Critical Thinking
36 Hours
One Semester or equivalent
Overview
This unit develops critical reasoning skills which students will find very useful in academic, professional, and everyday contexts. The emphasis is on the study and practice of argumentation.
Requisites
Teaching periods
Location
Start and end dates
Last self-enrolment date
Census date
Last withdraw without fail date
Results released date
Learning outcomes
Students who successfully complete this unit will be able to:
- Distinguish between arguments and non-arguments, and to systematically analyse short arguments in standard written and diagrammatic forms, so as to clearly show their intended logical structure
- Understand, and demonstrate the ability to apply the core requirements for systematic argument evaluation
- Understand, and apply the requirements for analysing several important specialized types of arguments and for evaluating their cogency
- Recognize arguments, their intended roles, and their importance, in real-world contexts of everyday life, academic life, and the communication of scientific ideas to a general audience
- Demonstrate ability to identify common fallacies and problematic uses of language, and to appraise the extent of these defects in weakening the related arguments
- Demonstrate the foregoing skills of argument analysis and evaluation in a critically evaluative appraisal of an extended argument
Teaching methods
Hawthorn
| Type | Hours per week | Number of weeks | Total (number of hours) |
|---|---|---|---|
| Face to Face Contact (Phasing out) Lecture | 1.00 | 12 weeks | 12 |
| Face to Face Contact (Phasing out) Tutorial | 2.00 | 12 weeks | 24 |
| Specified Learning Activities (Phasing out) Various | 5.00 | 12 weeks | 60 |
| Unspecified Learning Activities (Phasing out) Individual Study | 4.50 | 12 weeks | 54 |
| TOTAL | 150 |
Assessment
| Type | Task | Weighting | ULO's |
|---|---|---|---|
| Essay | Individual | 40% | 2,3,5,6 |
| Portfolio | Individual | 30% | 1,2,3,4,5 |
| Test | Individual | 30% | 1,2,3,5 |
Content
- How to distinguish claims from evidence and assess claims in the light of supporting evidence
- Identifying (and in one's own reasoning avoiding) fallacies
- Organizing material in logically coherent patterns
- Identifying (and in one's own reasoning avoiding) problematic uses of language
- Critically evaluating extended arguments and writing evaluative essays
- Recognizing the pervasive roles, importance, and forms of argumentation in everyday life, the academic world, and in science
- More specialised types and roles of reasoning, and the specialised forms of analysis and critical evaluation appropriate for dealing with them
Study resources
Reading materials
A list of reading materials and/or required textbooks will be available in the Unit Outline on Canvas.