CHAPTER 6
LOGICAL AND CRITICAL THINKING:
ANALYZING TEAM INFORMATION
In this chapter, we prepare students to manage the information they’ve gathered as a team. To
engage in cooperative analysis and to use data wisely and ethically, students will learn to
evaluate their information critically and to reason logically from the evidence they’ve identified.
We use a simplified Toulmin method of analyzing arguments, explained in terms of deductive
and inductive reasoning. Students are directed toward looking at probabilities and qualifications
of arguments, ethical dimensions, and valid conclusions as issues in testing their analysis and
reasoning. They are introduced to fallacies, and to the importance of examining how
assumptions and values affect their collaboration and reasoning in using data.
Chapter Outline
Evaluating Information Critically
Norms for Critical Analysis
Criteria for Analysis
The Information’s Source
The Information Itself
Internet Information’s Virtual Locations
Reasoning Logically
Drawing Conclusions
Analyzing Warrants
Identifying Reservations
Qualifying Conclusions
Examining Complete Arguments
Testing Reasoning
Inductive Reasoning
Deductive Reasoning
Cause-Effect Reasoning
Fallacious Reasoning
Examining Assumptions and Values
Nature and Effects
Cultural and Gender Influences
Summary
Exercises
Discussion Suggestions For Boxes
Critical Thinking
This box emphasizes the need for concrete strategies of critical thinking and decision making in
the nursing and medical professions. The nursing textbook emphasize[s] interdisciplinary team
work and evidence-based practice among their many recommendations. The box talks about the
Defensive versus Productive Reasoning
Single and double loop learning
A good way to get students to understand the message in this excerpt is to ask them to apply it to
their own experience. When might they have used defensive reasoning to rationalize a failure or
to avoid learning? If students can’t pinpoint this behavior in themselves, ask them to think of a
time they have observed someone else using defensive reasoning. (It’s always easier to see it in
someone else!) A student, for example, might intend to do a good term paper, but procrastinate
Discussion Suggestions for Case Analysis 6.1
BLT Research Team, Inc.: Science and The Circles
Examining web site, apply the four “questions to consider” to sections of the web site for further
evaluation of BLT Research Team, Inc’s validity in the way they formed their team and plan for
conducting crop circle research.
Talking Points:
• Does the web site show a good or poor model for building and running an organization
devoted to a controversial research area?
• How much can you further answer of the four questions in the textbook’s case study from
the web site?
Suggestions For Guiding Chapter Exercises
Exercise 1: Self-Analysis of Logical and Critical Thinking
This exercise is good to use for ongoing teams, or as an individual self-assessment. It also works
2. Have students rate themselves individually on Form 6.1.
4. Subdivide the teams that have worked together on the exercise into groups of three or
four.
5. Ask each student to complete a form for each other person in the subdivided group—in
7. Ask students to compare the opinions of others with their opinions of themselves.
9. Ask students to look for their strengths and to identify why they are strengths and what
they do that makes them work. For example, is a student who perceives herself as
“logical” seen by teammates as logical.
Do students see being logical as a strength because it helps to see issues clearly and
arrive at good decisions. What does she do that makes her appear logical to her
teammates? Perhaps she subdivides ideas into clear categories; perhaps she points
10. In a paper or the journal (Syllabus B), you might ask students to respond to what they
learned about their own logical and analytical abilities.
Exercise 2: Group Dynamic Critique
If you plan to use the Twelve Angry Men Film Case Study, this exercise is a good one to use
with it. Or, you can use a live discussion in class or provide a tape. If you use a class discussion,
it helps to videotape it so you can play it back to check perceptions. Have members do their
tallies separately, and then discuss what they found.
Exercise 3: Mapping Data, Warrant and Conclusions
This is a difficult exercise for many students; it does, however, help them to see the relationships
among data, warrant, and claim. It also helps them to see the issues related to probability,
qualifying and backing arguments, and making ethically defensible statements.
Exercise 4: Cooperatively Analyzing Reasoning
This provides an excellent opportunity for teams or ad hoc groups to work together on
collaborative analysis. Ask students to be as objective as possible, to suspend their own values
and assumptions for the moment, and to analyze the statement dispassionately whether they
agree with it or not.
Statement a. Although many observations are possible, some that students might recognize are:
The statement represents an artificial dilemma. Are these the only two interpretations of
abortion? Is right to choose the polar opposite of right to life? Is the conflict between rights the
Statement b. Here is a sweeping generalization. The term “only” obscures other alternatives.
There may be reason to believe it is true, but ask students to think of what evidence the statement
Statement c. Ask students to assume for a moment that educational excellence is declining. If
so, is it fair or logical to conclude that television is the only cause? This is a false cause or
sweeping generalization fallacy.
What other causes might there be? Can there be multiple causes? You might want to use a
Statement d. This, too, is a sweeping generalization. Ask students to consider the people they
know who smoke. Do they all infringe on others’ rights? Many do, of course—but many do not.
Statement e. Ask students to find how this hypothesis creates a fallacy of generalization. They
should notice that it needs data to support it, of course. But it also does these things:
Statement f. This statement represents circumlocution. Further, its circumlocution cloaks its
generalized use of “people”—which might imply all people.
