Critical Reading Across the Curriculum, Volume 2 Social and Natural Sciences

Provides educators with practical strategies, tools, and techniques for teaching critical reading skills to students in the social and natural sciences.

Strong critical reading skills are an essential part of any student’s academic success. Teaching these vital skills requires educators to develop and implement effective teaching strategies, often based on their own critical reading practices. Critical Reading Across the Curriculum, Volume 2: Social and Natural Sciences provides educators with expert insights, real-world methods, and proven strategies to build critical reading skills in students across disciplines. Drawing from the experience of seasoned classroom practitioners, this book presents a dozen essays that offer various applications of critical reading best practices in fields such as anthropology, biology, economics, engineering, political science, and sociology. 

Clear, jargon-free chapters identify, explain, and illustrate best teaching practices for critical reading. Containing numerous practical examples and demonstrations, essays written by experts in their respective fields explain what critical reading requires for their discipline, as well as how to teach those skills in the classroom. Every essay includes a host of pedagogical activities, assignments, and projects that can be used directly or adapted for diverse teaching applications. This valuable book helps educators:

• Develop the skills students need to ask the right questions, consider sources, assess evidence, evaluate arguments, and reason critically
• Encourage students to practice critical reading skills with engaging exercises and activities
• Teach students to establish context and identify contextual connections
• Explain how to read for arguments, including content-based and conceptual arguments
• Adapt and apply teaching strategies to various curricula and disciplines

Critical Reading Across the Curriculum, Volume 2: Social and Natural Sciences is an ideal resource for educators in a wide range of areas, such as college and high school instructors in science and social science disciplines and instructors of graduate education courses.

ANTON BORST, PHD, is an instructional consultant and faculty developer at NYU's center for teaching and learning, and has taught literature and writing at Hunter College, Baruch College, and Pace University. He is co-editor with Robert DiYanni of??Critical Reading Across the Curriculum, Volume I: Humanities.

ROBERT DiYANNI, PHD, is a professor of Humanities at New York University and an instructional consultant at NYU's center for teaching and learning. He is author of Critical and Creative Thinking: A Brief Guide for Teachers and co-editor with Anton Borst of Critical Reading Across the Curriculum, Volume I: Humanities.

Notes on Contributors ix

Preface xiii

Acknowledgments xviii

1 Reading Like an Anthropologist 1
Noelle Molé Liston

Anthropology as Over‐the‐Shoulder Reading 1

Empathetic Reading 4

Reading for Argument 7

Towards Non‐Linear Reading and Representations of Texts 7

Reading for Content‐Based Argument versus Conceptual Argument 9

Reading Context as Argument 11

Establishing Context: An Example 12

Reading Media Sources Like an Anthropologist 13

Classroom Activity: Competing Contextual Arguments 16

References 17

2 Developing Proficiency in Economics Through Critical Reading 18
Anna Shostya and Joseph C. Morreale

Economics and Critical Reading 18

Hansen’s Proficiencies and Critical Reading 20

Reading as an Economist 21

Concluding Thoughts 38

References 39

3 Searching for Story: Reading in Science 41
Andrea McKenzie and Eric Brenner

Building Reading Skills in High School 43

Reading in the First Year of College and Beyond 45

Reading an Experimental Report 45

From Reading to Writing 55

Notes 56

References 56

4 How to Read a Photograph, a Passport, a Product Sample, and a Patent: Teaching with STEM Archives 58
Lindsay Anderberg

How to Read a Photograph 60

Classroom Implementation and Activities 62

Question Set 1 63

Question Set 2 64

How to Read a Passport 66

How to Read a Product Sample 70

How to Read a Patent 73

Activity Modifications and Student Reactions 76

Question Set 1 for EWP Courses 77

Conclusion 80

References 80

5 Critical Reading in Political Science 81
Michael Busch and Garri Rivkin

What is Critical Reading in Political Science? 82

Teaching Critical Reading in Theory 85

Teaching Critical Reading in Practice 90

6 Minor Data: Reading the “Smart” City Through Engaged Pedagogy 100
Gregory T. Donovan

Reading What is Legible and Illegible in the Smart City 102

Engaging Difference Through Critical Service‐Learning 105

Learning and Design Practices 106

Minor Data in Practice: Reading Race in Lincoln Center 111

Conclusion 113

Acknowledgements 114

Notes 114

References 115

7 Critical Reading in Sociology: Developing Confidence to Know the World 117
Jesse Goldstein

Assignment 1: In‐Depth Interviews as a Model for Critical Dialogue 118

Assignment 2: Artifact Analysis 121

Assignment 3: Literature Analysis 124

Assignment 4: Reverse Outline 129

Conclusion: Always More Work to Be Done, Never Enough Time to Do It 130

8 Critical Reading in Business Education 132
Robert Lyon

Strategic Critical Reading 133

Strategic Critical Reading in the Social Sciences 136

Conclusion 150

References 151

9 How to Read a Scientific Article: The QDAFI Method of Structured Relevant Gist 152
Pascal Wallisch

Expert and Non‐Expert Readers 152

The QDAFI Method: An Overview 154

Benefits of the QDAFI Method 160

A Demonstration 161

Conclusion 163

Acknowledgments 163

References 164

10 A Political Science Pedagogy of Critical Cosmopolitanism 165
Michael S. Rodriguez

Introduction 165

Exercise 1: The Method of Substantiation 166

Exercise 1 Continued: Intellectual Empathy and Tacit Intellectual Wisdom 168

Exercise 2: Global Awareness as Pedagogy 170

Exercise 3: Combining Approaches 172

Theoretical Background 172

The Pedagogy of Cosmopolitanism 174

Conclusion 177

References 177

11 Text(ured) Considerations: Critical Reading in its Digital and Social Contexts 179
Kiersten Greene

Introduction 179

Thinking Aloud 181

Digital Annotation 186

Reading the Room for Equity 190

Final Thoughts 195

References 195

12 Transparency, Encouragement, and Autonomy: Teaching Critically Engaged Reading in Sociology 197
Deborah Gambs

Leveling the Playing Field Through Transparency 199

Encouraging Deep Reading 205

Teaching with Your Mouth Shut 210

Conclusion 212

References 212

13 Critical Reading with STS: Interdisciplinary Inspiration for the Science Classroom 214
Christopher Leslie

Introduction 214

Power and the Social Construction of Science and Technology 218

Darwin and Melville: A Pedagogical Case Study 222

Conclusion 230

References 231

Index 233

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