Critical Thinking: The Foundation of Education in a Technological World J. R. Reid1, P. R. Anderson 2

1 Corporate Development Associcates, Inc., 2201 S. Highland Ave, Lombard, Il, USA, 60148, jrreid5530@sbcglobal.net 2. Governors State University, University Park, Il, USA, 60466, panderson@govst.edu

Problem-solving, decision-making, and innovative thinking are conceded to be important skills needed in an increasingly technologically oriented environment. Conventionally, these skills are considered functions within the process known as critical thinking. Critical thinking can be defined as, “The conjunction of knowledge, skills, and strategies that promotes improved problem solving, rational decision making, and enhanced creativity” [1, 2]. Although the topic has been studied for many decades, critics insist that critical thinking cannot be taught, learned, or transferred to other domains. Very few researchers had investigated the acquisition of critical thinking skills using quantitative methods. None of those researchers quantitatively demonstrated improved critical thinking skills deriving from instruction in critical thinking. This chapter reports a quantitative study that demonstrated critical thinking can be taught, learned and transferred between domains.

Keywords Critical Thinking; Teaching for Critical Thinking; California Critical Thinking Skills Test

1. Introduction.

The research questions that this study intended to answer were can critical thinking can be taught, can it be learned, and can it be transferred to other domains? These questions have been debated for many years and by many authors. Many authors are convinced that it cannot be taught, learned, or transferred. Case [3], Rotherham and Willingham [4], and Senechal [5] cited the necessity of domain knowledge. Rosaen [6] suggested the cause is the relegation of the teaching of critical thinking skills to so-called higher-order skills. Willingham [7} declared the lack of teacher’s critical thinking skills, and McKee [8] declared that teachers’ refusal to incorporate critical thinking into their classroom instruction as the cause. Bloom and Weisberg [9] attested its cause as conflicts between sophisticated explanations provided by critical thinking as opposed to intuitive explanations developed in childhood. In a personal communication, Dr. Ken Silber of Northern Illinois University declared that nobody who had tried to demonstrate that critical thinking could be taught or learned had succeeded [10]. In his words, they “… hadn’t moved the needle.” Yet, others suggest that, if the proper methods are employed, then critical thinking skills could be learned and transferred. Facione, Facione and Giancarlo [11] reasoned that, given the empirical results, an effective approach to teaching for and about thinking must include strategies for building intellectual character. Facione [12] discussed the needs for training in critical thinking skills and for developing the disposition for critical thinking. Diane Halpern has written extensively regarding the teaching of critical thinking and its acquisition by students [13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19]. Leppard [20] opined that 30 years of research and scholarship supported the view that critical and creative thinking can be taught if appropriate instructional strategies are used. Vermunt [21] asserted, “…the results indicate that in order to bring about constructive and independent learning behavior, instruction should be mainly aimed at developing self-regulated control strategies and mental learning models in students in which the construction and use of knowledge are central.” Regardless of the conflicting opinions of the experts, few researchers have reported validated results of teaching, learning, or transfer of critical thinking skills. This lack of validation is one of the underlying causes of skepticism regarding the teaching or learning of critical thinking skills. One of the few to present a validated study was Westbrook [22], who reported significant gains in logic and reasoning using descriptive learning techniques, assessed using Lawson’s Seven Logic Tasks and Lawson’s Classroom Test of Scientific Reasoning. Combs [23] reported that cooperative learning increased students’ scores in the Iowa Tests of Basic Learning. Tiwari, Lai, and Yuen [24] used the California Critical Thinking Disposition Inventory to demonstrate that students involved in Problem-Based Learning achieved higher scores in Overall Improvement, Truth Seeking, Analyticity, and Critical Thinking Confidence. In pharmacology, Abbate [25] used the ATI Critical Thinking Assessment to find weak trends towards improved Explanation, Inference, Evaluation, and Self-Regulation along with a weak positive relationship to overall Critical Thinking. However, none of these researchers demonstrated improved critical thinking skills deriving from a course in critical thinking. The research problem required the development and implementation of a course of study in critical thinking, since no such course was extant. Therefore, a sound theoretical foundation in critical thinking was the first requirement in the development of such a course of study. Secondly, an instructional design model was needed to provide the pedagogical content and structure needed to develop and implement such a course of study. Third, a validated and reliable assessment was needed to measure any acquisition of critical thinking skills that might occur. Fourth, a sufficiently large number of test subjects had to be located and who would agree to participate in the course and research study.

