Critical Thinking

Tomorrow I'll be seeing some of you for a lecture on critical thinking.
So in addition to the oh-so-lucky ones who are attending, I thought I'd give a general explanation as to what critical thinking is.

Put simply, it's about questioning everything and not assuming facts are unchanging. Because they're not.
Facts are transient, like opinions, countries, people and theories. So that's what tomorrow will partly be about. It'll also touch on how you can pick apart theories and research too. This is a tremendous skill to have in readiness for your dissertation, because the option to be more refined in your selection of materials is key in final year.

We have loads of books (both electronic and paper) which cover the skills required to be a critical thinker. The e-book I'd recommend as a starting point is this one by Aveyard but there's plenty of others on the shelves.

One more thing.
Any of you who've had sessions with me previously will know that I'm interested in engaging with you. Not just talking at you but having a proper two-way conversation. Tomorrow will be no different. However, there are times to speak and times to stay quiet and listen and I've recently been involved in conversations between students and lecturers on the thorny issue of classroom disruption.

In my lectures and training sessions you get one chance. If you continue to talk over me, use your phone or disrupt others I will ask you to leave. My time with students is too precious to be wasted.

That aside, I'm hoping that the lecture will confuse, bemuse and eventually inform you.

See you tomorrow, second years.

Ignorance-based practice.

I've decided to invent a research approach.

If Dave Questionnaire and Mary Quantitative can do it then so can I. So I've decided on Ignorance-Based Practice (or IBP for short). It's partly based on closing my eyes and pointing at things and partly based on how Michael Gove appears to construct education policy.

The most important element, as opposed to Evidence-Based Practice, is that there's no good quality research available to back up any decision I make about anything I do from one minute to the next. Using evidence to make decisions is just so 2005 don't you think? It was so much better when doctors just tried things out and waited to see what happened. Sometimes people died, but not often.
Well not always anyway.
And the alternative was about sharing something called 'best practice' which frankly sounds like something Olympic athletes should be bothered about.

So until I write my book on IBP (I think 'Ignorance is Bliss' has a nice ring to it) you might have to make do with all the evidence based stuff instead. I suppose you could have a look here if you'd  like an entertaining, enlightening, explanation of what evidence based practice is.

But don't forget to buy my book when it comes out.





 

Radio programme on Evidence Based Practice

Firstly, happy new year. I hope 2013 is kind and gentle and holds the door open for you now and again.

I've a few things to blog about over the next few days, but Ben Goldacre's radio programme about Evidence Based Practice (EBP) and social policy comes first. I've mentioned Goldacre before on here; he's a doctor who writes about the importance of reliable research and good reporting of 'the facts'.

For any of you unsure of what EBP is then this show would be a great introduction. Equally, for those of you that have already studied some EBP then rest assured there's enough detail here to give you some new things to think about.

Anyway, the show is available from here on BBC radio i-player for another 5 days, so don't wait too long to take a listen.

Randomised Control Trials pt 2...

Yesterday I wrote a post on Ben Goldacre's government funded report looking into how RCT's can be used in the sphere of social policy.

This morning Goldacre was on the Today programme talking about the report so I thought I'd send you the link to the audio.

So here it is.

Evidence Based Practice and Public Policy - the future

Hello again. I know you may be having a well deserved rest from studying at the moment, but I've got something that I think is worth sharing...

One of my favourite people to follow on Twitter is a man called Ben Goldacre, a doctor and writer who's best known for his Bad Science column, originally published in the Guardian. He specialises in attacking the misuse of statistics, often by the media.

I mention this because he, along with three other experts, has written a new report for the Cabinet Office on how Randomised Control Trials (RCT's) can be implemented in areas of Public Policy. In case you're new to research skills RCT's are where you basically take two (well, usually two) groups and introduce some particular stimulus (for example, participation in a particular drug rehab programme for people suffering with drug problems) for half the participants.


The 'random' part of dividing the RCT's population into groups is crucial. Without that element you'll often get a skewed result due to volunteers being positively biased to succeed to begin with. At the end of the trial you try and ascertain whether the drug programme group are healthier/happier/ than the control group who haven't taken part in the programme. In a nutshell, this supposedly simple method is what we call 'evidence based practice'.

The new report looking into how RCT's can be used in the area of Public Policy is called 'Test, Learn, Adapt'. I think it's really interesting and thankfully it's pretty straightforward to comprehend. Read or download it from here.

I'll happily talk to you about statistics and research methods if you need assistance with that side of things. At the very least I can suggest some decent resources to make the issues clearer.

Right. You can get back to your summer now...