Adventures in Reasoning

Helping students think more critically, communicate ideas more effectively, and work more cooperatively with others are goals widely recognized as indispensable to a proper education. Adventures in Reasoning: Communal Inquiry Through Fantasy Role-Play provides middle school, high school, and even post-secondary teachers with a method to cultivate these crucial skill sets in a way that is engaging, academically rigorous, and also fun. The role-playing approach draws upon the pioneering notion of the community of inquiry as a vehicle for enhancing student learning and development through discussing philosophical concepts and issues. Students create characters that they then use to explore a rich fantasy world filled with practical and conceptual challenges specifically designed to enhance a wide range of cognitive and communication abilities. Drawing together the appeal of fantasy narratives with the rigor of communal inquiry, Adventures in Reasoning provides educators with a rich array of tools through which to engage students' interests, capture their curiosity, and cultivate crucial cognitive and social skills. Some additional key features of this book include:*step-by-step instructions on how to implement fantasy-gaming in the classroom*tips on how to assess students' critical and creative reasoning skills*easy to understand rules for fantasy role-playing*detailed adventure quests provided that target a wide array of skill sets*overview of the pedagogical benefits of introducing philosophy and communal inquiry to middle and high school students*lots of advice and suggestions on how to facilitate an effective community of inquiry and how to accommodate different class sizes and student abilities*recommendations on how to use fantasy role-playing as a type of service learning in college classrooms