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specific class formats where students noted the most benefit to develop critical thinking in
discussion-based classes over lecture-based classes. For example, one student noted:
I don’t feel I took a lot of classes where there was an opportunity to think critically. A lot of
classes were just, sit in a lecture hall, take notes, and take a multiple choice test. However,
I really like my senior capstone seminar now because we get to discuss and express our
thoughts and ideas.
And finally, to confirm the importance of using data from general education coursework
as a source of critical thinking, a number of students highlighted their coursework outside
of psychology (specifically in philosophy and Cluster One of general education) as key in
promoting their critical thinking skills.
We also uncovered a number of unexpected and interesting findings in students’ open-
ended comments. For example, students often focused on creative thinking in open-ended
responses. Although we first thought students misread Goal 3 and confused the labels creative
and critical, we quickly realized that the APA Goal 3 definition does emphasize both critical
and creative thinking (see Appendix 2) and that our students were carefully attending to the
definitions provided in our assessment. However, as we debate what critical thinking is (and
is not), we need to consider carefully whether our measures align with APA’s critical thinking
learning goal or if the APA learning goal definition for critical thinking will need to be revised
to align with best practice to assess critical thinking. Another interesting finding was a student
who noted, “I am told to think critically, but not told how,” revealing that our teaching may
be too abstract or focused on the jargon of critical thinking rather than the practice of critical
thinking. Finally, we were intrigued to find that a number of students mentioned needing
coursework to be more demanding and challenging in order to promote critical thinking.
In summary, our open-ended, qualitative data offer a “recipe” for promoting critical
thinking in psychology coursework that appears to be relatively straightforward:
● Make classes discussion-based (rather than lecture)
● Make classes activity-based with writing, group projects, and critiquing research
(rather than multiple-choice exams)
●
Model critical thinking as professor and demand it of your students.However, a number of these practices take time, resources, and training. How do we
balance our faculty roles and still promote critical thinking? One final purpose in identifying
Table 7.2. Coding Frequency of Specific Classes Linked
to Critical Thinking in Open-Ended Data
2004 2005
Lower level electives 0% 8%
Methods 31% 30%
Area courses 14% 16%
Upper level electives 24% 11%
Capstone 31% 35%