Critical Engagement, Evaluation of Sources, and Developing a Project
> Critical thinking is learning to think for yourself, yet to also acknowledge that no project develops independently of a community. Always acknowledge your path to the project itself, who ‘raised you’, so to speak. Sometimes our most important ‘sources’ in discovering and nurturing your project are people who really did raise us! Our communities are essential voices and influences in our research. At the same time, you are urged and encouraged to develop your own opinions, positions and claims, backed by sound structures of reasoning and support. You may need to develop new ‘logics’ that are not already apparent or which do not exist in the texts available to you. This kind of critical thinking is concentrated on the process of learning, grappling with new ideas and sources, composing your ‘mosaic’ of definitions, arguments and reasons. Critical engagement is shedding the ‘skin’ or ‘role’ of passive student and to assume the embodiment, posture and critical language and thinking of a self reliant thinker and researcher.
> Critical thinking enters into important decisions in your daily life and affects your growth process in school and work. The term critical thinking describes the deliberate thinking where you are intentionally deciding, making choices, ‘deliberating’ on what to believe and how to act according to the way new knowledge stimulates different and necessary behaviors and thoughts. Critical engagement helps you to examine a problem or issue from many angles to arrive at the best possible solution. You are taking control.
> Critical thinking is by no means restricted to academic matters! At certain points in our lives, we face situations in which it is not clear how we should proceed. Examples can include career choices and educational choices. The act of purchasing a car, renting an apartment, choosing a major all involve critical thinking to a certain degree. Without thinking carefully, you may make spur-of-the-moment decisions. In order to think critically you need to have sufficient background information concerning your subject. The information below will assist you with the decision making process of finding a topic and developing the areas that are most interesting and important to you.
To practice ‘thinking/being/behaving independently’ for our purposes in this class means, thinking with rigor and with tools in order to avoid the pitfalls of falling back onto the very binaries and normative structures (which are systems of power, oppression and privilege).
Rejecting the ‘passive’ learning role:
Therefore, to be an ‘independent and critical thinker’ is a process of becoming / getting weaned/unplugged from the passivity of not challenging the normative ideologies circulating inside our heads on a regular basis. Consider the following guidelines:
1. Avoid making inaccurate generalizations, such as ‘women are too emotional’.
2. Avoid oversimplifying complex problems.
3. Accept that diversity of opinions exists.
4. Remain open to new or even stronger ideas than ones you’ve.
5. Withhold judgment until you are sure.
6. Evaluate for yourself the opinions of ‘authorities’, ‘authors’, in complex ways, with an understanding that all knowledge is constructed and has bias.
7. Ask questions for clarification when speaking with someone who holds opposing views.
8. Avoid stereotyping the sources you read/view/see, and avoid stereotyped thinking/productions/viewpoints—irregardless of the source.
9. Acknowledge that stereotyping, racism, sexism, homophobism, and classism exists and that they are systems of power which do particular things within texts. They make specific kinds of meanings. They do certain kinds of work.
10. Do acknowledge your sensitivity to the work that they systems of oppression are doing within your study, subject, project, interest area.
> Research can be a communicative and emancipatory process! Me-Search, We-Search and Re-Search –more than books, it is a community of voices which have not been heard or listened to.
> When preparing/practicing/accomplishing research for college courses, apply critical thinking techniques when designing your search and evaluating materials found in books and journals related to your search.
Too often, students are socialized to feel outside 'knowledge' production, that 'real knowledge' is something that happens in lofty places, in a mysterious process, and then arrives in a bound book---apart from real life. find information and the mechanics of writing a research paper (how to use the results of research in a coherent paper). Students need to be given structures to evaluate diverse sources of knowledge from diverse communities in order to have a research project which is balanced in terms of 'scholarly' resources and community-based knowledges that may not be available in university settings (oral histories, interviews, photographs, journals, diaries, community archives: murals, quilts, building projects, gardening and agricultural coops, fsheries, archives of labor histories, etc).
> Scholarly resources are usually focused on a particular subject area and can include such titles as the Journal of Advertising, Journal of the American Medical Association, Journal of Basic Writing, etc. General interest titles might include Newsweek, Time, U.S. News and World Report, etc.
> Authors of scholarly articles are experts in their field of study and generally write articles in one subject area. The authors at Time magazine write a variety of articles on various subjects.. One week they may write an article on a new AIDS treatment, and later an article on United States foreign policy. These writers are not usually experts in a particular subject.
When you do read a book or an article to support your ideas, intuitions, curiosity... give your full attention and focus on several key points:
1. Is the article or book biased? This means does the article try to influence the reader in thinking one way or another.
2. Does the background of the author lead to conclusions concerning the article? For example, would the director of an animal testing laboratory write an article which is different from that of a member of an animal rights group.
3. What is the authority of the author? Is the author an expert in this particular field of study? Does the article or book give any background information on the author? Does the author a Ph.D. in a subject; is she or he a physician or researcher?
4. Is the article scholarly or of general interest? A scholarly article should include research findings, statistics, a bibliography or references. It should be written by experts in a particular subject. General interest titles are usually not written by subject experts.
5. How are articles accepted for publication? Most scholarly journals have an editorial board comprised of individuals in the subject area who determine which articles to accept for publication.
6. Is there an abstract at the beginning of the article? An abstract is a summary of the article. Most scholarly articles have an abstract at the beginning.
7. When looking at books, keep in mind the following questions:
1. Do you need books which cover new technologies; for example, in computers or nursing?
2. Do you need a book with up-to-date statistics?
3. Do you need sources which cover new trends in a particular area?
If you answered yes to any of the above questions, pay particular attention to the publication date of the books.
8. When reading books, you may want to look for book reviews or a critical analysis. Also, you could look for background information on the author which may give you insight of why that person wrote the book.
WHAT ELSE? WHAT IS MISSING FROM THE ABOVE LIST?:
Why are ‘scholarly texts’ and ‘books’ and ‘journal’s the privileged narratives of ‘authentic’ or ‘approved’ knowing?
Which narratives does this leave to the margins, to the peripheries, and under-developed, diminished?
➢ Oppressed groups’ histories, knowledges, and ‘citizenship’
o Slaves, indentureds, bonded people
o Women
o Indigenous people
o Elderly
o Children
o Homosexuals, gay, lesbian, queer, transsexual, transgender, bisexual communities
o Dispossessed, dislocated
o Wage-earners
o Unemployed, underemployed
o Migrants, immigrants YOU CAN FILL IN SOME TOO….
o _______________________
o ________________________
o _______________________
o _________________________
o __________________________
o etc…
Who is/are ‘We the People’?
Choosing the Research Project and Tips on Narrowing the Topic:
Another aspect of the critical thinking process is the ability to narrow a research topic into smaller pieces. For example, you decide to develop you project on Masculinity, Sexuality & AIDS, but that is a BROAD TOPIC. There are some articles and books on this subject covering a wide range of subtopics. You would want to narrow down this topic to something more manageable. One could start narrowing it to sub-topics: “At the U.S.-Canada Border”, or “in the Spokane metropolitican area”, etc. You might narrow the topic even further: “Among White-Heterosexual Males” . The same process can be applied to searching for journal articles. For example, if you decide to write a paper on AIDS you, for example, can narrow your search to locate articles on AIDS and Males and Treatment. Using this process you can find enough information on a subject without being overwhelmed.
(source: http://webster.commnet.edu/library/workbook/critical.htm)
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