How can critical thinking be learned and demonstrated by higher education students?

 

This article is based on the description of how critical thinking can be linked with cognitive science. It provides a new and fresher perspective to the generalist specifist debate to make progress in the structure of interventions for teaching and developing critical thinking in the students. It describes the ways by which cognitive theories circumvent human tendencies toward less rational and less effortful thought. The article gives an insight how the cognitive science contribute in enhancing higher education teaching students to develop their critical thinking skills. The article described the methods of cognitive science in developing critical thinking in the students pursuing higher education. It suggests practices and principles to engage students in deeper critical thinking by examining skepticism, higher-order thinking, problem solving, metacognition and many more. This paper rejects the informal logic for critical thinking as it is too much biased and do not follow the cognitive mechanism necessary for critical thinking. According to this article, the students can learn and demonstrate their critical thinking if it is taught with the help of cognitive science, though it is more difficult to implement the methods than the informal logic. It provides an idea, why there are limitations exist in learning of critical thinking and how it can be addressed. The paper presents an investigation under controlled laboratory condition after breaking down the components of critical thinking among the students.

 

This paper identifies the importance of critical thinking for students pursuing higher education to make effective contribution in the global market. The first half of the article provides insight of the existing assessments and their psychometric qualities. It uses the critical thinking assessment to identify the challenges surrounding the current design and implementation of those designs. The second half on the other hand, uses the data and proposes the next generation critical thinking frame that needs to be implemented in order to help the students in learning and demonstrating in the world workplace. The article is of critical importance for the institutes that are planning to design or adopt an assessment of critical thinking. The institutes which already have an critical thinking program can also use this article to develop their current program for a better result and outcome. Contexts, structural features, item formats, task types and accessibility are discussed in the article while designing the critical thinking of next generation. Advantages of the proposed framework is also identified and described in the article with assessment consideration. It clearly shows the complications of designing a new and better critical thinking assessment and demands the collaboration between domain experts, measurement experts, faculty members, assessment developers and institutions. An absolute need of coordination is required in this process of assessment development which is clearly identified in the article.

From the above discussion, it can be concluded that both the article focuses on the next generation critical thinking approach that needs to be implemented in the higher educational institutions in order to develop the critical thinking of the students. It is crucial, as the students need a more critical thinking in the workplace and the present approaches has many loop holes that needs to be avoided. The first article can be considered more effective as it focuses on using the cognitive science to increase the efficiency of the present approaches. As the critical thinking is a cognitive phenomenon, use of cognitive science can have more impact in the future approach of learning and demonstrating of the students.

References

Lodge, J. M., O’Connor, E., Shaw, R., & Burton, L. (2015). Applying cognitive science to critical thinking among higher education students. In The Palgrave Handbook of Critical Thinking in Higher Education (pp. 391-407). Palgrave Macmillan US.

Liu, O. L., Frankel, L., & Roohr, K. C. (2014). Assessing Critical Thinking in Higher Education: Current State and Directions for Next?Generation Assessment. ETS Research Report Series, 2014(1), 1-23.