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1.1 First Requirement: Theoretical Foundation

The first need was satisfied by the extensive literature generated by Dr. Diane Halpern, Director of the Berger Institute for Work, Family, and Children at Claremont McKenna College, Past President of the American Psychological Society, and recognized expert in the field of critical thinking. In 1989, she published Thought and Knowledge - An Introduction to Critical Thinking, describing in exquisite detail the technical parameters of critical thinking [13]. However, this tome was not only large and intimidating, but ill suited for use as a textbook. Subsequently, Halpern published Critical thinking across the Curriculum: A Brief Edition of Thought and Knowledge [15]. In 1998, Halpern provided the theoretical content and structure of such a course of study, which she called “Teaching for Critical Thinking” [16]. Halpern defined the goal of “Teaching for Critical Thinking” [TCT] as “… to promote the learning of transcontextual thinking skills and the awareness of and ability to direct one's own thinking and learning.”. Within this context, she proposed a “… model for teaching Critical Thinking skills so they will transfer across domains of knowledge …” consisting of four constituent elements. The first component of the TCT pedagogical strategy was the dispositional or attitudinal element. The second was instruction in and practice of Critical Thinking skills. The third component was structure training to facilitate transfer across contexts or domains. Finally, a metacognitive component was used to direct and assess thinking.

1.2 Second Requirement: Instructional Design

Although Halpern presented both a construct and structure, it was essential to translate that into instructional content. Foshay, Silber and Stelnicki [26] provided the needed instructional design methodology. Borrowing heavily from both Merrill [27, 28] and from Clark [29, 30], Foshay, Silber and Stelnicki wrote Writing Training Materials That Work: How to Train Anyone to Do Anything [26]. In this book, they describe a five-step model of instructional design that provides an underlying methodology to develop a course of study based on Halpern’s model.

1.3 Third Requirement: Assessment Instruments

The first assessment instrument was the California Critical Thinking Skills Test, as recommended by Diane Halpern [14]. This test derives from a pioneering effort by Peter Facione [31] in which he convened a Delphi panel of 46 scholars and educators to develop the principles upon which his critical thinking assessment instruments were developed and implemented. One of these instruments, the California Critical Thinking Skills Test [CCTST], has undergone vigorous and extensive testing, evaluation, and validation [32, 33, 34, 35]. This assessment instrument uses five scales to measure Critical Thinking Skills: Inductive Reasoning, Deductive Reasoning, Analysis, Inference, and Evaluation, in addition to an Overall score and a Percentile score relative to others of similar academic experience. In this study, the CCTST was used in two different ways. In the first instance, the CCTST was used as a pre-test/post-test in both of the Experimental classes to determine if critical thinking skills had been acquired. In the second instance, the CCTST was used to determine the difference between the acquisitions of critical thinking skills in the Experimental classes relative to the CT skills acquired in the Control class. The second assessment instruments were 10-question, True/False, Chapter quizzes provided by Halpern and Riggio [19]. The quizzes, designed to test the student’s knowledge, were comprehensive for each chapter. They were published in Halpern and Riggio’s text, which was intended to be used in conjunction with Critical Thinking Across the Curriculum [15], the main CT text for the researcher’s pedagogical treatment. The Halpern and Riggio Module/chapter quizzes were shown to be reliable and to be valid in terms of their construct validity, content validity and user validity [1, 31, 32, 33, 34, 35].

1.4 Fourth Requirement: Experimental Venue

The venue for the course of instruction was a senior class in business administration at a Midwestern university. The academic instructor required that the critical thinking course be integrated into the established course of study and assess business problems and solutions. The researcher and the academic instructor worked together to implement critical thinking content into the business course case studies, which were major components contained in the business class textbook.

