A course project for a sophomore-/junior-level course in thinking, reasoning, and decision making is described. Students in the course observe and describe the reasoning style of a partner from the class on four different tasks (e.g., geometric analogies and moral dilemmas). Then, they compare the performance across the four tasks to develop an argument about how many distinct kinds of reasoning they have observed in their partner. The assignment is designed to illustrate course material on theories and models of reasoning in concrete ways. Another and more important objective is to elicit from students a degree of critical thinking and creativity as they develop their own models and conclusions.
Get full access to this article
View all access options for this article.
References
1.
EricssonK. A.OliverW. L. (1988). Methodology for laboratory research on thinking: Task selection, collection of observations, and data analysis. In StembergR. J.SmithE. E.The psychology of human thought (pp. 392–428). Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.
2.
GilliganC. (1982). In a different voice. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
3.
HayesJ. R. (1989). The complete problem solver (2nd ed.). Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Inc.
4.
PerkinsD. N. (1981). The mind's best work. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
5.
RipsL. J. (1989). The psychology of knights and knaves. Cognition, 31, 85–116.
6.
StembergR. J. (1977). Component processes in analogical reasoning. Psychological Review, 84, 353–378.
7.
StembergR. J. (1986). Intelligence applied: Understanding and increasing your intellectual skills. San Diego: Harcourt Brace.
8.
WasonP. C. (1960). On the failure to eliminate hypotheses in a conceptual task. Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology, 12, 129–140.
9.
WasonP. C. (1977). On the failure to eliminate hypotheses … A second look. In LairdJohnson P. N.WasonP. C.Thinking: Readings in cognitive science (pp. 307–314). Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.
