ati critical thinking assessment

ati critical thinking assessment

The Importance of Critical Thinking Assessment

1. Introduction

At it was not until the mid 1980s that an interest in assessing critical thinking spawned a burgeoning of tests of critical thinking (Ennis, 1989; 1993). It is only in the last 15 years that assessment in critical thinking has an established position in the scholarship of teaching and learning with critical thinking. This growth has come with increasing expectations regarding student learning outcomes, leading once again to psychology being a forerunner in defining outcomes. For example, the American Psychological Association goals for the undergraduate psychology major include communication and research skills as well as critical thinking, with explicit statements that the student should be able to both think critically and understand and apply concepts from psychology (Halpern, 2003). This has provided a basis for defining and testing these skills with the APA Assessment Conference in 1996 providing a consensus definition of critical thinking from which specific assessment criteria can be drawn (p. 23). These developments in psychology education are in accord with increasing interest in teaching and learning in higher education with a plethora of disciplinary efforts to define and assess learning outcomes. Assessment of critical thinking is now a part of the agenda for many tertiary institutions and programs. Today there are numerous and differing assessments of critical thinking at different levels of education and settings from primary education to the workforce (Ennis, 2003). A wide variety of educators are interested in assessing critical thinking given its status as an important learning outcome. This includes not only discipline specific educators but also those with a vested interest in critical thinking education, cognitive and educational psychologists, and policy makers. Today there is a growing list of tertiary institutions that articulate clear expectations for students to develop and demonstrate critical and analytical thinking. These factors provide a very different climate for the emergence of assessment in critical thinking compared to two decades ago where the general climate in education was at first, simply convincing educators of the value of critical thinking and second, teaching it in the first place. With the growing interest in assessing critical thinking, the state and efficacy of teaching critical thinking becomes a crucial concern for educators. Processes involved in defining and assessing critical thinking can therefore provide insights into the best practices for teaching critical thinking and facilitating its development as an educational outcome.

Critical thinking is an important educational outcome for Australian higher education. The literature on critical thinking has roots in two primary academic disciplines, philosophy and psychology (Lewis & Smith, 1993). Over the past 30 years, both disciplines have generated a substantial amount of research dedicated to improving critical thinking. The interest in psychology was sparked via an educational mandate from the American Psychological Association in 1949 that required psychology to be taught as a science (Goodwin, 1999). This led to efforts to teach scientific thinking and subsequently critical thinking with published curriculum for psychology education and psychology education itself becoming an arena in which to study and apply critical thinking. The trend to teach critical thinking in psychology developed in parallel to curriculum being developed in other disciplines with educational efforts increasing in the 1980s (Halonen, 1995).

2. Benefits of Critical Thinking Assessment

– Enhanced self-understanding. Without critical thinking and self-understanding, self-assessment is unlikely and problematic. Where the learning goal is enduring and transferable life skill (e.g., proficiently solving some class of problem, artful writing), a subjective grade is to some extent a secondary game. The student wants to accurately judge if the skill learning was sufficient, where and why skill is lacking, and what to do about it. Self-assessment becomes the skill in question. This skill of self-assessment is simultaneously a skill of self-motivation and self-regulation in area of endeavor. The student who is practicing self-regulation will seek clear, meaningful, actionable feedback that informs the picture and the next step. A student’s aptitude for self-assessment and for insightfully seeking and using feedback is best measured by the evidence of his ability to critical think. For these students, standardized tests of skill level will increase their awareness for the gaps and the next steps. Although the most direct evidence is from test scores, indirect evidence is still evidence. High quality performances have often come from students who see potential for a great performance and value the instrumentation and rehearsals. Even in cases where students exhibit higher order skill, it is advantageous to capture these skills at a time when students attribute their performance level to internal causes and see value in developing this ability further.

– Evaluation and improvement of faculty teaching. Critical thinking is a broadly applicable skill. People who apply critical thinking as they acquire knowledge think about their thinking, what it means to have knowledge of something, how they come to have knowledge, and what it means to speak with understanding. Critical thinkers seek an epistemic understanding. Their awareness of thinking begins at an early stage. Because critical thinking is a thinking skill (versus a subject area), it applies to all subjects, in all areas of study, and at all levels of instruction. Thus, it is applicable to students as well as faculty, student life and administration. Although CT is a core thinking skill, it is learned better in the context of application to, for example, a discipline, department, program, section of class, etc. If critical thinking skills are to be cultivated in a scalable way, the locus of that skill cultivation can be in subject area courses, but also must occur in writing and communication, at the lower division, in general education, and in co-curricular activities. This distribution implies that some level of institutional support or scaffolding may be necessary to motivate faculty development and to foster environments supportive of student skill development. A process of assessment, with an eye toward meta-cognitive skill cultivation, is a powerful tool to guide planning and evaluation.

– Evaluation and improvement of student learning. Critical thinking is not a luxury reserved for the elite. Building, sustaining, and using students’ thinking skills are tasks of fundamental importance in education. For the sake of the long-term welfare of students and society, it is clearly crucial.

