ABSTRACT
For years I have told my students to be more critical. But for a while they didn’t understand what this meant and I struggled to help them as it seemed vague and something to do with ‘flair’. I then set up a final year module with a small group of students and started to realise what critical thinking was. And with the luxury of small numbers we had discussions (do dogs have arms?), debates (are emotions real or constructed?), critiqued papers (the male warrior hypothesis), pulled apart measures (what personality are you?), watched films (‘an inconvenient truth’), and even played games drawing words such as ‘epistemology’ for the other team to guess. Slowly as the years went by, critical thinking became less vague and something that could actually be taught. Then a couple of years ago I took over a final year compulsory module with over 100 students in the room. No more drawing games, just clear lectures, lots of examples, a check list of ideas, and ultimately a Critical Tool Kit. So now, here is the book.
