Critical Thinking in Academic Research

by Cindy Gruwell and Robin Ewing

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Critical Thinking in Academic Research will introduce students to the techniques and principles of critical thinking. However, a commitment to lifelong learning is required for critical thinking, it takes more than a single course or reading a book. In order for students to develop their own arguments, they need to find supporting evidence. This text provides guidance on developing research questions and finding resources to answer the questions.

Description from LibreTexts.

Publisher
University of West Florida
Subjects
Humanities, Research and Information Literacy
Licence
CC BY-SA 4.0, as LibreTexts states it
Who can read
Teens profiles and older, judged from its title and subjects

Contents

LibreTexts writes equations in TeX, and here they show as TeX; the PDF has them typeset.

  1. Front Matter
  2. TitlePage
  3. InfoPage
  4. Table of Contents
  5. About the Authors
  6. Licensing
  7. Introduction
  8. Licensing
  9. 1: What is Critical Thinking?
  10. 1.1: What is Critical Thinking?
  11. 1.2: Thinking Fast and Slow
  12. 1.3: How Confident Are You in Your Reasoning Skills?
  13. 1.4: Thinking in an Informed Way
  14. 1.5: A Word About Values
  15. 1.6: What About Assumptions?
  16. 2: Barriers to Critical Thinking
  17. 2.1: Barriers to Critical Thinking
  18. 2.2: Social Conditioning
  19. 2.3: Labeling
  20. 2.4: Stereotypes
  21. 2.5: Fallacies
  22. 3: Analyzing Arguments
  23. 3.1: Is It an Argument?
  24. 3.2: Standard Argument Form
  25. 3.3: Kinds of Arguments
  26. 3.4: Explanations and Reported Arguments
  27. 4: Making an Argument
  28. 4.1: Making an Argument
  29. 4.2: Components of an Argument
  30. 4.3: Order of the Components
  31. 4.4: Where You Get the Components
  32. 4.5: Helping Others Follow
  33. 5: Research Questions
  34. 5.1: The Purpose of Research Questions
  35. 5.2: Background Reading
  36. 5.3: Narrowing a Topic
  37. 5.4: Regular vs. Research Questions
  38. 5.5: Influence of a Research Question
  39. 5.6: Developing Your Research Question
  40. 6: Sources and Information Needs
  41. 6.1: Sources and Information Needs
  42. 6.2: Sources to Meet Needs
  43. 6.3: Thinking About the Roles of Sources
  44. 6.4: Synthesis of Your Own Ideas
  45. 6.5: BEAM- A Solution that Might Shine
  46. 6.6: Using BEAM
  47. 6.7: Practice with BEAM
  48. 6.8: BEAM Reference Chart
  49. 6.9: Planning Your Sources
  50. 7: Types of Sources
  51. 7.1: Categorizing Sources
  52. 7.2: Quantitative or Qualitative Information
  53. 7.3: Fact or Opinion
  54. 7.4: Primary, Secondary and Tertiary Sources
  55. 7.5: Popular, Professional, and Scholarly
  56. 7.6: Publication Formats and the Information Lifecycle
  57. 7.7: Scholarly Articles as Sources
  58. 7.8: News as a Source
  59. 7.9: Data as Sources
  60. 7.10: People as Sources
  61. 8: Precision Searching
  62. 8.1: Why Precision Searching?
  63. 8.2: Main Concepts
  64. 8.3: Related and Alternative Terms
  65. 8.4: Search Statements
  66. 8.5: Library Catalog
  67. 8.6: WorldCat
  68. 8.7: Google Scholar
  69. 8.8: Library Databases
  70. 8.9: Web Search Engines
  71. 8.10: Tips for Common Search Tools
  72. 9: Evaluating Sources
  73. 9.1: Thinking Critically About Sources
  74. 9.2: SIFT
  75. 9.3: Stop
  76. 9.4: Investigate the Source
  77. 9.5: Find and Confirm
  78. 9.6: Track down the Original Content
  79. 9.7: Evaluating Data as Sources
  80. 10: Ethical Use and Citing Sources
  81. 10.1: Ethical Use and Citing Sources
  82. 10.2: Why Cite Sources?
  83. 10.3: When to Quote, Paraphrase, or Summarize
  84. 10.4: Challenges in Citing Sources
  85. 10.5: Citation and Citation Styles
  86. 10.6: Steps for Citing
  87. 10.7: Citation Management
  88. 10.8: When to Cite
  89. 11: Copyright Basics
  90. 11.1: What Is Copyright?
  91. 11.2: What Copyright Covers
  92. 11.3: Copyright Rights and Exceptions
  93. 11.4: Respecting Copyright
  94. 11.5: Creative Commons
  95. 11.6: Public Domain and Term of Copyright
  96. 11.7: What Is Fair Use?
  97. Back Matter
  98. Index
  99. Works Cited
  100. Detailed Licensing
  101. Detailed Licensing