophical questioning, and creative problem- solving (called here "expansive questioning"). Offering students a wide and appreciative look at questions and questioning, this small book will also appeal to faculty and students across the disciplines: in college writing courses, creativity workshops, education schools, introductions to college thinking, design thinking projects, and humanities and thinking classes. Open-ended, creative, and critically self-possessed thinking is its constant theme-what field doesn't need more of that?

This unique book is a concise introduction to creativity--the art of expanding possibility. Covering such practical methods as multiplying options, brainstorming, lateral thinking, reframing problems, and many others, it offers provocative and effective methods for constructive and expansive kinds of thinking. These methods are illustrated and reinforced through exercises and applications that range from science and technology to the arts; from the small aggravations of everyday life to the largest difficulties in politics, the family, and the future; and from "creative good citizenship" to "creativity to change the world."
Creativity for Critical Thinkers is an ideal supplement for any general course in thinking skills, and in particular for courses in critical thinking, as it frees them from a preoccupation with "critical thinking" as merely criticism. It can be used in creative writing and design courses as well, and provides a quick and engaging introduction to creative thinking for workshop participants and general readers. It shows readers who have been trained to think "in the box" how to think "out of the box"--freely and imaginatively. By looking at the world or some part of the world as it could be, creativity offers an entirely new view of the world as it is.

Thinking Through Questions is an accessible and compact guide to the art of questioning, covering both the use and abuse of questions. Animated by wide-ranging and engaging exercises and examples, the book helps students deepen their understanding of how questions work and what questions do, and builds the skills needed to ask better questions. Cowritten by two of today's leading philosopher-teachers, Thinking Through Questions is specifically designed to complement, connect, and motivate today's standard curricula, especially for classes in critical thinking, philosophical questioning, and creative problem- solving (called here "expansive questioning"). Offering students a wide and appreciative look at questions and questioning, this small book will also appeal to faculty and students across the disciplines: in college writing courses, creativity workshops, education schools, introductions to college thinking, design thinking projects, and humanities and thinking classes. Open-ended, creative, and critically self-possessed thinking is its constant theme-what field doesn't need more of that?

This scarce antiquarian book is a selection from Kessinger Publishing's Legacy Reprint Series. Due to its age, it may contain imperfections such as marks, notations, marginalia and flawed pages. Because we believe this work is culturally important, we have made it available as part of our commitment to protecting, preserving, and promoting the world's literature. Kessinger Publishing is the place to find hundreds of thousands of rare and hard-to-find books with something of interest for everyone

"Scan this book quickly and you will think that philosophy has finally recovered a sense of imagination. Read it carefully - and recognize that every work and every author 'reviewed' here are but mere possibilities (except for one) - and you find yourself in the midst of an extraordinarily imaginative and audacious projection of what philosophy might become. 'Reinventing the culture' in the new Millennium; reinvoking the 'hidden possibilities' of human and more-than-human Others; reopening ethics in the direction of 'possibilistic' process; even 'teaching on the edge'... Oh for such a Philosophy! Oh for such Philosophers!"- Violet Woodsorrel Oxalis

"Scan this book quickly and you will think that philosophy has finally recovered a sense of imagination. Read it carefully - and recognize that every work and every author 'reviewed' here are but mere possibilities (except for one) - and you find yourself in the midst of an extraordinarily imaginative and audacious projection of what philosophy might become. 'Reinventing the culture' in the new Millennium; reinvoking the 'hidden possibilities' of human and more-than-human Others; reopening ethics in the direction of 'possibilistic' process; even 'teaching on the edge'... Oh for such a Philosophy! Oh for such Philosophers!"- Violet Woodsorrel Oxalis

This book offers a uniquely constructive set of tools for engaging complex and controversial ethical problems. Covering such practical methods as diversifying options, lateral thinking, reframing problems, approaching conflicts as creative opportunities, and many others, it shows how to find "room to move" inside even the most challenging ethical problems, and thereby discover new and productive ways to deal with them. The book features numerous exercises and applications that consider a wide range of familiar ethical issues--including the moral status of animals, the death penalty, poverty, drug use, and many others--and ends with some of the toughest: abortion, assisted suicide, and environmental ethics.
An ideal supplement for any general ethics course, Creative Problem-Solving in Ethics can also be used in more specific "applied" courses like bioethics, business ethics, and social ethics, as well as in critical thinking courses that emphasize ethics. In addition, it provides a concise and engaging introduction to creative thinking for workshop participants and general readers. From the very beginning of the book, readers will discover that creative thinking can offer imaginative and promising alternatives to seemingly intractable ethical dilemmas.