Nina Lamson & Katherine Kipp
250
Assessing Critical Thinking
The module-based approach outlined here offers several opportunities for assessing stu-
dents’ critical thinking. First, evaluations of students’ initial attempts at critical thinking
occur as they turn in drafts of sections and receive those drafts with corrections made by
the instructor. Second, evaluation of the content and application of the research methods
taught occurs on course exams. Finally, an authentic assessment (Halonen et al., 2003;
Palomba & Banta, 1999) of the entire project is possible because the project is a real-world
replica of the scientific method in psychology.
Conclusion
The purpose of this project is to familiarize introductory psychology students with the
research process by helping them to understand research methods, how research is guided
by the scientific method, and how it becomes the basis to the content that is learned in the
course. Most importantly, however, this assignment models how critical thinking is an
integral part of this process, in that students read, examine, and explore published research,
from which a hypothetical question to be tested emerges. Students learn how outcomes
can support, modify, or refute a theory, thus demonstrating the dynamics of science.
References
American Psychological Association. (2001). Publication manual of the American Psychological
Association (5th ed.). Washington, DC: Author.
Halonen, J. S., Bosack, T., Clay, S., & McCarthy, M. (with Dunn, D., Hill IV, G. W., et al.).
(2003). A rubric for learning, teaching, and assessing scientific inquiry in psychology. Teaching
of Psychology, 30, 196–208.
Palomba, C. A., & Banta, R. W. (1999). Assessment essentials: Planning, implementing, and improv-
ing assessment in higher education. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.
Radeborg, K., Briem, V., & Hedman, L. R. (1999). The effect of concurrent task difficulty on
working memory during stimulated driving. Ergonomics, 5, 767–777.
Spence, C., & Read, L. (2003). Speech shadowing while driving: On the difficulty of splitting
attention between eye and ear. Psychological Science, 3, 251–256.
Strayer, D. L., & Johnston, W. A. (2001). Driven to distraction: Dual-task studies of simulated
driving and conversing on a cellular telephone. Psychological Science, 6, 462–466.