2. Method

The sample was of three sections of a senior level, capstone course in business administration, two of which were Experimental and one was the Control. Thirty-nine students were enrolled in both the two experimental classes. Sixteen individuals took part in one or more of the research phases in the first class. Twenty-three took part in one or more phases of the research in the second class. The final sample (n=34) contained only those students who completed both

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the pre-test and the post-test of the California Critical Thinking Skills Test [24]. Twenty-one (n=21) students participated in the Control class. The researcher developed a pedagogical treatment based on Halpern’s Critical Thinking Across the Curriculum [15], congruent with the principles of the Thinking for Critical Thinking model while using the Cognitive Training Model [10] as the instructional design paradigm. This unit of instruction consisted of 11 modules of approximately 1-1/2 hours of class time. This corresponded to one introductory module, nine book chapters of the Halpern text, and one wrap-up session. Each module, corresponding to a chapter in the Halpern text [19], contained a True/False quiz; a computer-aided, multi-media assisted lecture; a discussion of the previous chapter assignment; a new chapter assignment; and a business case study. It was important to determine if the critical thinking component was transferred to the business course. This was accomplished by incorporating CT skills into the weekly case study analyses. Business case studies were a regular part of the course of study in business administration. Case studies from the regular text were examined by the academic instructor and the researcher for business content that could be used to emphasize CT skills. Grading rubrics were prepared by the authors to assess the combination of business and CT skills employed by the student’s in their analysis [37]. Each student was also assigned a major case study of a corporation. The students were required to use the full range of all the knowledge they had gained in their business courses to analyze the corporation. In addition, they were required to use their CT skills to assess their case study corporation’s tactics and strategies to determine whether they would have been different had CT skills been utilized.

3. Results

3.1 Critical Thinking Treatment

3.1.1 Sample-Control Analyses

Since it was important to separate the effects of the researcher’s critical thinking treatment from the effects of the regular business course, it was necessary to compare the results of the CCTST from the Experimental classes with that of the Control class. Because of logistical problems, only one CCTST was obtained from the Control class. Since this test was taken at the end of the senior course of study, it corresponded in time and business course content to the post-tests taken by the Experimental test subjects. The comparison of the Control, the Experimental pre-test, and the Experimental post-test results of the CCTST are shown in Table 1, Control v Experimental Classes.

Table 1. Control v Experimental Classes

CCTST Control (n=21) Experimental (n=34)

Pre-test Post-Test Pre-Test Post-Test

Percentile * 36.2 36.3 50.7 Total Score * 14.5 14.6 16.9 Analysis * 3.8 4.0 4.4 Inference * 6.9 6.8 8.3 Evaluation * 3.8 3.6 4.3 Inductive * 8.2 8.1 9.4 Deductive * 6.3 6.1 7.5

The values of the seven parameters of the CCTST were identical for the Control class and the Experimental pre-test classes, within the reporting error of the assessment instrument. The scores were within one-tenth of a unit of the mean value between the Control class and the corresponding pre-tests of the Experimental class for all seven variables. Therefore, for the purposes of this study, only the pre-test and post-test values from the Experimental class were used to derive the statistical significance of the experiment results.

3.1.2 Experimental Classes CCTST t-Tests

Since it was important to determine effects of the critical thinking pedagogical treatment, the scores of the pre-test CCTST from the experimental classes were compared to their corresponding post-tests. The students’ scores in the pre-test and post-test CCTST were compared using a repeated measures t-Test, one tail. In six of the seven parameters of

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the CCTST, the t-Scores were found to be significant. The Analysis parameter was shown to be statistically insignificant, t(33)=1.521, p<.10 (one tail), r2=.0655. The Evaluation parameter was found to be significant at the 99% confidence level, t(33)=2.490, p <.01 (one tail), r2=.1582. The other five parameters were significant at greater than the 99.5%, i.e. p<.005 level, one tail. These data are summarized in Table 2, Summary of CCTST Pre-Test/Post-Test Statistics.

