$49.95 - Paperbound

Critical Thinking and Clinical Reasoning in the Health Sciences:
          An International Multidisciplinary Teaching Anthology            ----  2008 
                Noreen C. Facione and Peter A. Facione (Eds.)

What can I do in my teaching to improve students’ critical thinking and clinical judgment skills?

Finally a new teaching anthology that offers workable answers!

Health science educators share successful teaching strategies for training critical thinking and clinical reasoning in the classroom and in the clinic. All the authors are published researchers who have achieved teaching excellence in the area of clinical reasoning. They represent all professional levels and academic ranks, and work in pre-service and in-service clinical and academic settings on four continents. Whether their teaching is on-line or face-to-face, they demonstrate the effectiveness of their approaches for building critical thinking skills and habits of mind in the context of authentic clinical problems.

This teaching anthology offers thoughtful examples that will guide even the experienced
educator to train clinical reasoning skills more effectively using problem-based learning,
clinical cases, think-aloud, reflective role-play, team problem-solving, reflective journaling
and many other approaches to engage students in the critical thinking skills of interpretation, analysis, inference, evaluation, explanation, and meta-cognition.

These active learning pedagogies foster and sustain positive critical thinking habits of mind such as truth-seeking, inquisitiveness, open-mindedness, systematicity, maturity of judgment, and confidence in reasoning. The positive effects of these approaches register both as observable cognitive behaviors in the course of clinical decision making and as significant improvements in students’ reasoning test scores.

Published by The California Academic Press LLC ©2008 Peter A and Noreen C Facione

ISBN (13 digit) 978-1891557-60-6
ISBN (10 digit) 1-891557-60-2

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2007                                                $27.95 Paperbound

Thinking and Reasoning in Human Decision Making: The Method of Argument and Heuristic Analysis ----
               Authors: Peter A. Facione and Noreen C. Facione

If your work does not require a deep understanding of how human beings make decisions, and how those decisions can be predicted and influenced, then this book is not for you.

From theory to illustrative case studies, this groundbreaking volume describes a new methodology for explaining and predicting human decision making. The method of argument and heuristic analysis, based on the latest scientific findings from studies of human reasoning, combines both quantitative and qualitative research designs. Use of this method takes the study of human reasoning to a deep and authentic level. The decision mapping techniques presented in this volume enable one to display visually the flow of a reasoning process and to examine the influence of the reasons and heuristics which shape human decision-making.

This new volume emerges from decades of research into human decision making. It offers a scientifically grounded and very widely applicable methodology for explaining and predicting human decisions. The method accounts for the reasons actually used by decision makers to make naturalistic decisions. This approach provides objective methods for evaluating the logical strength and appropriate reliance on thinking heuristics. The focus is on high risk, time limited judgments made under conditions of uncertainty. Using this new approach one can explain unwarranted confidence in poor reasoning and persistence in defending poor judgments when there is ample evidence to the contrary.

Using this approach, professionals and scholars can map human decisions in leadership, business, military, health care, and human interpersonal situations. And they can craft ways of predicting and addressing errors through interventions designed to respect and build upon those elements in human thinking and reasoning which can become the basis for better judgments in all those contexts.

Published by The California Academic Press LLC ©2007 Peter A and Noreen C Facione

ISBN (13 digit) 978-1891557-58-3
ISBN (10 digit) 1-891557-58-0

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2001 Revision                        e-book $20.00 per copy                 $49.00 Comb-Bound      

Ethics and Society                        
    Authors: Peter A. Facione, Donald Scherer, and Thomas Attig

If the police can lie when they interrogate suspects, why is it wrong for me to lie if I have a good enough reason too? If I oppose scientific experimentation on animals and genetics research, am I ethically obligated to refuse medical advances derived that research even if it would save my life? Should parents have the right to decide the sex of their children, or determine whether they will be vaccinated, or go to school? Would I be happier if I learned to curb my desire for power, wealth or popularity? In today's world, does it make sense to act virtuously and with integrity; or is it every one for themselves, and hurt the other guy before he hurts you? Should the government ration electricity and other forms of energy, and if so, who has priority and why? Do I as a person, or as a member of society, owe reparations to the descendants of former slaves? Should I be able to build any kind of home I wish on property I own, or do anything I wish in the privacy of my apartment, as long as it does not hurt anyone else? Is it really wrong to buy clothing made by children working fifteen hours a day in the sweatshops of the world's poorest countries? Where does my right to privacy end and your right to safety and the common good begin?

