critical thinking assessment (new)

• A Model for the National Assessment of Higher Order Thinking
• International Critical Thinking Essay Test
• Online Critical Thinking Basic Concepts Test
• Online Critical Thinking Basic Concepts Sample Test

Consequential Validity: Using Assessment to Drive Instruction

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Critical Thinking Testing and Assessment

The purpose of assessment in instruction is improvement. The purpose of assessing instruction for critical thinking is improving the teaching of discipline-based thinking (historical, biological, sociological, mathematical, etc.) It is to improve students’ abilities to think their way through content using disciplined skill in reasoning. The more particular we can be about what we want students to learn about critical thinking, the better we can devise instruction with that particular end in view.

The Foundation for Critical Thinking offers assessment instruments which share in the same general goal: to enable educators to gather evidence relevant to determining the extent to which instruction is teaching students to think critically (in the process of learning content). To this end, the Fellows of the Foundation recommend:

that academic institutions and units establish an oversight committee for critical thinking, and

that this oversight committee utilizes a combination of assessment instruments (the more the better) to generate incentives for faculty, by providing them with as much evidence as feasible of the actual state of instruction for critical thinking.

The following instruments are available to generate evidence relevant to critical thinking teaching and learning:

Course Evaluation Form : Provides evidence of whether, and to what extent, students perceive faculty as fostering critical thinking in instruction (course by course). Machine-scoreable.

Online Critical Thinking Basic Concepts Test : Provides evidence of whether, and to what extent, students understand the fundamental concepts embedded in critical thinking (and hence tests student readiness to think critically). Machine-scoreable.

Critical Thinking Reading and Writing Test : Provides evidence of whether, and to what extent, students can read closely and write substantively (and hence tests students' abilities to read and write critically). Short-answer.

International Critical Thinking Essay Test : Provides evidence of whether, and to what extent, students are able to analyze and assess excerpts from textbooks or professional writing. Short-answer.

Commission Study Protocol for Interviewing Faculty Regarding Critical Thinking : Provides evidence of whether, and to what extent, critical thinking is being taught at a college or university. Can be adapted for high school. Based on the California Commission Study . Short-answer.

Protocol for Interviewing Faculty Regarding Critical Thinking : Provides evidence of whether, and to what extent, critical thinking is being taught at a college or university. Can be adapted for high school. Short-answer.

Protocol for Interviewing Students Regarding Critical Thinking : Provides evidence of whether, and to what extent, students are learning to think critically at a college or university. Can be adapted for high school). Short-answer. 

Criteria for Critical Thinking Assignments : Can be used by faculty in designing classroom assignments, or by administrators in assessing the extent to which faculty are fostering critical thinking.

Rubrics for Assessing Student Reasoning Abilities : A useful tool in assessing the extent to which students are reasoning well through course content.  

All of the above assessment instruments can be used as part of pre- and post-assessment strategies to gauge development over various time periods.

Consequential Validity

All of the above assessment instruments, when used appropriately and graded accurately, should lead to a high degree of consequential validity. In other words, the use of the instruments should cause teachers to teach in such a way as to foster critical thinking in their various subjects. In this light, for students to perform well on the various instruments, teachers will need to design instruction so that students can perform well on them. Students cannot become skilled in critical thinking without learning (first) the concepts and principles that underlie critical thinking and (second) applying them in a variety of forms of thinking: historical thinking, sociological thinking, biological thinking, etc. Students cannot become skilled in analyzing and assessing reasoning without practicing it. However, when they have routine practice in paraphrasing, summariz­ing, analyzing, and assessing, they will develop skills of mind requisite to the art of thinking well within any subject or discipline, not to mention thinking well within the various domains of human life.

For full copies of this and many other critical thinking articles, books, videos, and more, join us at the Center for Critical Thinking Community Online - the world's leading online community dedicated to critical thinking!   Also featuring interactive learning activities, study groups, and even a social media component, this learning platform will change your conception of intellectual development.

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Article • 8 min read

Critical Thinking

Developing the right mindset and skills.

By the Mind Tools Content Team

We make hundreds of decisions every day and, whether we realize it or not, we're all critical thinkers.

We use critical thinking each time we weigh up our options, prioritize our responsibilities, or think about the likely effects of our actions. It's a crucial skill that helps us to cut out misinformation and make wise decisions. The trouble is, we're not always very good at it!

In this article, we'll explore the key skills that you need to develop your critical thinking skills, and how to adopt a critical thinking mindset, so that you can make well-informed decisions.

What Is Critical Thinking?

Critical thinking is the discipline of rigorously and skillfully using information, experience, observation, and reasoning to guide your decisions, actions, and beliefs. You'll need to actively question every step of your thinking process to do it well.

Collecting, analyzing and evaluating information is an important skill in life, and a highly valued asset in the workplace. People who score highly in critical thinking assessments are also rated by their managers as having good problem-solving skills, creativity, strong decision-making skills, and good overall performance. [1]

Key Critical Thinking Skills

Critical thinkers possess a set of key characteristics which help them to question information and their own thinking. Focus on the following areas to develop your critical thinking skills:

Being willing and able to explore alternative approaches and experimental ideas is crucial. Can you think through "what if" scenarios, create plausible options, and test out your theories? If not, you'll tend to write off ideas and options too soon, so you may miss the best answer to your situation.

To nurture your curiosity, stay up to date with facts and trends. You'll overlook important information if you allow yourself to become "blinkered," so always be open to new information.

But don't stop there! Look for opposing views or evidence to challenge your information, and seek clarification when things are unclear. This will help you to reassess your beliefs and make a well-informed decision later. Read our article, Opening Closed Minds , for more ways to stay receptive.

Logical Thinking

You must be skilled at reasoning and extending logic to come up with plausible options or outcomes.

It's also important to emphasize logic over emotion. Emotion can be motivating but it can also lead you to take hasty and unwise action, so control your emotions and be cautious in your judgments. Know when a conclusion is "fact" and when it is not. "Could-be-true" conclusions are based on assumptions and must be tested further. Read our article, Logical Fallacies , for help with this.

Use creative problem solving to balance cold logic. By thinking outside of the box you can identify new possible outcomes by using pieces of information that you already have.

Self-Awareness

Many of the decisions we make in life are subtly informed by our values and beliefs. These influences are called cognitive biases and it can be difficult to identify them in ourselves because they're often subconscious.

Practicing self-awareness will allow you to reflect on the beliefs you have and the choices you make. You'll then be better equipped to challenge your own thinking and make improved, unbiased decisions.

One particularly useful tool for critical thinking is the Ladder of Inference . It allows you to test and validate your thinking process, rather than jumping to poorly supported conclusions.

Developing a Critical Thinking Mindset

Combine the above skills with the right mindset so that you can make better decisions and adopt more effective courses of action. You can develop your critical thinking mindset by following this process:

Gather Information

First, collect data, opinions and facts on the issue that you need to solve. Draw on what you already know, and turn to new sources of information to help inform your understanding. Consider what gaps there are in your knowledge and seek to fill them. And look for information that challenges your assumptions and beliefs.

Be sure to verify the authority and authenticity of your sources. Not everything you read is true! Use this checklist to ensure that your information is valid:

• Are your information sources trustworthy ? (For example, well-respected authors, trusted colleagues or peers, recognized industry publications, websites, blogs, etc.)
• Is the information you have gathered up to date ?
• Has the information received any direct criticism ?
• Does the information have any errors or inaccuracies ?
• Is there any evidence to support or corroborate the information you have gathered?
• Is the information you have gathered subjective or biased in any way? (For example, is it based on opinion, rather than fact? Is any of the information you have gathered designed to promote a particular service or organization?)

If any information appears to be irrelevant or invalid, don't include it in your decision making. But don't omit information just because you disagree with it, or your final decision will be flawed and bias.

Now observe the information you have gathered, and interpret it. What are the key findings and main takeaways? What does the evidence point to? Start to build one or two possible arguments based on what you have found.

You'll need to look for the details within the mass of information, so use your powers of observation to identify any patterns or similarities. You can then analyze and extend these trends to make sensible predictions about the future.

To help you to sift through the multiple ideas and theories, it can be useful to group and order items according to their characteristics. From here, you can compare and contrast the different items. And once you've determined how similar or different things are from one another, Paired Comparison Analysis can help you to analyze them.

The final step involves challenging the information and rationalizing its arguments.

Apply the laws of reason (induction, deduction, analogy) to judge an argument and determine its merits. To do this, it's essential that you can determine the significance and validity of an argument to put it in the correct perspective. Take a look at our article, Rational Thinking , for more information about how to do this.

Once you have considered all of the arguments and options rationally, you can finally make an informed decision.

Afterward, take time to reflect on what you have learned and what you found challenging. Step back from the detail of your decision or problem, and look at the bigger picture. Record what you've learned from your observations and experience.

Critical thinking involves rigorously and skilfully using information, experience, observation, and reasoning to guide your decisions, actions and beliefs. It's a useful skill in the workplace and in life.

You'll need to be curious and creative to explore alternative possibilities, but rational to apply logic, and self-aware to identify when your beliefs could affect your decisions or actions.

You can demonstrate a high level of critical thinking by validating your information, analyzing its meaning, and finally evaluating the argument.

