Assessing students critical thinking skills

College

College of Liberal Arts

Document Type

Article

Source Title

LEAPS: MIriam College Faculty Research Journal

Volume

35

First Page

20

Last Page

31

Publication Date

2012

Abstract

Critical thinking has often been cited as one of the primary objectives of curricula especially in tertiary education. Students have to be challenged to question, examine and evaluate ideas and information, rather than to merely absorb data and acquire knowledge. To effectively undertake teaching for thinking, there should be a clear and adequate understanding of the concept of critical thinking and the availability of an appropriate and accessible instrument to assess its development. These are the concerns this paper aimed to address. Toward this end, the paper looked into the expert consensus of what critical thinking is and the skills involved in it as stipulated in the proceedings of the American Philosophical Association (APA) Delphi Project. Criteria were identified by which the execution of the critical thinking skills of analysis, evaluation and inference can be assessed. On the basis of these criteria, a scale was developed consisting of a thirty-five (35) item questionnaire aimed to measure the students' capacity to think critically. Initial test has demonstrated a good test-retest reliability (r=.653, < .01) and a KR-20 coefficient of .708 indicating adequate internal consistency. It also has a high criterion validity (r=.686, < .01) when correlated with the performance rating of students in a critical thinking course.

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Disciplines

Philosophy of Mind

Keywords

Critical thinking; Critical thinking—Ability testing

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