Ethics and Society helps you come to grips with the real ethical questions of everyday living. You will learn how to make ethical decisions that are both principled and practical. This book sharpens your intellectual skills and equips you with the fundamental knowledge for dealing with normative questions. Case studies, examples, and rich sets of exercises and discussion questions make the ethical theories and concepts practical. Our assumption is that most readers are interested primarily in acquiring a practical, not just a theoretical, knowledge of ethics that is relevant for today’s world. Our chief goal in this book is simply making ethical ideas accessible to college level readers and equipping them with the intellectual tools to deal rationally with ethical issues and ideas in the personal and social realm.

The book's middle chapters focus on ethical decision-making values: social utility and the common good, self-interest, rights and duties, freedom and autonomy, justice and equality, community quality and social stability, the rule of law and private morality. Each chapter is a self-contained presentation of the relevant normative ideas, concepts, and distinctions. These chapters trace the implications of those ideas using illustrative case studies and examples. Objections and contrary views are considered along with some of the possible replies. The chapters which focus on key values are flanked at the start and the end with chapters serving different roles. These two chapters provide a framework for understanding what ethics is all about and for dealing rationally with ethical concerns. Chapter One tells how to justify normative claims; the final chapter concentrates on how to understand and how to resolve divergent and conflicting values.

There are many specially designed learning features loaded into this outstanding book. For example, chapters are divided into lesson-sized modules or sections, usually three to a chapter, each of which starts off by identifying the most important things you should be able to do after having read that section. Use these lists of learning goals to focus your efforts. Next comes a case study—a fictional story that illustrates the chief ideas and techniques to be developed in that section. The explanatory text draws out theoretical points and describes philosophical techniques both abstractly and by appeal to the case study and other examples. With each section we offer a set of exercises and discussion questions which give you the opportunity to apply the ideas and the tools you are learning. We are proud of these exercises and questions and we know how well they can reinforce your understanding of what you have read in the section. The questions represent real issues that have been drawn from our own classroom and professional lives. We give answers to selected exercises along with references back to specific paragraphs in the section to help you find the relevant material.

Published by The California Academic Press, Millbrae, CA.
©(2001) Peter A. Facione, Donald Scherer, Thomas Attig. ISBN 1-891557-51-3

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1978                                $35.00 Paperbound from Insight Assessment and from the Ox Bow Press

Logic and Logical Thinking            
   Authors: Peter A. Facione Ph.D. and Donald Scherer Ph.D.

Maybe one of the best classic "baby logic" textbooks ever published; every chapter in this book has been refined, reworked, and field-tested in the classroom with thousands of college students. The book includes a plethora of examples, exercises, and summative self-quizzes. Answers ready to hand refer the learner to the proper section of the chapter for immediate understanding. The book includes all the topic areas considered to be central to a first course in logic including: propositional logic, truth-tables, syllogisms, Venn Diagrams, predicate logic, translation between English and symbolic logic, natural deduction proof systems, and a rich section on formal and informal fallacies. The book also includes chapters on inductive reasoning and on the nature and scope of contemporary approaches to logic as the study of the logical correctness of arguments.

First published by McGraw Hill, this book is now available from Ox Bow Press. This book retails new at about 1/3 of the price of other textbooks covering the same material. Its modular approach permits the maximum flexibility for instructors to chart their own path through the material for their students. For example the study of first order predicate logic can begin fresh with the treatment of Syllogisms, or with Venn Diagrams, or with Sentential Logic. No matter which approach is taken, all of the needed information is included in each of those potential first modules so that, should the other two paths not be included, the students will have received all that they needed to proceed further with their study of first order predicate logic. Or, should one or both of those other modules also be used, the fundamentals of this level of logic will have been addressed from more than one perspective leading to reinforced and deeper learning. The same approach is taken in the modules on the informal and formal fallacies, and in the modules on proof strategies for propositional logic. Multiple avenues leading to the same result provide the learner with an optimal means of truly comprehending not only how logic works but why it works.