Critical Thinking Infographic

See Critical Thinking represented in our infographic: An Elementary Guide to Critical Thinking .

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Assessing Critical Thinking in the Digital Era

Sponsored Content

• Technology is poised to revolutionize education. Instead of being disrupted by the new tech, schools should participate in its development.
• Technology can be particularly useful in helping schools assess critical thinking skills, which have become even more important in a world that increasingly relies on artificial intelligence.
• Peregrine Global Services has worked with institutions of higher learning to launch a new Critical Thinking Assessment tool to help schools measure both retained knowledge and acquired competencies.

  Technology has traditionally disrupted education, and higher education institutions have struggled to keep pace with these changes. However, when institutions of higher education partner with the technology sector, they can become sources of disruption themselves.

One of the most notable examples of how technology disrupted the educational field is the calculator. As Sarah Banks outlines in a 2011 master’s thesis that analyzes historical attitudes about the use of calculators in junior high and high school math classrooms, the invention met with mixed responses from educators.

Some educators viewed calculators as helpful tools that could speed up calculations and save time, allowing students to focus on more complex mathematical concepts. Others expressed concern that calculators would become crutches for students, hindering their ability to develop basic arithmetic skills. Eventually, of course, calculators became indispensable tools in the classroom and beyond.

More recently, artificial intelligence (AI) has emerged as a powerful new technology that has the potential to revolutionize education. However, educators such as Andre Perry and Nicol Turner Lee have expressed concerns about the possible negative impacts of AI. Among other things, they note that its algorithms can perpetuate bias and discrimination. Industry observers such as Lyss Welding point out that AI poses a risk to academic integrity because it allows students to plagiarize and cheat on homework in ways that are easier, faster, and harder to detect.

Artificial intelligence (AI) has emerged as a powerful new technology that has the potential to revolutionize education.

Despite these concerns, AI technology has become an integral part of modern education as more educators are actively adapting and leveraging it to benefit their learners. But teachers should not introduce technology into their classrooms unless they are also helping students develop their skills in higher-order thinking. While technology provides tools to assist with calculations, information access, and other tasks, critical thinking enables students to make sense of that information and use it effectively.

The Importance of Assessment

However, while critical thinking is widely recognized as an essential skill, it can be challenging for higher education institutions to quantify or measure how well students have learned it. Assessment is a vital and dynamic component of teaching knowledge, skills, and competencies. It informs program and institutional improvement, providing invaluable information that administrators, faculty, and staff can use to make data-driven decisions that lead to better student outcomes.

One of the key difficulties in assessing critical thinking is defining what it is and how it should be measured. Critical thinking is a complex skill that involves the ability to analyze and evaluate information, think creatively, and make reasoned judgments, as Richard Paul and Linda Elder outline in their 2019 publication . It is not a single skill that can be easily quantified or measured through traditional assessments. As a result, educators have had to develop more nuanced approaches to evaluating critical thinking skills, such as project-based assessments and open-ended questions that require students to demonstrate their reasoning and problem-solving abilities.

While critical thinking is widely recognized as an essential skill, it can be challenging for higher education institutions to quantify or measure how well students have learned it.

Another challenge in measuring critical thinking is ensuring that assessments are fair and unbiased. Assessments that are overly reliant on multiple-choice questions or rote memorization can unfairly disadvantage students who may excel in other areas of critical thinking.

For these reasons, educators need effective assessment methods that accurately measure critical thinking skills in a variety of contexts. These assessments should use consistent and objective criteria to ensure that all students are given equal opportunities to demonstrate their abilities.

However, building such assessment tools and overcoming the barriers associated with measuring critical thinking places a large and sometimes overwhelming administrative burden on faculty and staff. Unfortunately, there can be a negative impact on student performance when faculty members must allocate more time and resources to handling administrative tasks than to teaching courses and supporting learner success.

A Partnership Between Industry and Academia

The need for critical thinking assessment tools is being addressed through a recent partnership between various higher education institutions and Peregrine Global Services, an education technology company specializing in assessment and instructional solutions. Peregrine recently launched its Critical Thinking Assessment to help colleges and universities evaluate this important skill.

To ensure that the assessment tool would meet the specific needs of the higher education community, the company developed its Peregrine Partner Program, which involved beta testing the tool with programs of varying sizes and types during the fall of 2022 and the spring of 2023. Each educational partner provided valuable feedback on how to present data to help schools make informed decisions, how to remove administrative burdens associated with assessment, and how to foster a culture of quality.

The partnership between Peregrine and the higher education institutions has led to several unforeseen advancements in technology. These include the ability to analyze exam data by course, cohort, or program, as well as the implementation of blind scoring to remove scoring bias. The new tool also adopts an innovative approach to assessing critical thinking and generating the data necessary to analyze exam results. For example, schools will be able to sort and filter data by levels of higher-order thinking.

The Critical Thinking Assessment uses a standardized rubric covering six critical thinking subcriteria and provides institutions with the flexibility to customize the exams to meet their needs. Academic programs can tailor the service to cover specific disciplines and assess varying levels of higher-order thinking. Learners receive scenarios randomly, ensuring a unique testing experience for each student.

The system auto-scores multiple-choice questions, while designated program faculty and assessment administrators use a rubric to manually score open-ended items. The short case studies and scenario questions are written and validated by subject matter experts with practical and teaching experience in each specific discipline.

“The Critical Thinking Assessment helps make assessment a facultywide effort, where everyone has buy-in,” says Melodie Philhours, associate professor of marketing and director of assessment at Arkansas State University’s Neil Griffin College of Business in Jonesboro. “The assessment tool significantly reduces the time and resources required for assessment, allowing faculty to focus on teaching and improving student learning outcomes. One of the most significant benefits has been the removal of the administrative burden related to compiling and entering the data, as the results are readily available after the assessment is fully scored.”

At the Forefront of Disruption

The collaboration between Peregrine and its partner schools will benefit not only the institutions involved, but also the broader field of education. Any time higher education and the technology sector can work together, they will drive innovation and disruption, ultimately leading to better learner outcomes. With the Critical Thinking Assessment tool, Peregrine aims to help higher education institutions assess not just retained knowledge, but also acquired skills and competencies.

In the future, Peregrine plans to incorporate AI into the assessment and build an aggregate pool, so schools can compare their results over periods of time, internally and externally, allowing them to benchmark against schools with similar demographics. Until then, Peregrine is offering the tool to schools as a course-level assessment they can use in their overall assessment portfolio. 

The partnership between Peregrine and universities highlights the potential for industry and academia to come together to address the challenges faced by higher education. It demonstrates that when universities are at the forefront of disrupting education in a positive manner, they can move along with technology rather than lag behind it.

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• Teaching Tips

A Brief Guide for Teaching and Assessing Critical Thinking in Psychology

In my first year of college teaching, a student approached me one day after class and politely asked, “What did you mean by the word ‘evidence’?” I tried to hide my shock at what I took to be a very naive question. Upon further reflection, however, I realized that this was actually a good question, for which the usual approaches to teaching psychology provided too few answers. During the next several years, I developed lessons and techniques to help psychology students learn how to evaluate the strengths and weaknesses of scientific and nonscientific kinds of evidence and to help them draw sound conclusions. It seemed to me that learning about the quality of evidence and drawing appropriate conclusions from scientific research were central to teaching critical thinking (CT) in psychology.

In this article, I have attempted to provide guidelines to psychol­ogy instructors on how to teach CT, describing techniques I devel­oped over 20 years of teaching. More importantly, the techniques and approach described below are ones that are supported by scientific research. Classroom examples illustrate the use of the guidelines and how assessment can be integrated into CT skill instruction.

Overview of the Guidelines

Confusion about the definition of CT has been a major obstacle to teaching and assessing it (Halonen, 1995; Williams, 1999). To deal with this problem, we have defined CT as reflective think­ing involved in the evaluation of evidence relevant to a claim so that a sound or good conclusion can be drawn from the evidence (Bensley, 1998). One virtue of this definition is it can be applied to many thinking tasks in psychology. The claims and conclusions psychological scientists make include hypotheses, theoretical state­ments, interpretation of research findings, or diagnoses of mental disorders. Evidence can be the results of an experiment, case study, naturalistic observation study, or psychological test. Less formally, evidence can be anecdotes, introspective reports, commonsense beliefs, or statements of authority. Evaluating evidence and drawing appropriate conclusions along with other skills, such as distin­guishing arguments from nonarguments and finding assumptions, are collectively called argument analysis skills. Many CT experts take argument analysis skills to be fundamental CT skills (e.g., Ennis, 1987; Halpern, 1998). Psychology students need argument analysis skills to evaluate psychological claims in their work and in everyday discourse.

Some instructors expect their students will improve CT skills like argument analysis skills by simply immersing them in challenging course work. Others expect improvement because they use a textbook with special CT questions or modules, give lectures that critically review the literature, or have students complete written assignments. While these and other traditional techniques may help, a growing body of research suggests they are not sufficient to efficiently produce measurable changes in CT skills. Our research on acquisition of argument analysis skills in psychology (Bensley, Crowe, Bernhardt, Buchner, & Allman, in press) and on critical reading skills (Bensley & Haynes, 1995; Spero & Bensley, 2009) suggests that more explicit, direct instruction of CT skills is necessary. These results concur with results of an earlier review of CT programs by Chance (1986) and a recent meta-analysis by Abrami et al., (2008).

