Thinking Skills

Here is a book that can be helpful to both students and people who work in organisations of all kinds and want to improve their performance in the role management.

Thinking Skills is the endorsed coursebook that provides complete coverage of the Cambridge AS and A Level Thinking Skills syllabus offering substantially updated, new and revised content.

It also contains extensive extra material to cover related awards.

Written by experienced and highly respected authors, this book includes features such as clearly focused and differentiated units, stimulating student activities with commentaries to develop analytical skills, summaries of key concepts to review learning, end-of-chapter assignments to reinforce knowledge and skills, and a mapping grid to demonstrate the applicability of each unit to awards including Critical Thinking, BMAT (BioMedical Admissions Test) and TSA (Thinking Skills Assessment).
Finally, this book is of crucial importance for those who want to develop independently critical thinking and improve their problem-solving skills.

Contents

Unit 1 Thinking and reasoning

1.1 Thinking as a skill

1.2 An introduction to critical thinking

1.3 Solutions, not problems

Unit 2 Critical thinking: the basics

2.1 Claims, assertions, statements

2.2 Judging claims

2.3 Argument

2.4 Identifying arguments

2.5 Analysing arguments

2.6 Complex arguments

2.7 Conclusions

2.8 Reasons

2.9 Assumptions

2.10 Flaws and fallacies

Unit 3 Problem solving: basic skills

3.1 What do we mean by a ‘problem’?

3.2 How do we solve problems?

3.3 Selecting and using information

3.4 Processing data

3.5 Finding methods of solution

3.6 Solving problems by searching

3.7 Recognising patterns

3.8 Hypotheses, reasons, explanations and inference

3.9 Spatial reasoning

3.10 Necessity and sufficiency

3.11 Choosing and using models

3.12 Making choices and decisions

Unit 4 Applied critical thinking

4.1 Inference

4.2 Explanation

4.3 Evidence

4.4 Credibility

4.5 Two case studies

4.6 Critical thinking and science

4.7 Introducing longer arguments

4.8 Applying analysis skills

4.9 Critical evaluation

4.10 Responding with further argument

4.11 A self-assessment

Unit 5 Advanced problem solving

5.1 Combining skills – using imagination

5.2 Developing models

5.3 Carrying out investigations

5.4 Data analysis and inference

Unit 6 Problem solving: further techniques

6.1 Using other mathematical methods

6.2 Graphical methods of solution

6.3 Probability, tree diagrams and decision trees

6.4 Have you solved it?

Unit 7 Critical reasoning: Advanced Level

7.1 Conditions and conditionals

7.2 Soundness and validity: a taste of logic

7.3 Non-deductive reasoning

7.4 Reasoning with statistics

7.5 Decision making

7.6 Principles

7.7 An argument under the microscope

7.8 Critical writing

Answers to assignments

Appendix

Acknowledgements

Index