Page 184 - Smart Thinking: Skills for Critical Understanding and Writing, 2nd Ed

ANSWERS, DISCUSSION, AND FURTHER ADVICE 17 1

Chapter 8

Exercise 8.1

At this stage, there is no 'answer'. However you might want to review and organise
your list after having done exercise 8.3.

Exercise 8.2

Here are two further Comments. First, learn how to 'read' effectively ('reading'
includes watching, listening, observing, and so on). The 'knowledge' we want in
those five classes will not have a label that tells us where it fits into this classification
system. Rather, it is our own analysis, while we read, that begins to make these
interconnections between classes of knowledge. Hence active reading—with a keen
awareness of the possible outcomes, the questions to be answered, the extra
questions that might emerge, and so on—is crucial.
Second, everyone is reasonably good at searching for the third of these four types
(basic details and evidence), yet smart thinking is precisely about the way that evidence
gathered in this search can be related to values, assumptions, other possible con-
clusions, and contexts. In that sense, we need to work hardest and learn most about
the other types of information. Experience and study tend to throw up great masses of
'facts', data, or evidence, and the other three types of information get 'hidden' or 'lost';
learn to read through the detail to seek out the more general types of information.

Exercise 8.3

The point of the exercise is not to come to conclusions about the 'right answer' but
to develop your conscious ability to ask questions about the sources of the
information you are seeking. In other words, to be effective reasoners, we need to
do more than ask 'What is in this book/experiment/article/interview that I can use
in my argument?'; we must also ask questions such as:

• Why should I use this source?
• Can I trust this source?
• What sort of source is it: direct? indirect?
• Under what conditions was the information in this source produced?
• What was the original purpose of the source?
• What methods, approaches, or definitions does the source employ?
• Who is it being written for?
• Does it tell me more about the author or about the topic?
• When was it written or performed?
• How does the context of this source affect the information within it?
As noted at the start of chapter 8, good analysis is as much about asking
questions as it is about finding answers. Hence, if our research is to be an active and