Based on these and other findings, the following guidelines describe an approach to explicit instruction in which instructors can directly infuse CT skills and assessment into their courses. With infusion, instructors can use relevant content to teach CT rules and concepts along with the subject matter. Directly infus­ing CT skills into course work involves targeting specific CT skills, making CT rules, criteria, and methods explicit, providing guided practice in the form of exercises focused on assessing skills, and giving feedback on practice and assessments. These components are similar to ones found in effective, direct instruc­tion approaches (Walberg, 2006). They also resemble approaches to teaching CT proposed by Angelo (1995), Beyer (1997), and Halpern (1998). Importantly, this approach has been successful in teaching CT skills in psychology (e.g., Bensley, et al., in press; Bensley & Haynes, 1995; Nieto & Saiz, 2008; Penningroth, Despain, & Gray, 2007). Directly infusing CT skill instruction can also enrich content instruction without sacrificing learning of subject matter (Solon, 2003). The following seven guidelines, illustrated by CT lessons and assessments, explicate this process.

Seven Guidelines for Teaching and Assessing Critical Thinking

1. Motivate your students to think critically

Critical thinking takes effort. Without proper motivation, students are less inclined to engage in it. Therefore, it is good to arouse interest right away and foster commitment to improving CT throughout a course. One motivational strategy is to explain why CT is important to effective, professional behavior. Often, telling a compelling story that illustrates the consequences of failing to think critically can mo­tivate students. For example, the tragic death of 10-year-old Candace Newmaker at the hands of her therapists practicing attachment therapy illustrates the perils of using a therapy that has not been supported by good empirical evidence (Lilienfeld, 2007).

Instructors can also pique interest by taking a class poll posing an interesting question on which students are likely to have an opinion. For example, asking students how many think that the full moon can lead to increases in abnormal behavior can be used to introduce the difference between empirical fact and opinion or common sense belief. After asking students how psychologists answer such questions, instructors might go over the meta-analysis of Rotton and Kelly (1985). Their review found that almost all of the 37 studies they reviewed showed no association between the phase of the moon and abnormal behavior with only a few, usually poorly, controlled studies supporting it. Effect size over all stud­ies was very small (.01). Instructors can use this to illustrate how psychologists draw a conclusion based on the quality and quantity of research studies as opposed to what many people commonly believe. For other interesting thinking errors and misconceptions related to psychology, see Bensley (1998; 2002; 2008), Halpern (2003), Ruscio (2006), Stanovich (2007), and Sternberg (2007).

Attitudes and dispositions can also affect motivation to think critically. If students lack certain CT dispositions such as open-mindedness, fair-mindedness, and skepticism, they will be less likely to think critically even if they have CT skills (Halpern, 1998). Instructors might point out that even great scientists noted for their powers of reasoning sometimes fail to think critically when they are not disposed to use their skills. For example, Alfred Russel Wallace who used his considerable CT skills to help develop the concept of natural selection also believed in spiritualistic contact with the dead. Despite considerable evidence that mediums claiming to contact the dead were really faking such contact, Wallace continued to believe in it (Bensley, 2006). Likewise, the great American psychologist William James, whose reasoning skills helped him develop the seeds of important contemporary theories, believed in spiritualism despite evidence to the contrary.

2. Clearly state the CT goals and objectives for your class

Once students are motivated, the instructor should focus them on what skills they will work on during the course. The APA task force on learning goals and objectives for psychology listed CT as one of 10 major goals for students (Halonen et al., 2002). Under critical thinking they have further specified outcomes such as evaluating the quality of information, identifying and evaluating the source and credibility of information, recognizing and defending against think­ing errors and fallacies. Instructors should publish goals like these in their CT course objectives in their syllabi and more specifically as assignment objectives in their assignments. Given the pragmatic penchant of students for studying what is needed to succeed in a course, this should help motivate and focus them.

To make instruction efficient, course objectives and lesson ob­jectives should explicitly target CT skills to be improved. Objectives should specify the behavior that will change in a way that can be measured. A course objective might read, “After taking this course, you will be able to analyze arguments found in psychological and everyday discussions.” When the goal of a lesson is to practice and improve specific microskills that make up argument analysis, an assignment objective might read “After successfully completing this assignment, you will be able to identify different kinds of evidence in a psychological discussion.” Or another might read “After suc­cessfully completing this assignment, you will be able to distinguish arguments from nonarguments.” Students might demonstrate they have reached these objectives by showing the behavior of correctly labeling the kinds of evidence presented in a passage or by indicating whether an argument or merely a claim has been made. By stating objectives in the form of assessable behaviors, the instructor can test these as assessment hypotheses.

Sometimes when the goal is to teach students how to decide which CT skills are appropriate in a situation, the instructor may not want to identify specific skills. Instead, a lesson objective might read, “After successfully completing this assignment, you will be able to decide which skills and knowledge are appropriate for criti­cally analyzing a discussion in psychology.”

3. Find opportunities to infuse CT that fit content and skill requirements of your course

To improve their CT skills, students must be given opportunities to practice them. Different courses present different opportunities for infusion and practice. Stand-alone CT courses usually provide the most opportunities to infuse CT. For example, the Frostburg State University Psychology Department has a senior seminar called “Thinking like a Psychologist” in which students complete lessons giving them practice in argument analysis, critical reading, critically evaluating information on the Internet, distinguishing science from pseudoscience, applying their knowledge and CT skills in simula­tions of psychological practice, and other activities.

In more typical subject-oriented courses, instructors must find specific content and types of tasks conducive to explicit CT skill instruction. For example, research methods courses present several opportunities to teach argument analysis skills. Instructors can have students critically evaluate the quality of evidence provided by studies using different research methods and designs they find in PsycINFO and Internet sources. This, in turn, could help students write better critical evaluations of research for research reports.

A cognitive psychology teacher might assign a critical evalu­ation of the evidence on an interesting question discussed in text­book literature reviews. For example, students might evaluate the evidence relevant to the question of whether people have flashbulb memories such as accurately remembering the 9-11 attack. This provides the opportunity to teach them that many of the studies, although informative, are quasi-experimental and cannot show causation. Or, students might analyze the arguments in a TV pro­gram such as the fascinating Nova program Kidnapped by Aliens on people who recall having been abducted by aliens.

4. Use guided practice, explicitly modeling and scaffolding CT.

Guided practice involves modeling and supporting the practice of target skills, and providing feedback on progress towards skill attainment. Research has shown that guided practice helps student more efficiently acquire thinking skills than unguided and discovery approaches (Meyer, 2004).

Instructors can model the use of CT rules, criteria, and proce­dures for evaluating evidence and drawing conclusions in many ways. They could provide worked examples of problems, writing samples displaying good CT, or real-world examples of good and bad thinking found in the media. They might also think out loud as they evaluate arguments in class to model the process of thinking.

To help students learn to use complex rules in thinking, instruc­tors should initially scaffold student thinking. Scaffolding involves providing product guidelines, rules, and other frameworks to support the process of thinking. Table 1 shows guidelines like those found in Bensley (1998) describing nonscientific kinds of evidence that can support student efforts to evaluate evidence in everyday psychologi­cal discussions. Likewise, Table 2 provides guidelines like those found in Bensley (1998) and Wade and Tavris (2005) describing various kinds of scientific research methods and designs that differ in the quality of evidence they provide for psychological arguments.

In the cognitive lesson on flashbulb memory described earlier, students use the framework in Table 2 to evaluate the kinds of evidence in the literature review. Table 1 can help them evaluate the kinds of evidence found in the Nova video Kidnapped by Aliens . Specifically, they could use it to contrast scientific authority with less credible authority. The video includes statements by scientific authorities like Elizabeth Loftus based on her extensive research contrasted with the nonscientific authority of Bud Hopkins, an artist turned hypnotherapist and author of popular books on alien abduction. Loftus argues that the memories of alien abduction in the children interviewed by Hopkins were reconstructed around the suggestive interview questions he posed. Therefore, his conclu­sion that the children and other people in the video were recalling actual abduction experiences was based on anecdotes, unreliable self-reports, and other weak evidence.

Modeling, scaffolding, and guided practice are especially useful in helping students first acquire CT skills. After sufficient practice, however, instructors should fade these and have students do more challenging assignments without these supports to promote transfer.

5. Align assessment with practice of specific CT skills

Test questions and other assessments of performance should be similar to practice questions and problems in the skills targeted but differ in content. For example, we have developed a series of practice and quiz questions about the kinds of evidence found in Table 1 used in everyday situations but which differ in subject matter from practice to quiz. Likewise, other questions employ research evidence examples corresponding to Table 2. Questions ask students to identify kinds of evidence, evaluate the quality of the evidence, distinguish arguments from nonarguments, and find assumptions in the examples with practice examples differing in content from assessment items.

6. Provide feedback and encourage students to reflect on it

Instructors should focus feedback on the degree of attainment of CT skill objectives in the lesson or assessment. The purpose of feedback is to help students learn how to correct faulty thinking so that in the future they monitor their thinking and avoid such problems. This should increase their metacognition or awareness and control of their thinking, an important goal of CT instruction (Halpern, 1998).

