Picking a Book

For the semester long research project I have to do, I am going to research people with Down Syndrome, and in specific, the medical advances that have occurred since it was first diagnosed.  I'll be doing specific research on the advances, but also general research on the topic since I don't know very much about people with Down Syndrome. When I first started the research on the SCSU library page, I went to advance search, and searched for Down Syndrome and Medical Advances, and sadly, no results came back.  I then searched simply for Down Syndrome and 91 results came back, and it seemed to be a lot of books for parents.  Then I searched Down Syndrome and diagnosis and only returned one result that is a government document.  When I searched the public library website and typed in Down Syndrome and Medicine in the advance search, 2 results came back, one for bowl movements and the other was children stories who have Down Syndrome.  I feel like I'm lucking out! When I went back to the SCSU library search, I found the section that has ebooks and found a couple there.  I personally don't like ebooks, I don't find them enjoying to read, I like being able to hold a book and to make markings, whether its highlighting or if I can't do that, post it marks.  I read a paragraph of one of the ebooks and stopped because I disliked it so much!  I have a smart phone, and can access the internet, so I would assume I can pull up ebooks on my phone, but I know I would never use that feature.  As I said earlier I tried the public library search.  When I just searched for Down Syndrome, I came across a lot of fictional books which I wouldn't use for research, so I personally didn't find the public library to be as useful.

What do you assume to be true about ______?

I was asked to think about a vulnerable population that I don't know very much about, or that I have a slight fear of.  When I was first asked to think about a group,  my mind drew a blank.  I'm not saying I know everything about all the populations in the world, but there wasn't a particular group that came to my mind that really scared me.  Throughout the week, I thought a lot about this subject, thought about if a certain person walked into the store I managed, which kind of persn would I most be hestitant about.  I still don't have a very clear idea, but a group that has come to mind, (and I do apologize if I offend anyone, I want to be more educated about this topic) is people with Down Sydrome. 

I would like to consider myself an intellegent person, and I undersatnd my fear of people with Down Sydrome is irrational and unneccesary, but it's one of those things I can't help.  I think my fear stems off of not knowing what they are capable of.  I know each person with Down Sydrome has different severities of the sydrome, so not knowing how large their brain capacity is, or not knowing what kind of things make them angry, because I have heard they are an unstable population, whether you are their best friend or not, they may snap.  But I suppose any person could.  I have also heard that people with Down Sydrome are very smart, but possibly only smart when it comes to certain topics, like some may know everything there is to know about air planes, while others may know everything about boats.  That part slightly scares me, because it makes me wonder how they decide that's the most interesting thing, and that's what they decide to focus on so much instead of other things. 

I think the biggest struggle I will have on doing research about this is going out of my comfort zone and learning about a population that has frightened me for many years.  I know it will be refreshing once I learn more about them.  Another struggle is the guilt.  Voicing that I am afraid of a particular group makes me feel guilty, mankind has come a long way in making people equal and making everyone understand each other, and I take pride in myself for trying to give everyone an equal oppurtunity in my mind when I first meet them, to try and not past too much judgement, but deep down, I haven't given everyone that equal oppurtunity and I feel guilty for doing so.  I hope by doing this research, I can educate myself better.

What is Critical Thinking?

My definition of critial thinking is to think hard about something, to think about a certian subject in not just your own point of views, but also in the views of others and how they may feel about that subject.  I have taken a critical thinking class at SCSU already, so I have heard it in class.  To an expert, by the name of Peter A. Facione, in his article titled, Critical Thinking: What Is it and why it counts,  critical thinking means, "We understood critical thinking to be purposeful, self-regulatory judgment which reselts in interpretaion, analysis, evaluation, and inference, as well as explaination of the evidential, conceptual, methodological, criteriological, or contextual considerations upon which that judgement is based."   I found that quote from the website https://mail.stcloudstate.edu/owa/redir.aspx?C=91656436996e4968b11031b53be035a0&URL=http%3a%2f%2fwww.aacu.org%2fmeetings%2fpdfs%2fcriticalthinking.pdf.  The author goes into great detail about the different components one needs to know and understand it order to fully undetstand what critical thinking is.  The connection between critical thinking and our class is that we all need to think about what each author may be trying to convey when we are doing our research, to make sure what they are saying, and what we think they are saying is the same thing.