One of my strengths and weaknesses is that I don’t particularly like leaving things unfinished. I would not consider myself a perfectionist, but leaving projects unfinished creates significant irritation. Consequently, although I have always engaged with reading, I have usually read books from beginning to end, just in case I am missing something. Fear of missing out (FOMO) is a reality I face in reading. I have always been an elementary reader. While the Masters program greatly challenged that and indeed forced me into a more inspectional type of reading, there is no doubt that my natural inclination is to read from cover to cover. It’s time to grow up and face the facts. There is no time to do that with the books in the semester’s reading schedule. Indeed, the type of books don’t demand that from the reader. The academic books of last semester and this semester are less a storytelling journey, drawing the reader into a compelling narrative and more of a “pick and mix” idea. In other words, the four reading levels espoused by Adler are incredibly freeing. “It’s ok not to read the whole book!” “It’s ok to begin with the inspectional read and then choose where to go from there!” Not only is this a liberating idea, but it makes the book schedule for the semester seem less daunting.
\nThe four questions to ask of every book create a template for reading the books this semester and will guide our desire to “read further” or not.<\/p>\n
1. What is the book about? 2. What is being said in detail and how? 3. Is the book true in whole or in part? and 4. What of it? These questions to ask at every reading level may lead to a “next level of reading,” i.e. from Inspectional to Analytical or Analytical to Synoptical where necessary. But the questions also allow the reader to put the book down and move on.
\nAdler’s book is compelling until Part 3, allowing the reader to read in further depth in Part 4, assuming that Part 3 is reference-type material, which is useful when reading the types of books mentioned in that section. I look forward to Dr Clarke’s challenge of writing about a book without reading a book and seeing if we can “catch him out.”<\/p>\n
My note-taking has always been “verbatim”. Write down everything I can, as fast as possible, hoping that the critical things will stick, and I have enough to review post-lecture\/reading. How to Take Smart Notes by Ahrens challenges that and provides simple yet profound note-taking tools. At the Oxford advance I was introduced to Obsidian and have been using that since, learning how to connect thoughts and ideas. I plan to use that tool to collate all the ideas I read through the doctoral program and beyond.<\/p>\n
Paul and Elder’s book on critical thinking has simple profundity throughout. Whether it be the simplicity of defining critical thinking on page 2 and the diagrams throughout or the profound step-by-step guide to problem-solving on page 17, the book will invariably become the book to guide critical insight into all other books. My already dog-eared, written, all-over Critical Thinking guide will stay with me throughout the doctoral journey.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
One of my strengths and weaknesses is that I don’t particularly like leaving things unfinished. I would not consider myself a perfectionist, but leaving projects unfinished creates significant irritation. Consequently, although I have always engaged with reading, I have usually read books from beginning to end, just in case I am missing something. Fear of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":191,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[660,2326,2967,290,292],"class_list":["post-34690","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-adler","tag-ahrens","tag-dlgp03","tag-elder","tag-paul","cohort-dlgp03"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34690","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/191"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=34690"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34690\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":34691,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34690\/revisions\/34691"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=34690"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=34690"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=34690"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}