Even though there probably is a lot of truth in the statement, it takes the listener or reader in
Additional Exercises
EXERCISE 1: DATA EVALUATION
Objective
To practice looking at data with cooperative, critical analysis
Time
Half an hour
Materials
2. A copy of the Data Sheet for each student
Procedure
2. Give each student a Data Sheet.
4. Debrief.
Preparation of Materials
Data Sheet
Your group is a task force studying the effect of alcohol and cigarette advertising on children and
teenagers. You’ve found the following materials:
1. Copies of posters with Anheuser Busch’s Spuds McKenzie, the “party animal,” (familiar on
2. A poster of the adorable cartoon camel used for Camel Cigarettes, an image seen on
billboards, ads, and other promotional materials that children and teenagers see.
3. Data that 90% of smokers start smoking before age 21. Every day 3,000 more teenagers and
5. Photographs of large Virginia Slims billboards behind the healthy young female athletes at
the tournaments the company sponsors.
6. A quotation:
How well do these data stack up against the criteria for credible data? What conclusions could
Debriefing
Circulate among groups and help them identify some of the issues they find in the data.
Although these data support an extremely important issue—the effect on children of advertising
alcohol and cigarettes—the data presented here are insufficient. Ask the students to see where
the problems lie, and think of what they would do to find more and better data.
1. The posters are powerful messages to young people that make the products seem cute and
2. The data that support the numbers of teenagers and younger children who are smoking
3. Students probably will realize that tobacco company brochures are issued for the purposes of
supporting its profits. Ask them about research done under such a circumstance. Can they rely
4. What does the Virginia Slims campaign imply about the product? To what extent do
students think such a campaign affects young people? And how would they use the photographs
as evidence? For what claim and warrant would the photographs be valid evidence?
EXERCISE 2: AN ETHICAL CODE FOR INFORMATION
Objective
To focus students’ attention on the ethical issues in using information.
Time
Half an hour to forty-five minutes
Materials
Paper and pencils; newsprint and markers, tape
Procedure
1. Ask students to review what they’ve learned about ethics in groups and teams and to think
2. Divide students into groups and tell them their task is to create an ethical code of behavior
4. Ask the groups to print their lists on the newsprint sheets.
6. Tell students to circulate around the room, reading the ethical codes.
8. Debrief the experience.
Debriefing
Because ethical issues strike at people’s value systems, there may have been conflict as students
discussed these. Having students simply read others’ codes, rather than engage in an immediate
discussion of them, helps students to think more open-mindedly about the other groups’ ideas.
They don’t have to defend their own against encroachment. In debriefing the exercise, you might
ask:
1. As you developed your code, what influenced your opinions? Religion? Law? Family
experience? Culture? Your gender? Your experiences? Students who come, for example, from
2. Where and how did members of your group agree? Disagree? How did you resolve your
disagreements? What do you think you felt most strongly about? What was more easily
negotiable?
3. To what extent and how did you use real or hypothetical cases to develop your ideas? Issues
4. In what ways did you adapt your own code after looking at others, if at all? They may have
been firmly committed to what they produced, and closed to others’ ideas. Try to get them to
open up to considering others’ views.
Case Study: The Lousy Logo
The new president of the Sensitive Souls Institute, an institution of higher learning, wanted a
new logo. He talked with his top executives, then called in a designer and told her what he
wanted. When the new logo was ready, the president surprised the institute with it. Everybody
hated it. It didn’t seem to convey the mission or syntality of the organization; nobody could tell
what it was supposed to say; it cost a lot of money and the institute was on a tight budget.
Worse, when a group of faculty got together and did a marketing study they found the logo was a
failure.
Consider these questions:
Suggestions for Debriefing
1. Ask students to consider the bases for the selection of the logo. The president had already
2. Students will see that the marketing study should have been done first; information from that
would have provided a foundation for creating an appropriate logo.
4. For an excellent case study of the Challenger disaster, see Jaksa, J. A., & Pritchard, M. S.
165-185.
Film Case Study: Twelve Angry Men
The tape for Twelve Angry Men should be available on video rental. It provides an excellent case
analysis for students in conjunction with this and/or with Chapter 9, as well as with other areas of
the text.
Ask students to consider:
1. In what ways was the evidence inadequate?
2. How did the jurors develop their evidence to give them more complete and accurate
information?
Additional Resources
Print Resources
Baron, J. B., & Sternberg, R. J. (Eds.). (1987). Teaching thinking skills: Theory and practice.
New York: W. H. Freeman and Company.
de Bono, E. (1994). de Bono’s thinking course. (Rev. ed.). New York, NY: Facts on File.
Hackley, Susan. (Oct 2007). One Reasonable and Inquiring Man: 12 Angry Men as a
Negotiation-Teaching Tool. Negotiation Journal, 23.4 p463 (6).
Haynes, T. B., & Schroeder, C. (August, 1989). Activities to stimulate critical thinking.
Vocational Education Journal, 64 (5), 30-31.
Media Resources
Critical thinking: How to evaluate information and draw conclusions. Carlsbad, CA: CRM
Films. 47 min