根据图片生成讲授视频---Why a Thinker's Guide on How to Study and Learn? This guide is designed not only for students but also for administrators and faculty, to remind us all of the essence of what it is to study academic subjects with discipline. It does not aim to take the intellectual work out of learning—for this would be an insult to the intelligence of our readers. It contributes, rather, toward making intellectual work and deep learning more manageable, practical, and intuitive. Its goal is to foster lifelong learning and the traditional ideal of a liberally educated mind: a mind that questions, probes, and masters a variety of forms of knowledge, through command of itself, intellectual perseverance, and the tools of learning. It respects equally the traditions of John Henry Newman, Bertrand Russell, and Albert Einstein. It does not answer all questions, but rather puts all questions into a clear perspective. It emphasizes that all bona fide fields of study share common intellectual structures and standards of reasonability. It emphasizes that foundational intellectual structures and standards of reasonability are worth learning explicitly and in themselves, since they help us more deeply interconnect and understand all that we learn. It also emphasizes foundational intellectual dispositions and values that define the traits of the disciplined thinker in all fields: intellectual autonomy, intellectual humility, intellectual integrity, intellectual perseverance, intellectual empathy, confidence in reason, and fair-mindedness. On every page, it honors the idea and power of intellectual work. It scorns the idea of knowledge as the memorizing of bits and pieces of information, or as the mere accumulation of so many units or institutional credits. It rejects both dogmatic absolutism and intellectual relativism. It warns us of the danger of ignorance and misconception, and by implication, that of self-deception and illusion in human affairs. It emphasizes the importance of contrasting disciplines whose questions are, by and large, answerable in definitive ways, with those whose questions require multiple perspectives, role- playing, and reasoned judgment. It distinguishes, in short, one-system subjects like physics, chemistry, and math (where disagreement between experts plays a minor role) from competing-systems subjects like history, psychology, and art (where expert disagreement plays a major role). If this thinker's guide is successful, it will serve as a resource to which one can return again and again to garner new depth of meaning and understanding. What is worth learning is worth learning well, and there is nothing better worth learning than the very process of learning itself: the development, through systematic intellectual work of the arts, habits, and strategies, of a DISCIPLINED mind. [Signature] Richard Paul Center for Critical Thinking [Signature] Linda Elder Foundation for Critical Thinking **Page Header:** The Thinker's Guide for Students on How to Study & Learn 1 **Main Title:** How to Use This Guide **Paragraph 1:** In this guide we suggest a variety of strategies for becoming not just a better student but a master student. Some are simple. Others require further explanation and clarification. For example, if you are motivated to improve, you can immediately implement Idea #15 (from "**18 Ideas for Becoming a Master Student**"): "Test yourself before you come to class by trying to summarize, orally or in writing, the main points of the previous class meeting." Your summary may be inaccurate, but nothing can stop you from making the attempt— nothing, that is, but lack of will. **Paragraph 2:** On the other hand, some of the suggestions may require further understanding on your part. Consider Idea #4: "Become a questioner. Engage yourself in lectures and discussions by asking questions. If you don't ask questions, you will probably not discover what you do and do not know." In this case you may need to read further in the guide to get ideas of kinds of questions you can or should ask. **Paragraph 3:** We suggest, therefore, that you employ a two-fold process. First, using 18 Ideas For Becoming A Master Student, compile a personal list of suggestions or strategies you can immediately use. USE THEM IMMEDIATELY. Second, read through the remaining pages one by one looking for further strategies, especially as you acquire insight into items on the initial list of 18 ideas. **Paragraph 4:** For example, you may want to ask more questions in class, but are not sure what to ask. Then, you read about eight basic structures in thinking: purpose, question, information, interpretation, concept, assumption, implication, and point of view. Each of the structures suggests to you possible questions. You then begin to pose some of them in class (Do chemists assume that...?). **Paragraph 5:** Of course, this presupposes that you summon up the courage to raise your hand in class and actually ask questions (questions which your classmates may think odd). For example, you might raise your hand and say, "I was a little confused by chapter III in our text. What is the main idea of the chapter, as you see it?" If you just sit there afraid of what the other students might think, you will probably not ask any questions at all. **Paragraph 6:** Finally, as you successfully implement some of the suggestions, your confidence and motivation should improve. Re-cycling through the guide, again and again, re-thinking what you are and are not doing, should raise you to yet further achievements as a student—a student seeking mastery. **Footer:** ©2011 Foundation for Critical Thinking Press www.criticalthinking.org