Students must use their feedback for it to improve their CT skills. In the CT exercises and critical reading assignments, students receive feedback in the form of corrected responses and written feedback on open-ended questions. They should be advised that paying attention to feedback on earlier work and assessments should improve their performance on later assessments.

7. Reflect on feedback and assessment results to improve CT instruction

Instructors should use the feedback they provide to students and the results of ongoing assessments to ‘close the loop,’ that is, use these outcomes to address deficiencies in performance and improve instruction. In actual practice, teaching and assessment strategies rarely work optimally the first time. Instructors must be willing to tinker with these to make needed improvements. Reflec­tion on reliable and valid assessment results provides a scientific means to systematically improve instruction and assessment.

Instructors may find the direct infusion approach as summarized in the seven guidelines to be efficient, especially in helping students acquire basic CT skills, as research has shown. They may especially appreciate how it allows them to take a scientific approach to the improvement of instruction. Although the direct infusion approach seems to efficiently promote acquisition of CT skills, more research is needed to find out if students transfer their skills outside of the class­room or whether this approach needs adjustment to promote transfer.

Table 1. Strengths and Weaknesses of Nonscientific Sources and Kinds of Evidence

Table 2. Strengths and Weaknesses of Scientific Research Methods/Designs Used as Sources of Evidence

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Excellent article.

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About the Author

D. Alan Bensley is Professor of Psychology at Frostburg State University. He received his Master’s and PhD degrees in cognitive psychology from Rutgers University. His main teaching and research interests concern the improvement of critical thinking and other cognitive skills. He coordinates assessment for his department and is developing a battery of instruments to assess critical thinking in psychology. He can be reached by email at [email protected] Association for Psychological Science December 2010 — Vol. 23, No. 10

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Original research article, performance assessment of critical thinking: conceptualization, design, and implementation.

• 1 Lynch School of Education and Human Development, Boston College, Chestnut Hill, MA, United States
• 2 Graduate School of Education, Stanford University, Stanford, CA, United States
• 3 Department of Business and Economics Education, Johannes Gutenberg University, Mainz, Germany

Enhancing students’ critical thinking (CT) skills is an essential goal of higher education. This article presents a systematic approach to conceptualizing and measuring CT. CT generally comprises the following mental processes: identifying, evaluating, and analyzing a problem; interpreting information; synthesizing evidence; and reporting a conclusion. We further posit that CT also involves dealing with dilemmas involving ambiguity or conflicts among principles and contradictory information. We argue that performance assessment provides the most realistic—and most credible—approach to measuring CT. From this conceptualization and construct definition, we describe one possible framework for building performance assessments of CT with attention to extended performance tasks within the assessment system. The framework is a product of an ongoing, collaborative effort, the International Performance Assessment of Learning (iPAL). The framework comprises four main aspects: (1) The storyline describes a carefully curated version of a complex, real-world situation. (2) The challenge frames the task to be accomplished (3). A portfolio of documents in a range of formats is drawn from multiple sources chosen to have specific characteristics. (4) The scoring rubric comprises a set of scales each linked to a facet of the construct. We discuss a number of use cases, as well as the challenges that arise with the use and valid interpretation of performance assessments. The final section presents elements of the iPAL research program that involve various refinements and extensions of the assessment framework, a number of empirical studies, along with linkages to current work in online reading and information processing.

Introduction

In their mission statements, most colleges declare that a principal goal is to develop students’ higher-order cognitive skills such as critical thinking (CT) and reasoning (e.g., Shavelson, 2010 ; Hyytinen et al., 2019 ). The importance of CT is echoed by business leaders ( Association of American Colleges and Universities [AACU], 2018 ), as well as by college faculty (for curricular analyses in Germany, see e.g., Zlatkin-Troitschanskaia et al., 2018 ). Indeed, in the 2019 administration of the Faculty Survey of Student Engagement (FSSE), 93% of faculty reported that they “very much” or “quite a bit” structure their courses to support student development with respect to thinking critically and analytically. In a listing of 21st century skills, CT was the most highly ranked among FSSE respondents ( Indiana University, 2019 ). Nevertheless, there is considerable evidence that many college students do not develop these skills to a satisfactory standard ( Arum and Roksa, 2011 ; Shavelson et al., 2019 ; Zlatkin-Troitschanskaia et al., 2019 ). This state of affairs represents a serious challenge to higher education – and to society at large.

In view of the importance of CT, as well as evidence of substantial variation in its development during college, its proper measurement is essential to tracking progress in skill development and to providing useful feedback to both teachers and learners. Feedback can help focus students’ attention on key skill areas in need of improvement, and provide insight to teachers on choices of pedagogical strategies and time allocation. Moreover, comparative studies at the program and institutional level can inform higher education leaders and policy makers.

The conceptualization and definition of CT presented here is closely related to models of information processing and online reasoning, the skills that are the focus of this special issue. These two skills are especially germane to the learning environments that college students experience today when much of their academic work is done online. Ideally, students should be capable of more than naïve Internet search, followed by copy-and-paste (e.g., McGrew et al., 2017 ); rather, for example, they should be able to critically evaluate both sources of evidence and the quality of the evidence itself in light of a given purpose ( Leu et al., 2020 ).

In this paper, we present a systematic approach to conceptualizing CT. From that conceptualization and construct definition, we present one possible framework for building performance assessments of CT with particular attention to extended performance tasks within the test environment. The penultimate section discusses some of the challenges that arise with the use and valid interpretation of performance assessment scores. We conclude the paper with a section on future perspectives in an emerging field of research – the iPAL program.

Conceptual Foundations, Definition and Measurement of Critical Thinking

In this section, we briefly review the concept of CT and its definition. In accordance with the principles of evidence-centered design (ECD; Mislevy et al., 2003 ), the conceptualization drives the measurement of the construct; that is, implementation of ECD directly links aspects of the assessment framework to specific facets of the construct. We then argue that performance assessments designed in accordance with such an assessment framework provide the most realistic—and most credible—approach to measuring CT. The section concludes with a sketch of an approach to CT measurement grounded in performance assessment .

Concept and Definition of Critical Thinking

Taxonomies of 21st century skills ( Pellegrino and Hilton, 2012 ) abound, and it is neither surprising that CT appears in most taxonomies of learning, nor that there are many different approaches to defining and operationalizing the construct of CT. There is, however, general agreement that CT is a multifaceted construct ( Liu et al., 2014 ). Liu et al. (2014) identified five key facets of CT: (i) evaluating evidence and the use of evidence; (ii) analyzing arguments; (iii) understanding implications and consequences; (iv) developing sound arguments; and (v) understanding causation and explanation.

There is empirical support for these facets from college faculty. A 2016–2017 survey conducted by the Higher Education Research Institute (HERI) at the University of California, Los Angeles found that a substantial majority of faculty respondents “frequently” encouraged students to: (i) evaluate the quality or reliability of the information they receive; (ii) recognize biases that affect their thinking; (iii) analyze multiple sources of information before coming to a conclusion; and (iv) support their opinions with a logical argument ( Stolzenberg et al., 2019 ).

There is general agreement that CT involves the following mental processes: identifying, evaluating, and analyzing a problem; interpreting information; synthesizing evidence; and reporting a conclusion (e.g., Erwin and Sebrell, 2003 ; Kosslyn and Nelson, 2017 ; Shavelson et al., 2018 ). We further suggest that CT includes dealing with dilemmas of ambiguity or conflict among principles and contradictory information ( Oser and Biedermann, 2020 ).

Importantly, Oser and Biedermann (2020) posit that CT can be manifested at three levels. The first level, Critical Analysis , is the most complex of the three levels. Critical Analysis requires both knowledge in a specific discipline (conceptual) and procedural analytical (deduction, inclusion, etc.) knowledge. The second level is Critical Reflection , which involves more generic skills “… necessary for every responsible member of a society” (p. 90). It is “a basic attitude that must be taken into consideration if (new) information is questioned to be true or false, reliable or not reliable, moral or immoral etc.” (p. 90). To engage in Critical Reflection, one needs not only apply analytic reasoning, but also adopt a reflective stance toward the political, social, and other consequences of choosing a course of action. It also involves analyzing the potential motives of various actors involved in the dilemma of interest. The third level, Critical Alertness , involves questioning one’s own or others’ thinking from a skeptical point of view.

Wheeler and Haertel (1993) categorized higher-order skills, such as CT, into two types: (i) when solving problems and making decisions in professional and everyday life, for instance, related to civic affairs and the environment; and (ii) in situations where various mental processes (e.g., comparing, evaluating, and justifying) are developed through formal instruction, usually in a discipline. Hence, in both settings, individuals must confront situations that typically involve a problematic event, contradictory information, and possibly conflicting principles. Indeed, there is an ongoing debate concerning whether CT should be evaluated using generic or discipline-based assessments ( Nagel et al., 2020 ). Whether CT skills are conceptualized as generic or discipline-specific has implications for how they are assessed and how they are incorporated into the classroom.

