Studies show only 20 to 40 percent of students read assigned texts and are prepared for class discussions. To address this issue we created the "3-2-1 Reading Assignment," in which students engage in critical reading and deep learning by providing "three" points that summarize the text, "two" points that analyze it,…

It is commonly accepted in the academy that developing a critical thinking capacity and related capabilities will make students more effective thinkers and writers, and that these are desirable traits for graduates to have no matter what path they take after graduation. While most academics agree that critical thinking is an essential component of…

Using Mariolina Salvatori's "difficulty paper" assignment to explore student experiences when reading, this paper examines basic writing students' difficulties with reading in the composition classroom. The authors argue that examining difficulty can provide an entry point for understanding how students experience the (dis)connections…

This paper adds to the nascent literature on teaching research methods and what students learn from courses and assessment. Postgraduate students are often confronted with large amounts of reading, and the content of material can be intimidating. Convincing them also to engage critically with readings is even more difficult. We report on a…

When evaluating the effectiveness of their program, members of the Brooklyn College SEEK Department, a higher education opportunity program, decided to make their pedagogy more student-centered. They created a method of reading instruction, which they named critical inquiry. Its goals are to build community through teaching students to annotate,…

The first reading assignment one educator gives his first-year composition students helps answer their questions about what college work will be like. For this reason, he gives them Neil Postman's "Amusing Ourselves to Death" to read, a book which shows that the late 20th century is undergoing a vast epistemological shift, moving from…

Describes a teaching exercise in an undergraduate psychology course in which students read a book with unconventional perspectives on the field of study. Maintains that the activity develops critical reading and thinking skills by confronting students with controversial views. Identifies some of the books selected to fit the criteria of this…