Table 2: Summary of CCTST Pre-Test/Post-Test Statistics

Parameter t-Test, one tail Cohen’s d r2

Total Score T(33)=3.057, Significant, α<.005

.534 Medium

22.07% Strong

Percentile Score

T(33)=4.600, Significant, α<.005

.789 Large

39.07% Very Strong

Analysis T(33)=1.521, Not Significant

.260 Small

6.55% Medium

Inference T(33)=3.48, Significant, α<.005

.598 Medium

25.85% Strong

Evaluation T(33)=2.490, Significant, α<.01

.427 Medium

15.82% Medium

Inductive T(33)=3.730, Significant, α<.005

.640 Medium

29.66% Strong

Deductive T(33)=2.860, Significant, α<.005

.491 Medium

19.87% Strong

3.2 Chapter Pre-Tests/Post Tests

Since it was important to determine whether the content of each chapter of the critical thinking treatment had been acquired, retained, and recalled by the students, the results of the pre-test chapter quizzes from the experimental classes were compared to their corresponding post-tests. The students’ scores in pre-test and post-test of the chapter-by-chapter modules quizzes were compared using a repeated measures t-Test, one tail. In each Module, the t-Scores were found to be significant. In Modules 2 and 9, the t-Scores were found to be significant at the 95% confidence level, i.e. p<.05, one tail. In all other Modules, the t-Score were found to be significant at greater than the 99.5%, confidence level, i.e. p<.005, one tail. The total of the Module scores was found to be significant at greater than the 99.5% confidence level, i.e. p<.005, one tail. A summary of the data analyses are shown in Table 3, Summary of Module Pre-Test/Post-Test Statistics.

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Table 3: Summary of Chapter Pre-Test/Post-Test Statistics

Module t-Test, one tail Cohen’s d r2

1 –Introduction T(38)=2.72, Significant, α<.005

.435 Medium

16.25% Strong

2 – Memory & Knowledge

T(30)=1.807 Significant, α<.05

.324 Small

9.81% Medium

3 – Thought & Language

T(38) = 2.673 Significant, α<.005

.428 Medium

15.82% Strong

4 – Deductive Reasoning

T(36) = 5.03 Significant, α<.005

.827 Large

41.30% Very Strong

5 – Analyzing Arguments

T(37) = 3.224 Significant, α<.005

.523 Medium

21.93% Strong

6 – Thinking as Hypothesis Testing

T(36) = 3.526 Significant, α<.005

.580 Medium

25.67% Strong

7 – Likelihood and Uncertainty

T(32) = 3.736 Significant, α<.005

.650 Medium

30.37% Strong

8 – Problem Solving T(30) = 4.403 Significant, α<.005

.790 Large

39.25% Very Strong

9 – Decision Making T(27) = 1.996 Significant, α<.05

.3772 Medium

12.86% Medium

Overall Score T(312) = 9.360 Significant, α<.005

.535 Medium

22.28% Strong

3.3 Discussion

The objectives of this study were to determine whether critical thinking could be taught, whether it could be learned, and whether critical thinking skills could be transferred among domains. A pedagogical treatment was developed that was congruent with Halpern’s Teaching for Critical Thinking model. The treatment was taught to two senior classes in a college of business administration. Emphasis was placed on revising the regular business-class case studies to incorporate a critical thinking component and to assess transfer. An independent, reliable, and validated assessment instrument was used to determine the acquisition, retention, and recall of critical thinking skills. Quizzes, designed by the author of the textbook used in the treatment, were implemented to assess chapter-by-chapter learning. Statistical analyses showed that six of the seven parameters of the CCTST were shown to be significantly higher in the Experimental classes than in the control class. These results were interpreted as evidence that the authors’ treatment had been effective in increasing the CT skills of the students in comparison to the Control business class program of study. Statistical analyses of chapter-by-chapter quizzes showed that the student’s scores of the post-tests were significantly higher than their scores in the pre-test. These results were interpreted as evidence of the students’ acquisition, retention, and recall of the information content within each chapter of the critical thinking textbook. Statistical analyses of six of the seven parameters of the CCTST were shown to be significantly higher in the post-tests than in the pre-tests. These results were interpreted as evidence of the students’ acquisition, retention, and recall of the critical thinking skills acquired during the critical thinking treatment. These results were also interpreted as utilizing the skills initially learned within the domain of the CT treatment and transferred those skills successfully to the domain of the CCTST. The academic instructor verified that the students had successfully used their CT skills in the analyses of their weekly business course case studies. The academic instructor also verified that the students had used the CT skills they had acquired to assess the tactics and strategies employed in case studies of their assigned corporations. These results were interpreted as utilizing the skills initially learned within the domain of the CT treatment and transferred those skills successfully to the domain of business.