These benefits may be realized at the institutional or program level, and to an extent, at the level of the individual student. Benefits at the institutional or program level include:

3. Components of a Successful Assessment

Students at a high level of critical thinking are able to apply skills and have knowledge of the components to think critically. Many conversational and behavior quality indicators have been identified that relate to critical thinking, and because these quality indicators are only seen in the context of specific tasks, some have attempted to identify the behavioral characteristics of critical thinkers. Facione (1990) found that critical thinkers are inquisitive and are generally open to new ideas. They are able to infer and recognize assumptions that underlie propaganda and disguised messages. They are able to use information and make precise distinctions and provide relevant implications and consequences from what they know. In an attempt to measure critical thinking skill and ability, the Watson-Glaser Critical Thinking Appraisal has been developed. This test has been used in the US for 60 years to measure critical thinking in the areas of reading, writing, and math. The Test of Critical Thinking (TCTT) has been recently developed and is intended to both test and teach critical thinking skill and ability. It has been tried out in Australia and the UK with a range of students from school age through to the university. The developers of the test to date have found it a useful measure and a valuable teaching and learning aid.

4. Implementing Critical Thinking Assessment

4.1 Quantitative Assessment: Measuring college students’ general cognitive development. James Pellegrino and Karen Hanson, also part of the AAC&U project, recommend embedding ‘classroom-based performance assessment’ and ‘standards-based assessment’ into the curricula from a range of courses and programs. These assessments should seek to test either a general education program outcome (e.g., writing and the communicative process) or seek to evaluate discipline-specific higher-order thinking. This method of assessments dovetails nicely with the no/low stakes assessment style recommended by the course. A more direct method of assessing general cognitive development, standardized tests can be given at the beginning and end of a college educational program to track the overall improvement of students. However, the most useful measure of general cognitive development may be gained through norm-referenced testing. Known as the gold standard for reliability and validity in standardized testing, norm-referenced testing provides indications of where a student, academic program, or institution ranks compared to peer programs or institutions. Developed at the University of Kentucky in 2001, The Holistic Critical Thinking Scoring Rubric (HCTSR) is a standardized test that is designed to assess the two overarching general education outcomes of The Kentucky Plan; excellent communication and problem-solving/critical thinking. This method of testing uses a norm-referenced measure to assign a ranking to college student performance in these critical thinking dimensions.

Require all students: Incorporating critical thinking assessment as a vital part of all first level college/university students in order to best capture what experts expect from college graduates. According to AAC&U’s 2005 report, this can be accomplished with the use of e-portfolios and student reflective journals that establish a clear record of the student’s activities and achievement over time at the institution. Instance e-portfolios and reflective journals can be assessed at earlier and later stages in a student’s academic program to monitor improvement in critical thinking performance. Other realistic tools may include assessment of selected student papers, written work from course-embedded tests and assignments, and responses to standardized critical thinking tests.

As to language use, what tools do they need and how can you deliver these tools? This section addresses logistical questions of what a critical thinking assessment tool should look like, offering specific recommendations and examples. Both qualitative and quantitative assessment tools are addressed.

5. Conclusion

In conclusion, it is easy to list the changes that we want to see in education toward critical thinking. We are attempting to induce a sea change in education through the infusion of critical thinking throughout all studies. A curriculum constructed around thought-infused learning, teaching the elements of thought and intellectual standards with emphasis on practice, coupled with a major shift to assessment of thought throughout all studies and a mirror assessment of student thought culminating in a more thoughtful society. Yet while the actions seem simple, the movement is complex and the changes substantial. We are selling a bill of goods to an educational establishment and educational consumer that are looking for a quick fix in a time of economic dislocation and disorder. We are asking educators to reconceptualize their teaching and it is reasonable to expect it will take time for peers and students to develop a shared articulation of thought. And finally, a change to thinking itself is no small task. In saying that the journey will be long and arduous, we must first equip ourselves and our students with the tool of thought itself. If we are agreed that thought is the path to thought, then it must be our first step, and the first steps are always the most difficult.

What we want to assess is what is postulated by the higher order model, that is we want to assess critical thinking. The ideal would be an assessment that mirrors the tuition, moving students successively through the elements of thought and the affective and cognitive infusing the later elements to reach a global assessment of thought. As we contemplate how our students are learning to think, we are immediately drawn to the question of how to assess their progress. This is a sticky issue in the atmosphere of easily measurable results. If we consider critical thinking as the goal of education, we must ask how can we best assess the extent to which our students are learning it. This leads us to consideration of a single inclusive assessment for the many elements of thought and the possible development of a general assessment of critical thinking.

This essay tackles the importance of critical thinking assessment. Critical thinking has been an important issue in education, and has become quite the trendy buzzword in education. In the start of the 21st century, there is an even greater emphasis placed on critical thinking, be it in the 2001 Mac Report, No Child Left Behind, or the P21 framework. The bottom line is that we are trying to produce students who can think on a higher level. This fundamental premise, the need for students to be able to think effectively, is the driving force behind all the recent attention to critical thinking. Assessment is an integral part of that heightened critical thinking. The assessment of thought is both more and less than we thought. It is more in that it is foundational to assessment in the three categories cited often by academics: assessment for learning, assessment of learning, assessment as learning. It is less in that thought assessment is not just another form of assessment to be added to the existing repertoire of testing inferences. Yet the above question what we want to assess, in what way and assessing it to what level it confuses the issue somewhat. Given that the goal is to empower students to think critically, it would seem the students’ work should be assessed in terms of its empowerment to critical thinking.