5 References and Background Information

Accompanying site with this book

For examples of the use of Rationale (e.g. samples of argument maps), educational materials, tutorials in Critical Thinking, Argument Mapping and Reasoning for Knowledge and research behind the method Critical Thinking with Rationale, see: https://www.reasoninglab.com/materials/

Critical Thinking

• Critical Thinking Web: http://philosophy.hku.hk/think

This educational web site provides over 100 free online tutorials on critical thinking, logic, scientific reasoning, creativity, and other aspects of thinking skills.

On Critical Thinking: research

• Abrami PC, Bernard RM, Borokhovski E, Wadem A, Surkes M A, Tamim R, Zhang D. 2008. Instructional interventions affecting critical thinking skills and dispositions: a stage 1 meta-analysis. Review of Educational Research. 78:1102-1134.
  The study' ...summarizes the available empirical evidence on the impact of instruction on the development and enhancement of critical thinking skills and dispositions'.
  Conclusions:

1. Training in critical thinking works.
2. In regard to the question of how to plan a curriculum in such a way that students are successfully developing their critical thinking skills:

• ' This is an important finding for the design of courses. Developing CT skills separately and then applying them to course content explicitly works best.'

• ' When instructors received special advanced training in preparation for teaching CT skills...the impacts of the interventions were greatest.'

• ' As important as the development of CT skills is, educators must take steps to make CT objectives explicit in courses and to integrate them into both pre-service and in-service training and faculty development.' ( Abrami, p. 1121-1122).

• Davies, W.M., In Defence of Generalisation: Moore on the Critical Thinking Debate (2004).

• Higgins S, Hall E, Baumfield V, Moseley D (2005) A meta-analysis of the impact of the implementation of thinking skills approaches on pupils. In: Research Evidence in Education Library. London: EPPI-Centre, Social Science Research Unit, Institute of Education, University of London.

'Overall, the quantitative synthesis indicates that, when thinking skills programmes and approaches are used in schools, they are effective in improving pupils’ performance on a range of tested outcomes (relative to those who did not receive thinking skills interventions). The magnitude of the gains found appears to be important when compared with the reported effect sizes of other educational interventions.
This review found an overall mean effect of 0.62 for the main (cognitive) effect of each of the included studies, larger than the mean of Hattie’s vast database of meta-analyses at 0.4 (Hattie, 1999) but very similar to the overall figure reported by Marzano (1998, p 76) of 0.65 for interventions across the knowledge, cognitive, metacognitive and self-system domains. In particular, our study identified metacognitive interventions as having relatively greater impact, similar to Marzano’s study.'

• Marin, L.M., Halpern, D.F., Pedagogy for developing critical thinking in adolescents: Explicit instruction produces greatest gains.. Thinking Skills and Creativity, September 2010.

On Critical Thinking & Argument Mapping

• Alvarez, C., Does Philosophy improve Critical Thinking Skills? 2007. A meta-analysis of research on the effectivity of different methods to develop critical thinking skills. (see especially Chapter 5). Click here for a map of the conclusions.
• Davies, W.M., Not quite right' : helping students to make better arguments. . Teaching in Higher Education. Vol.13, No. 3, June 2008, 327-340.
• Davies, W.M., Concept Mapping, Mind Mapping and Argument Mapping: What are the differences and do they matter? , 2007.
• Dwyer, C., Hogan, M., & Stewart, I. (2012): An evaluation of argument mapping as a method of enhancing critical thinking performance in e-learning environments. Metacognition and Learning, 7(3), 219-244.
• Dwyer, C., Hogan, M., & Stewart, I. (2013): An examination of the effects of argument mapping on students ' memory and comprehension performance. Thinking Skills and Creativity, 8(0), 11-24.
• Elsegood, S.,Teaching Critical Thinking in an English for Academic Purposes Program using a 'Claims and Supports' Approach.. Refereed paper presented at the 10th Pacific Rim First Year in Higher Education Conference, 2007.
• Gelder, T. van, Teaching Critical Thinking: Some Lessons from Cognitive Science.. College Teaching, 53,1, pp. 41-46. (2005). For a map of the conclusions/lessons of the article see here .
• Gelder, T. van, What is Argument Mapping?. Entry to appear in H. Pashler (Ed.), Encyclopedia of the Mind. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.
• Gelder, T. van, Bissett, M., Cumming, G., Cultivating Expertise in Informal Reasoning.. Canadian Journal of Experimental Psychology, 2004, 58:2. Research on the importance of 'dedicated practice' for the development of critical thinking skills.
• Mara Harrell (Carnegie Mellon University) is doing research into the influence of argument mapping on the development of critical thinking skills in her own practice as a lecturer philosophy at Carnegie Mellon. See her list of publications here.
• Rider, Yanna; Thomason, Neil (2008): Cognitive and Pedagogical Benefits of Argument Mapping: L.A.M.P. Guides The Way to Better Thinking. Knowledge Cartography, Advanced Information and Knowledge Processing. Springer-Verlag London.
• The Monash Critical Thinking Study, 2004-2007.
  'Many people reason poorly, by almost any measure of reasoning. Although there is evidence that people can be taught to think critically, educators don't really know how. They don't know what works, what doesn't, or why. This report describes the Monash Critical Thinking Study - a three year project to investigate the effectiveness of a number of teaching methods for improving critical thinking.'
• Twardy, C., Argument Maps Improve Critical Thinking, 2004.Teaching Philosophy, 27:2.

