Critical Thinking for Helping Professionals: A Skills Based Workbook

Bol

Critical thinking values, knowledge, and skills are integral to evidence-based practice in the helping professions. Practitioners must be able to think clearly, on a daily basis, about decisions that may change their clients' lives. Critical Thinking for Helping Professionals, 3rd Edition, is designed to engage readers as active participants in honing their critical thinking skills, mastering a coherent decision-making process, and integrating the evidence-based practice process into their work with clients. In this interactive skills-based workbook, 37 hands-on exercises offer rich opportunities for students in professional education programs to learn how to make informed decisions. Unique material exploring the use of propaganda in advertising and discussing the research on judgment and problem solving highlight the connection between critical thinking and evidence-based practice. For students in social work, nursing, counseling, and psychology, this new edition of a unique workbook is a fun and thought-provoking way to sharpen and maximize their decision-making skills so that they can provide their clients with the best care possible. * Fun, interactive exercises emphasize learning by doing * Integrates research and practice, practice and policy, and critical thinking and evidence-based practice * Helps readers to recognize how to recognize propaganda, avoid pitfalls in decision making, critically appraise research, and improve their practice * Ideal for graduate and undergraduate courses in research and practice

Bol Partner

Critical thinking values, skills, and knowledge are integral to evidence-based practice in the helping professions. Inflated claims of knowledge, both in the media as well as in the peer-reviewed literature, show critical thinking to be ever more important to decrease the influence of marketing in the guise of scholarship. Practitioners must be able and willing to think critically about decisions that affect clients lives. This requires minimizing the influence of cognitive and affective biases, such as hindsight bias, and avoiding misleading framing of problems that may harm clients but contribute to the profit of involved industries (e.g. ignoring environmental sources of distress and focusing on client characteristics). This book continues to focus on engaging students as active participants in exercises designed to hone their critical thinking skills, drawing on related research and theory in a variety of related areas, including judgement and decision making. Exercises are included to help students enhance their skills in the process of evidence-based practice, including posing clear, relevant questions and locating and critically appraising related research. This fourth edition of Critical Thinking for Helping Professionals is for students of helping professions including social work, nursing, counseling, and psychology. Decision-making skills guided by an ethical compass are vital in all helping professions.