4. Conclusion

4.1 Discussion of Results

Case stated, “Every curriculum document mentions critical thinking, and there is universal agreement about the need to make thoughtful judgments in virtually every aspect of our lives - from who and what to believe to how and when to act” [3]. The United States Department of Education has declared that the acquisition of critical thinking skills are “…invaluable not only in science but also in making wise and well-informed choices as citizens and consumers” [38].

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The National Science Foundation concludes, “…approximately 70 percent of Americans do not understand the scientific process, technological literacy is weak, and belief in pseudoscience is relatively widespread and may be growing” [39]. The National Mathematics Advisory Panel [40] recommended, “…assessments should be improved in quality and should carry increased emphasis on the most critical knowledge and skills leading to Algebra.” The results from this study indicate that a course developed with behavioral-cognitive protocols, such as those proposed by Foshay, Silber and Stelnicki [26], employing Halpern’s Teaching for Critical Thinking [16], was effective in teaching critical thinking skills to undergraduate seniors. These results indicate that critical thinking skills can be taught, learned, and transferred. Using Ken Silber’s nomenclature, the needle moved! This study also indicates that domain knowledge need not be required to learn critical thinking skills. Although efforts were made both by the researcher and the academic instructor to integrate critical thinking skills within the business curriculum, the wide variety of questions and problem-solving skills required by the CCTST did not include those of the domain of business or of the logical processes involved in the acquisition of critical thinking skills. These findings indicate that the students in this sample successfully acquired and then transferred the knowledge and skills they gained in the course of study to the CCTST assessment questions.

4.2 Future Research

The need to teach and to learn critical thinking skills is evident. This research indicates that a training course, such as the authors’ pedagogical treatment, is effective in teaching critical thinking skills to students. However, additional research is needed to confirm these results in other environments and to apply these results to the greater questions of education theory and practice. The authors chose to use Halpern’s ‘Teaching for Critical Thinking’ conceptual model as the exemplar, because it was well documented, including books, supplementary texts and numerous resources. However, other experts have written extensively on critical thinking. Research using their methods should be studied using validated assessment instruments. The authors’ course of study included a wide variety of pedagogical techniques directed towards scaffolding to enhance metacognitive strategies and learning. It must be asked, which, if any, enhanced learning? It has been reported that scaffolding is ineffective as an enhancement to learning [41]. Would students have learned just as much without any scaffolding? The sample populations in this study were college seniors majoring in business administration at a single Midwestern university. Are the students of this university unique in comparison with other universities? Are business administration majors more or less proficient than college students majoring in some other discipline? Are high school, junior high school, or elementary school students more or less capable of learning critical thinking skills than are college students? Is there a lower age limit below which instruction in critical thinking is ineffective? This preliminary study has implications for the future of the education. To comply with the recommendations of the Department of Education and to improve high school graduates’ scores, students should learn critical thinking skills. To do so would require high school curricula incorporating critical thinking instruction. In turn, this would require teachers to become skilled in critical thinking theory and practice, as well as in the methods of teaching critical thinking. Since it is colleges of education that provide the basic training for teachers, how might this research affect their curricula in the future? Similarly, how might greater emphasis on critical thinking, the foundation of education in a technological world, affect society, culture and civilization?

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