In the iPAL project, CT is characterized as a multifaceted construct that comprises conceptualizing, analyzing, drawing inferences or synthesizing information, evaluating claims, and applying the results of these reasoning processes to various purposes (e.g., solve a problem, decide on a course of action, find an answer to a given question or reach a conclusion) ( Shavelson et al., 2019 ). In the course of carrying out a CT task, an individual typically engages in activities such as specifying or clarifying a problem; deciding what information is relevant to the problem; evaluating the trustworthiness of information; avoiding judgmental errors based on “fast thinking”; avoiding biases and stereotypes; recognizing different perspectives and how they can reframe a situation; considering the consequences of alternative courses of actions; and communicating clearly and concisely decisions and actions. The order in which activities are carried out can vary among individuals and the processes can be non-linear and reciprocal.

In this article, we focus on generic CT skills. The importance of these skills derives not only from their utility in academic and professional settings, but also the many situations involving challenging moral and ethical issues – often framed in terms of conflicting principles and/or interests – to which individuals have to apply these skills ( Kegan, 1994 ; Tessier-Lavigne, 2020 ). Conflicts and dilemmas are ubiquitous in the contexts in which adults find themselves: work, family, civil society. Moreover, to remain viable in the global economic environment – one characterized by increased competition and advances in second generation artificial intelligence (AI) – today’s college students will need to continually develop and leverage their CT skills. Ideally, colleges offer a supportive environment in which students can develop and practice effective approaches to reasoning about and acting in learning, professional and everyday situations.

Measurement of Critical Thinking

Critical thinking is a multifaceted construct that poses many challenges to those who would develop relevant and valid assessments. For those interested in current approaches to the measurement of CT that are not the focus of this paper, consult Zlatkin-Troitschanskaia et al. (2018) .

In this paper, we have singled out performance assessment as it offers important advantages to measuring CT. Extant tests of CT typically employ response formats such as forced-choice or short-answer, and scenario-based tasks (for an overview, see Liu et al., 2014 ). They all suffer from moderate to severe construct underrepresentation; that is, they fail to capture important facets of the CT construct such as perspective taking and communication. High fidelity performance tasks are viewed as more authentic in that they provide a problem context and require responses that are more similar to what individuals confront in the real world than what is offered by traditional multiple-choice items ( Messick, 1994 ; Braun, 2019 ). This greater verisimilitude promises higher levels of construct representation and lower levels of construct-irrelevant variance. Such performance tasks have the capacity to measure facets of CT that are imperfectly assessed, if at all, using traditional assessments ( Lane and Stone, 2006 ; Braun, 2019 ; Shavelson et al., 2019 ). However, these assertions must be empirically validated, and the measures should be subjected to psychometric analyses. Evidence of the reliability, validity, and interpretative challenges of performance assessment (PA) are extensively detailed in Davey et al. (2015) .

We adopt the following definition of performance assessment:

A performance assessment (sometimes called a work sample when assessing job performance) … is an activity or set of activities that requires test takers, either individually or in groups, to generate products or performances in response to a complex, most often real-world task. These products and performances provide observable evidence bearing on test takers’ knowledge, skills, and abilities—their competencies—in completing the assessment ( Davey et al., 2015 , p. 10).

A performance assessment typically includes an extended performance task and short constructed-response and selected-response (i.e., multiple-choice) tasks (for examples, see Zlatkin-Troitschanskaia and Shavelson, 2019 ). In this paper, we refer to both individual performance- and constructed-response tasks as performance tasks (PT) (For an example, see Table 1 in section “iPAL Assessment Framework”).

Table 1. The iPAL assessment framework.

An Approach to Performance Assessment of Critical Thinking: The iPAL Program

The approach to CT presented here is the result of ongoing work undertaken by the International Performance Assessment of Learning collaborative (iPAL 1 ). iPAL is an international consortium of volunteers, primarily from academia, who have come together to address the dearth in higher education of research and practice in measuring CT with performance tasks ( Shavelson et al., 2018 ). In this section, we present iPAL’s assessment framework as the basis of measuring CT, with examples along the way.

iPAL Background

The iPAL assessment framework builds on the Council of Aid to Education’s Collegiate Learning Assessment (CLA). The CLA was designed to measure cross-disciplinary, generic competencies, such as CT, analytic reasoning, problem solving, and written communication ( Klein et al., 2007 ; Shavelson, 2010 ). Ideally, each PA contained an extended PT (e.g., examining a range of evidential materials related to the crash of an aircraft) and two short PT’s: one in which students either critique an argument or provide a solution in response to a real-world societal issue.

Motivated by considerations of adequate reliability, in 2012, the CLA was later modified to create the CLA+. The CLA+ includes two subtests: a PT and a 25-item Selected Response Question (SRQ) section. The PT presents a document or problem statement and an assignment based on that document which elicits an open-ended response. The CLA+ added the SRQ section (which is not linked substantively to the PT scenario) to increase the number of student responses to obtain more reliable estimates of performance at the student-level than could be achieved with a single PT ( Zahner, 2013 ; Davey et al., 2015 ).

iPAL Assessment Framework

Methodological foundations.

The iPAL framework evolved from the Collegiate Learning Assessment developed by Klein et al. (2007) . It was also informed by the results from the AHELO pilot study ( Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development [OECD], 2012 , 2013 ), as well as the KoKoHs research program in Germany (for an overview see, Zlatkin-Troitschanskaia et al., 2017 , 2020 ). The ongoing refinement of the iPAL framework has been guided in part by the principles of Evidence Centered Design (ECD) ( Mislevy et al., 2003 ; Mislevy and Haertel, 2006 ; Haertel and Fujii, 2017 ).

In educational measurement, an assessment framework plays a critical intermediary role between the theoretical formulation of the construct and the development of the assessment instrument containing tasks (or items) intended to elicit evidence with respect to that construct ( Mislevy et al., 2003 ). Builders of the assessment framework draw on the construct theory and operationalize it in a way that provides explicit guidance to PT’s developers. Thus, the framework should reflect the relevant facets of the construct, where relevance is determined by substantive theory or an appropriate alternative such as behavioral samples from real-world situations of interest (criterion-sampling; McClelland, 1973 ), as well as the intended use(s) (for an example, see Shavelson et al., 2019 ). By following the requirements and guidelines embodied in the framework, instrument developers strengthen the claim of construct validity for the instrument ( Messick, 1994 ).

An assessment framework can be specified at different levels of granularity: an assessment battery (“omnibus” assessment, for an example see below), a single performance task, or a specific component of an assessment ( Shavelson, 2010 ; Davey et al., 2015 ). In the iPAL program, a performance assessment comprises one or more extended performance tasks and additional selected-response and short constructed-response items. The focus of the framework specified below is on a single PT intended to elicit evidence with respect to some facets of CT, such as the evaluation of the trustworthiness of the documents provided and the capacity to address conflicts of principles.

From the ECD perspective, an assessment is an instrument for generating information to support an evidentiary argument and, therefore, the intended inferences (claims) must guide each stage of the design process. The construct of interest is operationalized through the Student Model , which represents the target knowledge, skills, and abilities, as well as the relationships among them. The student model should also make explicit the assumptions regarding student competencies in foundational skills or content knowledge. The Task Model specifies the features of the problems or items posed to the respondent, with the goal of eliciting the evidence desired. The assessment framework also describes the collection of task models comprising the instrument, with considerations of construct validity, various psychometric characteristics (e.g., reliability) and practical constraints (e.g., testing time and cost). The student model provides grounds for evidence of validity, especially cognitive validity; namely, that the students are thinking critically in responding to the task(s).

In the present context, the target construct (CT) is the competence of individuals to think critically, which entails solving complex, real-world problems, and clearly communicating their conclusions or recommendations for action based on trustworthy, relevant and unbiased information. The situations, drawn from actual events, are challenging and may arise in many possible settings. In contrast to more reductionist approaches to assessment development, the iPAL approach and framework rests on the assumption that properly addressing these situational demands requires the application of a constellation of CT skills appropriate to the particular task presented (e.g., Shavelson, 2010 , 2013 ). For a PT, the assessment framework must also specify the rubric by which the responses will be evaluated. The rubric must be properly linked to the target construct so that the resulting score profile constitutes evidence that is both relevant and interpretable in terms of the student model (for an example, see Zlatkin-Troitschanskaia et al., 2019 ).

iPAL Task Framework

The iPAL ‘omnibus’ framework comprises four main aspects: A storyline , a challenge , a document library , and a scoring rubric . Table 1 displays these aspects, brief descriptions of each, and the corresponding examples drawn from an iPAL performance assessment (Version adapted from original in Hyytinen and Toom, 2019 ). Storylines are drawn from various domains; for example, the worlds of business, public policy, civics, medicine, and family. They often involve moral and/or ethical considerations. Deriving an appropriate storyline from a real-world situation requires careful consideration of which features are to be kept in toto , which adapted for purposes of the assessment, and which to be discarded. Framing the challenge demands care in wording so that there is minimal ambiguity in what is required of the respondent. The difficulty of the challenge depends, in large part, on the nature and extent of the information provided in the document library , the amount of scaffolding included, as well as the scope of the required response. The amount of information and the scope of the challenge should be commensurate with the amount of time available. As is evident from the table, the characteristics of the documents in the library are intended to elicit responses related to facets of CT. For example, with regard to bias, the information provided is intended to play to judgmental errors due to fast thinking and/or motivational reasoning. Ideally, the situation should accommodate multiple solutions of varying degrees of merit.

