Teaching Critical Thinking in Psychology: A Handbook of Best Practices

Chapter 6

Measure for Measure: The Challenge

of Assessing Critical Thinking

Jane S. Halonen

I am an accidental critical thinking scholar.

As an undergraduate, I was the prototypical student interested in “helping people.”

I saw research and statistics as hurdles that must be overcome to get to the “good stuff.” In

fact, my undergraduate advisor recommended, “Jane, you are at least going to have to

pretend that you like research if you expect to get into graduate school.” And so I did, but

research was never a comfortable home for me during those formative years.

As I was preparing for a clinical career, it was a great shock to me to discover how much

I enjoyed teaching. I learned not to talk about it to my graduate school friends because it

would have reinforced my outlier status. However, I thought it was fascinating to see what

kinds of improvements I could make over the course of my six discussion sessions per week

to enhance student learning. Little did I know I was engaging in the early stages of the

scholarship of teaching and learning.

Although I tried the clinical life, I badly missed the classroom so I was thrilled when

Alverno College offered me a position in 1981 at a whopping $15,000 per year. I didn’t

realize when I was hired that I was entering service with a college that would contribute

to such dramatic changes in higher education. They long ago abandoned traditional

grading in favor of performance assessment. It suited my own ideas about active learning

perfectly.

Teaching Critical Thinking in Psychology: A Handbook of Best Practices Edited by D. S. Dunn, J. S. Halonen, and R. A. Smith