On the method Critical Thinking with Rationale and Rationale itself

• Berg, T. ter, Brugge, E. van der, Teaching Critical Thinking with Rationale. INTED 2013. This paper gives more information on an IARPA funded research project. The open course Improving Reasoning was a result of this project. The course is based on Rationale. It has textbooks and tons of exercises.
• Davies, W.M., Computer-Assisted Argument Mapping: A Rationale Approach, 2009. Higher Education.
• S. van Driel & H. Prakken, Visualising the argumentation structure of an expert witness report with Rationale (extended abstract). In A.Z. Wyner (ed.), Proceedings of the Workshop on Modelling Legal Cases and Legal Rules, in conjunction with JURIX-10, Liverpool 2010, pp. 1-8.
  From the Abstract:

'This paper reports on a case study in which the use of the Rationale software was investigated to analyse the argumentation structure of a Dutch expert witness report in a criminal case. The underlying motivation of the case study was to explore the usefulness of argumentation visualisation software for increasing a judge's understanding of expert reports and for assisting him or her in asking the proper critical questions to the expert. By way of an initial exploration of this usefulness, an expert report was analysed with the Rationale software. The visualisation was informally discussed with a legal expert, who was generally positive but also expressed some concerns and expected that the main usefulness of the tool is in training and education of judges.'

For the Rationale maps that were used in this research, click here (you need Rationale to open them).

• Gelder, T. van, The rationale for Rationale ®. Law, Probability and Risk, (2007) 6, 23−42.
• Examples of and Guides for lecturers for the use of Rationale in primary, secondary and tertiairy education.
• The Rationale Guide and the Tutorials
• A Teacher’s Guide
• The Rationale Thinking Pack
• Materials for the IB Schools including an Extended Essay Guide
• In Rationale a place where users of Rationale share maps: the Public Maps part. Click on the Tags icon on the top to see all the available tags.
• The old Rationale WIKI. On this site you can find many argument maps (made in Rationale ) on different subjects. Especially noteworthy are the sections on patterns of argument including the section on argumentation schemes and their related critical questions (cf. the work of Walton, Pollock and Katzay & Reed).

On critical thinking and writing an essay with the help of Rationale

• A short video shows how you can make a well structured paper by using Rationale.
• 6 steps to better thinking: Rationale’s interface has been designed to provide a path for critical thinking. From gathering research, to weighing up evidence to formulating a judgement, Rationale will assist you. Here you will find 6 critical thinking steps with examples to demonstrate the path to better outcomes.
• Geoff Hyde (National Centre for Biological Sciences, Bangalore) developed an online course Scientific Writing in which Rationale is fully integrated.
  From the Introduction:

'Rationale is mainly focussed on teaching people how to think clearly about contentious issues, and has very successfully popularized a diagrammatic method of argument development. My experiences in the classroom have taught me that this diagrammatic approach is also a great starting point for writing all types of scientific text. It is the most practical way to outline that I have come across. Outlining is often promoted as a writing tool because it forces the writer to focus first on organising ideas, before moving onto packaging them.'