The dimensions of the scoring rubric are derived from the Task Model and Student Model ( Mislevy et al., 2003 ) and signal which features are to be extracted from the response and indicate how they are to be evaluated. There should be a direct link between the evaluation of the evidence and the claims that are made with respect to the key features of the task model and student model . More specifically, the task model specifies the various manipulations embodied in the PA and so informs scoring, while the student model specifies the capacities students employ in more or less effectively responding to the tasks. The score scales for each of the five facets of CT (see section “Concept and Definition of Critical Thinking”) can be specified using appropriate behavioral anchors (for examples, see Zlatkin-Troitschanskaia and Shavelson, 2019 ). Of particular importance is the evaluation of the response with respect to the last dimension of the scoring rubric; namely, the overall coherence and persuasiveness of the argument, building on the explicit or implicit characteristics related to the first five dimensions. The scoring process must be monitored carefully to ensure that (trained) raters are judging each response based on the same types of features and evaluation criteria ( Braun, 2019 ) as indicated by interrater agreement coefficients.

The scoring rubric of the iPAL omnibus framework can be modified for specific tasks ( Lane and Stone, 2006 ). This generic rubric helps ensure consistency across rubrics for different storylines. For example, Zlatkin-Troitschanskaia et al. (2019 , p. 473) used the following scoring scheme:

Based on our construct definition of CT and its four dimensions: (D1-Info) recognizing and evaluating information, (D2-Decision) recognizing and evaluating arguments and making decisions, (D3-Conseq) recognizing and evaluating the consequences of decisions, and (D4-Writing), we developed a corresponding analytic dimensional scoring … The students’ performance is evaluated along the four dimensions, which in turn are subdivided into a total of 23 indicators as (sub)categories of CT … For each dimension, we sought detailed evidence in students’ responses for the indicators and scored them on a six-point Likert-type scale. In order to reduce judgment distortions, an elaborate procedure of ‘behaviorally anchored rating scales’ (Smith and Kendall, 1963) was applied by assigning concrete behavioral expectations to certain scale points (Bernardin et al., 1976). To this end, we defined the scale levels by short descriptions of typical behavior and anchored them with concrete examples. … We trained four raters in 1 day using a specially developed training course to evaluate students’ performance along the 23 indicators clustered into four dimensions (for a description of the rater training, see Klotzer, 2018).

Shavelson et al. (2019) examined the interrater agreement of the scoring scheme developed by Zlatkin-Troitschanskaia et al. (2019) and “found that with 23 items and 2 raters the generalizability (“reliability”) coefficient for total scores to be 0.74 (with 4 raters, 0.84)” ( Shavelson et al., 2019 , p. 15). In the study by Zlatkin-Troitschanskaia et al. (2019 , p. 478) three score profiles were identified (low-, middle-, and high-performer) for students. Proper interpretation of such profiles requires care. For example, there may be multiple possible explanations for low scores such as poor CT skills, a lack of a disposition to engage with the challenge, or the two attributes jointly. These alternative explanations for student performance can potentially pose a threat to the evidentiary argument. In this case, auxiliary information may be available to aid in resolving the ambiguity. For example, student responses to selected- and short-constructed-response items in the PA can provide relevant information about the levels of the different skills possessed by the student. When sufficient data are available, the scores can be modeled statistically and/or qualitatively in such a way as to bring them to bear on the technical quality or interpretability of the claims of the assessment: reliability, validity, and utility evidence ( Davey et al., 2015 ; Zlatkin-Troitschanskaia et al., 2019 ). These kinds of concerns are less critical when PT’s are used in classroom settings. The instructor can draw on other sources of evidence, including direct discussion with the student.

Use of iPAL Performance Assessments in Educational Practice: Evidence From Preliminary Validation Studies

The assessment framework described here supports the development of a PT in a general setting. Many modifications are possible and, indeed, desirable. If the PT is to be more deeply embedded in a certain discipline (e.g., economics, law, or medicine), for example, then the framework must specify characteristics of the narrative and the complementary documents as to the breadth and depth of disciplinary knowledge that is represented.

At present, preliminary field trials employing the omnibus framework (i.e., a full set of documents) indicated that 60 min was generally an inadequate amount of time for students to engage with the full set of complementary documents and to craft a complete response to the challenge (for an example, see Shavelson et al., 2019 ). Accordingly, it would be helpful to develop modified frameworks for PT’s that require substantially less time. For an example, see a short performance assessment of civic online reasoning, requiring response times from 10 to 50 min ( Wineburg et al., 2016 ). Such assessment frameworks could be derived from the omnibus framework by focusing on a reduced number of facets of CT, and specifying the characteristics of the complementary documents to be included – or, perhaps, choices among sets of documents. In principle, one could build a ‘family’ of PT’s, each using the same (or nearly the same) storyline and a subset of the full collection of complementary documents.

Paul and Elder (2007) argue that the goal of CT assessments should be to provide faculty with important information about how well their instruction supports the development of students’ CT. In that spirit, the full family of PT’s could represent all facets of the construct while affording instructors and students more specific insights on strengths and weaknesses with respect to particular facets of CT. Moreover, the framework should be expanded to include the design of a set of short answer and/or multiple choice items to accompany the PT. Ideally, these additional items would be based on the same narrative as the PT to collect more nuanced information on students’ precursor skills such as reading comprehension, while enhancing the overall reliability of the assessment. Areas where students are under-prepared could be addressed before, or even in parallel with the development of the focal CT skills. The parallel approach follows the co-requisite model of developmental education. In other settings (e.g., for summative assessment), these complementary items would be administered after the PT to augment the evidence in relation to the various claims. The full PT taking 90 min or more could serve as a capstone assessment.

As we transition from simply delivering paper-based assessments by computer to taking full advantage of the affordances of a digital platform, we should learn from the hard-won lessons of the past so that we can make swifter progress with fewer missteps. In that regard, we must take validity as the touchstone – assessment design, development and deployment must all be tightly linked to the operational definition of the CT construct. Considerations of reliability and practicality come into play with various use cases that highlight different purposes for the assessment (for future perspectives, see next section).

The iPAL assessment framework represents a feasible compromise between commercial, standardized assessments of CT (e.g., Liu et al., 2014 ), on the one hand, and, on the other, freedom for individual faculty to develop assessment tasks according to idiosyncratic models. It imposes a degree of standardization on both task development and scoring, while still allowing some flexibility for faculty to tailor the assessment to meet their unique needs. In so doing, it addresses a key weakness of the AAC&U’s VALUE initiative 2 (retrieved 5/7/2020) that has achieved wide acceptance among United States colleges.

The VALUE initiative has produced generic scoring rubrics for 15 domains including CT, problem-solving and written communication. A rubric for a particular skill domain (e.g., critical thinking) has five to six dimensions with four ordered performance levels for each dimension (1 = lowest, 4 = highest). The performance levels are accompanied by language that is intended to clearly differentiate among levels. 3 Faculty are asked to submit student work products from a senior level course that is intended to yield evidence with respect to student learning outcomes in a particular domain and that, they believe, can elicit performances at the highest level. The collection of work products is then graded by faculty from other institutions who have been trained to apply the rubrics.

A principal difficulty is that there is neither a common framework to guide the design of the challenge, nor any control on task complexity and difficulty. Consequently, there is substantial heterogeneity in the quality and evidential value of the submitted responses. This also causes difficulties with task scoring and inter-rater reliability. Shavelson et al. (2009) discuss some of the problems arising with non-standardized collections of student work.

In this context, one advantage of the iPAL framework is that it can provide valuable guidance and an explicit structure for faculty in developing performance tasks for both instruction and formative assessment. When faculty design assessments, their focus is typically on content coverage rather than other potentially important characteristics, such as the degree of construct representation and the adequacy of their scoring procedures ( Braun, 2019 ).

Concluding Reflections

Challenges to interpretation and implementation.

Performance tasks such as those generated by iPAL are attractive instruments for assessing CT skills (e.g., Shavelson, 2010 ; Shavelson et al., 2019 ). The attraction mainly rests on the assumption that elaborated PT’s are more authentic (direct) and more completely capture facets of the target construct (i.e., possess greater construct representation) than the widely used selected-response tests. However, as Messick (1994) noted authenticity is a “promissory note” that must be redeemed with empirical research. In practice, there are trade-offs among authenticity, construct validity, and psychometric quality such as reliability ( Davey et al., 2015 ).

One reason for Messick (1994) caution is that authenticity does not guarantee construct validity. The latter must be established by drawing on multiple sources of evidence ( American Educational Research Association et al., 2014 ). Following the ECD principles in designing and developing the PT, as well as the associated scoring rubrics, constitutes an important type of evidence. Further, as Leighton (2019) argues, response process data (“cognitive validity”) is needed to validate claims regarding the cognitive complexity of PT’s. Relevant data can be obtained through cognitive laboratory studies involving methods such as think aloud protocols or eye-tracking. Although time-consuming and expensive, such studies can yield not only evidence of validity, but also valuable information to guide refinements of the PT.

Going forward, iPAL PT’s must be subjected to validation studies as recommended in the Standards for Psychological and Educational Testing by American Educational Research Association et al. (2014) . With a particular focus on the criterion “relationships to other variables,” a framework should include assumptions about the theoretically expected relationships among the indicators assessed by the PT, as well as the indicators’ relationships to external variables such as intelligence or prior (task-relevant) knowledge.

