REASONING ABOUT REASONING - A COURSE PROJECT

A course project for a sophomore-/junior-level course in thinking, rea soning, and decision making is described. Students in the course obser ve and describe the reasoning style of a partner from the class on fou r different tasks (e.g., geometric analogies and moral dilemmas). Then , they compare the performance across the four tasks to develop an arg ument about how many distinct kinds of reasoning they have observed in their partner. The assignment is designed to illustrate course materi al on theories and models of reasoning in concrete ways. Another and m ore important objective is to elicit from students a degree of critica l thinking and creativity as they develop their own models and conclus ions.