Available from Insight Assessment Order Now. Also available from
OX BOW PRESS, PO Box 4045, Woodbridge, CT 06525,
Phone: 203-387-5900,Fax: 203-387-0035,oxbow@gte.net

495 + xii pages, 6 x 9. Reprint of first McGraw Hill edition published in 1978.
ISBN 0-918024-33-1

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1997                                               e-book $20.00 per copy

CT Assessment in Nursing Education Programs: An Aggregate Data Analysis
               Author: Noreen C. Facione Ph.D., FAAN.

This report summarizes the analysis of an aggregate data set comprising 145 predominantly undergraduate samples contributed by on site collaborative investigators at 50 programs of nursing education throughout the United States (Total N = 7,926 cases). Collaborators are listed in this report, as are the analyses of each independent sample, for purposes of validation of the reported findings. The data analyzed were collected from 1992 through 1997. Significant relationships are reported between two measures of critical thinking (CT), the CCTST, which is a skills measure, and the CCTDI, which profiles CT dispositions, and a wide variety of academic achievement indicators (e.g. grade point average, standardized test scores), student descriptors (e.g. age, sex, RN-status, NCLEX passage), and program descriptors (e.g. student to faculty ratio, location of program, faculty focus on CT in planning and curriculum development). Modest cross sectional increases and longitudinal gains are demonstrated in CT skills and habits of mind. Several of these relationships are also explored in the limited graduate level sample available. Initial percentile norms for the CCTST are calculated for nursing students by undergraduate class level. Percentile distributions by class for the seven scales of the CCTDI are also reported. A relative strength in students CT skills and dispositions scores were observed in samples collected in nursing programs where faculty reported being engaged in discussions about CT and curriculum reform to optimize teaching for CT. Evidence was observed for a comparable strength in CT skills in both generic and RN completion students on both entry and exit. Disposition scores were higher for RN to BSN students than for same class level generic nursing student on entry. Scores in CT disposition for exiting RN to BSN students raise concern for whether these students’ CT disposition is being nurtured by current nursing curricula. A similar concern is raised in relation to female students versus male students as a result of analyses of observed CCTDI scores by sex at exit. Using this dataset, the largest aggregation of CT skills and dispositions test data known to date, the theoretical relationships between the traditional and the Delphi constructs, in terms of division of CT skills, are also explored empirically, as was the relationship between CT skill and the disposition toward CT.

Published by The California Academic Press, Millbrae, CA.
©(1997)Noreen C. Facione and The California Academic Press ISBN 1-891557-21-1

2002                                                            $14.95 Paperbound

We Never Aimed for Blight           
        by Don Scherer, Ph.D.

If we Americans never aimed for blight, why have we so often degraded our environment, depleted our resources, poisoned our water, and polluted our air? Greed and negligence, perhaps; and yet the histories Don Scherer collected tell a different story - a story of results foreseeable but unforeseen, predictable but unintended. To continue down the historical path toward our nation's environmental degradation will confound our hopes and thwart our aspirations. But, this outcome is by no means inevitable. We Never Aimed for Blight reveals the patterns that lead to degradation. And, once revealed, these avenues to disaster can be avoided. Though his historical analyses and case studies, Scherer's considerable accomplishment is to explain what causes environmental degradation and, at the same time, to give us the key to prevention and reversal.

Published by The California Academic Press in conjunction with Benzonia Press.
© 2002 Donald Scherer, ISBN 1-891557-56-4

2002                                                           $16.95 Paperbound 

Our Greener Ways                          
       by Don Scherer, Ph.D.

Environmental degradation is by no means inevitable. Don Scherer recounts the moving stories of how strong-willed people have saved their homes, rebuilt their neighborhoods and protected their communities. Our Greener Ways inspires with descriptions of corporations acting out of convictions and finding the incentives that make them good environmental citizens. A decade of research reveals effective strategies environmentally concerned people and organizations have used and can continue to use to overcome fear, misunderstanding, and political opposition. Scherer illustrates how to make the connections and marshal the community resources to tackle big issues, transform our cities and create the far-flung communities to engage the full complexity of contemporary environmental problems. Robert Hood has created the CD-ROM for Our Greener Ways. This CD invites participation in a virtual community of environmental concern, Our Greener Ways provides the substance of hopes for creating the environments in which we can all be pleased to dwell. Book preface by Jordon Lindberg.

Published by The California Academic Press in conjunction with Benzonia Press.
© 2002 Donald Scherer, ISBN 1-891557-55-6

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