Complementing the necessity of evaluating construct validity, there is the need to consider potential sources of construct-irrelevant variance (CIV). One pertains to student motivation, which is typically greater when the stakes are higher. If students are not motivated, then their performance is likely to be impacted by factors unrelated to their (construct-relevant) ability ( Lane and Stone, 2006 ; Braun et al., 2011 ; Shavelson, 2013 ). Differential motivation across groups can also bias comparisons. Student motivation might be enhanced if the PT is administered in the context of a course with the promise of generating useful feedback on students’ skill profiles.

Construct-irrelevant variance can also occur when students are not equally prepared for the format of the PT or fully appreciate the response requirements. This source of CIV could be alleviated by providing students with practice PT’s. Finally, the use of novel forms of documentation, such as those from the Internet, can potentially introduce CIV due to differential familiarity with forms of representation or contents. Interestingly, this suggests that there may be a conflict between enhancing construct representation and reducing CIV.

Another potential source of CIV is related to response evaluation. Even with training, human raters can vary in accuracy and usage of the full score range. In addition, raters may attend to features of responses that are unrelated to the target construct, such as the length of the students’ responses or the frequency of grammatical errors ( Lane and Stone, 2006 ). Some of these sources of variance could be addressed in an online environment, where word processing software could alert students to potential grammatical and spelling errors before they submit their final work product.

Performance tasks generally take longer to administer and are more costly than traditional assessments, making it more difficult to reliably measure student performance ( Messick, 1994 ; Davey et al., 2015 ). Indeed, it is well known that more than one performance task is needed to obtain high reliability ( Shavelson, 2013 ). This is due to both student-task interactions and variability in scoring. Sources of student-task interactions are differential familiarity with the topic ( Hyytinen and Toom, 2019 ) and differential motivation to engage with the task. The level of reliability required, however, depends on the context of use. For use in formative assessment as part of an instructional program, reliability can be lower than use for summative purposes. In the former case, other types of evidence are generally available to support interpretation and guide pedagogical decisions. Further studies are needed to obtain estimates of reliability in typical instructional settings.

With sufficient data, more sophisticated psychometric analyses become possible. One challenge is that the assumption of unidimensionality required for many psychometric models might be untenable for performance tasks ( Davey et al., 2015 ). Davey et al. (2015) provide the example of a mathematics assessment that requires students to demonstrate not only their mathematics skills but also their written communication skills. Although the iPAL framework does not explicitly address students’ reading comprehension and organization skills, students will likely need to call on these abilities to accomplish the task. Moreover, as the operational definition of CT makes evident, the student must not only deploy several skills in responding to the challenge of the PT, but also carry out component tasks in sequence. The former requirement strongly indicates the need for a multi-dimensional IRT model, while the latter suggests that the usual assumption of local item independence may well be problematic ( Lane and Stone, 2006 ). At the same time, the analytic scoring rubric should facilitate the use of latent class analysis to partition data from large groups into meaningful categories ( Zlatkin-Troitschanskaia et al., 2019 ).

Future Perspectives

Although the iPAL consortium has made substantial progress in the assessment of CT, much remains to be done. Further refinement of existing PT’s and their adaptation to different languages and cultures must continue. To this point, there are a number of examples: The refugee crisis PT (cited in Table 1 ) was translated and adapted from Finnish to US English and then to Colombian Spanish. A PT concerning kidney transplants was translated and adapted from German to US English. Finally, two PT’s based on ‘legacy admissions’ to US colleges were translated and adapted to Colombian Spanish.

With respect to data collection, there is a need for sufficient data to support psychometric analysis of student responses, especially the relationships among the different components of the scoring rubric, as this would inform both task development and response evaluation ( Zlatkin-Troitschanskaia et al., 2019 ). In addition, more intensive study of response processes through cognitive laboratories and the like are needed to strengthen the evidential argument for construct validity ( Leighton, 2019 ). We are currently conducting empirical studies, collecting data on both iPAL PT’s and other measures of CT. These studies will provide evidence of convergent and discriminant validity.

At the same time, efforts should be directed at further development to support different ways CT PT’s might be used—i.e., use cases—especially those that call for formative use of PT’s. Incorporating formative assessment into courses can plausibly be expected to improve students’ competency acquisition ( Zlatkin-Troitschanskaia et al., 2017 ). With suitable choices of storylines, appropriate combinations of (modified) PT’s, supplemented by short-answer and multiple-choice items, could be interwoven into ordinary classroom activities. The supplementary items may be completely separate from the PT’s (as is the case with the CLA+), loosely coupled with the PT’s (as in drawing on the same storyline), or tightly linked to the PT’s (as in requiring elaboration of certain components of the response to the PT).

As an alternative to such integration, stand-alone modules could be embedded in courses to yield evidence of students’ generic CT skills. Core curriculum courses or general education courses offer ideal settings for embedding performance assessments. If these assessments were administered to a representative sample of students in each cohort over their years in college, the results would yield important information on the development of CT skills at a population level. For another example, these PA’s could be used to assess the competence profiles of students entering Bachelor’s or graduate-level programs as a basis for more targeted instructional support.

Thus, in considering different use cases for the assessment of CT, it is evident that several modifications of the iPAL omnibus assessment framework are needed. As noted earlier, assessments built according to this framework are demanding with respect to the extensive preliminary work required by a task and the time required to properly complete it. Thus, it would be helpful to have modified versions of the framework, focusing on one or two facets of the CT construct and calling for a smaller number of supplementary documents. The challenge to the student should be suitably reduced.

Some members of the iPAL collaborative have developed PT’s that are embedded in disciplines such as engineering, law and education ( Crump et al., 2019 ; for teacher education examples, see Jeschke et al., 2019 ). These are proving to be of great interest to various stakeholders and further development is likely. Consequently, it is essential that an appropriate assessment framework be established and implemented. It is both a conceptual and an empirical question as to whether a single framework can guide development in different domains.

Performance Assessment in Online Learning Environment

Over the last 15 years, increasing amounts of time in both college and work are spent using computers and other electronic devices. This has led to formulation of models for the new literacies that attempt to capture some key characteristics of these activities. A prominent example is a model proposed by Leu et al. (2020) . The model frames online reading as a process of problem-based inquiry that calls on five practices to occur during online research and comprehension:

1. Reading to identify important questions,

2. Reading to locate information,

3. Reading to critically evaluate information,

4. Reading to synthesize online information, and

5. Reading and writing to communicate online information.

The parallels with the iPAL definition of CT are evident and suggest there may be benefits to closer links between these two lines of research. For example, a report by Leu et al. (2014) describes empirical studies comparing assessments of online reading using either open-ended or multiple-choice response formats.

The iPAL consortium has begun to take advantage of the affordances of the online environment (for examples, see Schmidt et al. and Nagel et al. in this special issue). Most obviously, Supplementary Materials can now include archival photographs, audio recordings, or videos. Additional tasks might include the online search for relevant documents, though this would add considerably to the time demands. This online search could occur within a simulated Internet environment, as is the case for the IEA’s ePIRLS assessment ( Mullis et al., 2017 ).

The prospect of having access to a wealth of materials that can add to task authenticity is exciting. Yet it can also add ambiguity and information overload. Increased authenticity, then, should be weighed against validity concerns and the time required to absorb the content in these materials. Modifications of the design framework and extensive empirical testing will be required to decide on appropriate trade-offs. A related possibility is to employ some of these materials in short-answer (or even selected-response) items that supplement the main PT. Response formats could include highlighting text or using a drag-and-drop menu to construct a response. Students’ responses could be automatically scored, thereby containing costs. With automated scoring, feedback to students and faculty, including suggestions for next steps in strengthening CT skills, could also be provided without adding to faculty workload. Therefore, taking advantage of the online environment to incorporate new types of supplementary documents should be a high priority and, perhaps, to introduce new response formats as well. Finally, further investigation of the overlap between this formulation of CT and the characterization of online reading promulgated by Leu et al. (2020) is a promising direction to pursue.

Data Availability Statement

All datasets generated for this study are included in the article/supplementary material.

Author Contributions

HB wrote the article. RS, OZ-T, and KB were involved in the preparation and revision of the article and co-wrote the manuscript. All authors contributed to the article and approved the submitted version.

This study was funded in part by the Spencer Foundation (Grant No. #201700123).

Conflict of Interest

The authors declare that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest.

Acknowledgments

We would like to thank all the researchers who have participated in the iPAL program.

• ^ https://www.ipal-rd.com/
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Keywords : critical thinking, performance assessment, assessment framework, scoring rubric, evidence-centered design, 21st century skills, higher education

Citation: Braun HI, Shavelson RJ, Zlatkin-Troitschanskaia O and Borowiec K (2020) Performance Assessment of Critical Thinking: Conceptualization, Design, and Implementation. Front. Educ. 5:156. doi: 10.3389/feduc.2020.00156

Received: 30 May 2020; Accepted: 04 August 2020; Published: 08 September 2020.

Reviewed by:

Copyright © 2020 Braun, Shavelson, Zlatkin-Troitschanskaia and Borowiec. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY) . The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) and the copyright owner(s) are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.

*Correspondence: Henry I. Braun, [email protected]

This article is part of the Research Topic

Assessing Information Processing and Online Reasoning as a Prerequisite for Learning in Higher Education

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A Short Guide to Building Your Team’s Critical Thinking Skills

• Matt Plummer

Critical thinking isn’t an innate skill. It can be learned.

Most employers lack an effective way to objectively assess critical thinking skills and most managers don’t know how to provide specific instruction to team members in need of becoming better thinkers. Instead, most managers employ a sink-or-swim approach, ultimately creating work-arounds to keep those who can’t figure out how to “swim” from making important decisions. But it doesn’t have to be this way. To demystify what critical thinking is and how it is developed, the author’s team turned to three research-backed models: The Halpern Critical Thinking Assessment, Pearson’s RED Critical Thinking Model, and Bloom’s Taxonomy. Using these models, they developed the Critical Thinking Roadmap, a framework that breaks critical thinking down into four measurable phases: the ability to execute, synthesize, recommend, and generate.

With critical thinking ranking among the most in-demand skills for job candidates , you would think that educational institutions would prepare candidates well to be exceptional thinkers, and employers would be adept at developing such skills in existing employees. Unfortunately, both are largely untrue.

• Matt Plummer (@mtplummer) is the founder of Zarvana, which offers online programs and coaching services to help working professionals become more productive by developing time-saving habits. Before starting Zarvana, Matt spent six years at Bain & Company spin-out, The Bridgespan Group, a strategy and management consulting firm for nonprofits, foundations, and philanthropists.  

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Why Schools Need to Change Yes, We Can Define, Teach, and Assess Critical Thinking Skills

Jeff Heyck-Williams (He, His, Him) Director of the Two Rivers Learning Institute in Washington, DC

Today’s learners face an uncertain present and a rapidly changing future that demand far different skills and knowledge than were needed in the 20th century. We also know so much more about enabling deep, powerful learning than we ever did before. Our collective future depends on how well young people prepare for the challenges and opportunities of 21st-century life.

Critical thinking is a thing. We can define it; we can teach it; and we can assess it.

While the idea of teaching critical thinking has been bandied around in education circles since at least the time of John Dewey, it has taken greater prominence in the education debates with the advent of the term “21st century skills” and discussions of deeper learning. There is increasing agreement among education reformers that critical thinking is an essential ingredient for long-term success for all of our students.

However, there are still those in the education establishment and in the media who argue that critical thinking isn’t really a thing, or that these skills aren’t well defined and, even if they could be defined, they can’t be taught or assessed.

To those naysayers, I have to disagree. Critical thinking is a thing. We can define it; we can teach it; and we can assess it. In fact, as part of a multi-year Assessment for Learning Project , Two Rivers Public Charter School in Washington, D.C., has done just that.

Before I dive into what we have done, I want to acknowledge that some of the criticism has merit.

First, there are those that argue that critical thinking can only exist when students have a vast fund of knowledge. Meaning that a student cannot think critically if they don’t have something substantive about which to think. I agree. Students do need a robust foundation of core content knowledge to effectively think critically. Schools still have a responsibility for building students’ content knowledge.

However, I would argue that students don’t need to wait to think critically until after they have mastered some arbitrary amount of knowledge. They can start building critical thinking skills when they walk in the door. All students come to school with experience and knowledge which they can immediately think critically about. In fact, some of the thinking that they learn to do helps augment and solidify the discipline-specific academic knowledge that they are learning.

The second criticism is that critical thinking skills are always highly contextual. In this argument, the critics make the point that the types of thinking that students do in history is categorically different from the types of thinking students do in science or math. Thus, the idea of teaching broadly defined, content-neutral critical thinking skills is impossible. I agree that there are domain-specific thinking skills that students should learn in each discipline. However, I also believe that there are several generalizable skills that elementary school students can learn that have broad applicability to their academic and social lives. That is what we have done at Two Rivers.

Defining Critical Thinking Skills

We began this work by first defining what we mean by critical thinking. After a review of the literature and looking at the practice at other schools, we identified five constructs that encompass a set of broadly applicable skills: schema development and activation; effective reasoning; creativity and innovation; problem solving; and decision making.

We then created rubrics to provide a concrete vision of what each of these constructs look like in practice. Working with the Stanford Center for Assessment, Learning and Equity (SCALE) , we refined these rubrics to capture clear and discrete skills.

For example, we defined effective reasoning as the skill of creating an evidence-based claim: students need to construct a claim, identify relevant support, link their support to their claim, and identify possible questions or counter claims. Rubrics provide an explicit vision of the skill of effective reasoning for students and teachers. By breaking the rubrics down for different grade bands, we have been able not only to describe what reasoning is but also to delineate how the skills develop in students from preschool through 8th grade.

Before moving on, I want to freely acknowledge that in narrowly defining reasoning as the construction of evidence-based claims we have disregarded some elements of reasoning that students can and should learn. For example, the difference between constructing claims through deductive versus inductive means is not highlighted in our definition. However, by privileging a definition that has broad applicability across disciplines, we are able to gain traction in developing the roots of critical thinking. In this case, to formulate well-supported claims or arguments.

Teaching Critical Thinking Skills

The definitions of critical thinking constructs were only useful to us in as much as they translated into practical skills that teachers could teach and students could learn and use. Consequently, we have found that to teach a set of cognitive skills, we needed thinking routines that defined the regular application of these critical thinking and problem-solving skills across domains. Building on Harvard’s Project Zero Visible Thinking work, we have named routines aligned with each of our constructs.

For example, with the construct of effective reasoning, we aligned the Claim-Support-Question thinking routine to our rubric. Teachers then were able to teach students that whenever they were making an argument, the norm in the class was to use the routine in constructing their claim and support. The flexibility of the routine has allowed us to apply it from preschool through 8th grade and across disciplines from science to economics and from math to literacy.

Kathryn Mancino, a 5th grade teacher at Two Rivers, has deliberately taught three of our thinking routines to students using the anchor charts above. Her charts name the components of each routine and has a place for students to record when they’ve used it and what they have figured out about the routine. By using this structure with a chart that can be added to throughout the year, students see the routines as broadly applicable across disciplines and are able to refine their application over time.

Assessing Critical Thinking Skills

By defining specific constructs of critical thinking and building thinking routines that support their implementation in classrooms, we have operated under the assumption that students are developing skills that they will be able to transfer to other settings. However, we recognized both the importance and the challenge of gathering reliable data to confirm this.

With this in mind, we have developed a series of short performance tasks around novel discipline-neutral contexts in which students can apply the constructs of thinking. Through these tasks, we have been able to provide an opportunity for students to demonstrate their ability to transfer the types of thinking beyond the original classroom setting. Once again, we have worked with SCALE to define tasks where students easily access the content but where the cognitive lift requires them to demonstrate their thinking abilities.

These assessments demonstrate that it is possible to capture meaningful data on students’ critical thinking abilities. They are not intended to be high stakes accountability measures. Instead, they are designed to give students, teachers, and school leaders discrete formative data on hard to measure skills.

While it is clearly difficult, and we have not solved all of the challenges to scaling assessments of critical thinking, we can define, teach, and assess these skills . In fact, knowing how important they are for the economy of the future and our democracy, it is essential that we do.

Jeff Heyck-Williams (He, His, Him)

Director of the two rivers learning institute.

Jeff Heyck-Williams is the director of the Two Rivers Learning Institute and a founder of Two Rivers Public Charter School. He has led work around creating school-wide cultures of mathematics, developing assessments of critical thinking and problem-solving, and supporting project-based learning.

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What Is Critical Thinking?

Who uses critical thinking tests and why, how to prepare for a critical thinking test in 2024, final thoughts, critical thinking tests (2024 guide).

Updated November 18, 2023

Critical thinking is the ability to scrutinize evidence using intellectual skills. Reflective skills are employed to reach clear, coherent and logical conclusions – rather than just accepting information as it is provided.

Critical thinking tests measure the candidate’s understanding of logical connections between ideas, the strength of an argument, alternate interpretations and the significance of a particular claim.

A major facet of critical thinking is the ability to separate facts from opinions and work against any subconscious bias.

In critical thinking tests, employers are looking for people who can think critically about information, showing they are open-minded, good problem-solvers and excellent decision-makers.

Critical thinking tests assess how well a candidate can analyze and reason when presented with specific information.

They are used as part of the application process in several industries, most commonly for professions where employees would need to use advanced judgment and analysis skills in decision-making.

For example:

Academic applications – In some instances, critical thinking tests are used to assess whether prospective students have the skills required to be successful in higher education.

Law – Critical thinking assessments are often used in the legal sector as part of the application process. In many law positions, facts are more important than opinion, subconscious bias or pre-existing ideas so an applicant needs to be skilled in critical thinking.

Finance – In financial institutions, decisions often need to be made based on facts rather than emotion or opinion. Judgments made in banking need to be skilled decisions based on logic and the strength of data and information – so to be successful, candidates need to demonstrate that they will not accept arguments and conclusions at face value.

Graduate roles – In some sectors, critical thinking tests are used in graduate recruitment because they are considered to be predictors of ability.

With several different tests available, suited to different industries, many top-level jobs are likely to include critical thinking assessments as part of the application process.

Critical Thinking Tests Explained

Critical thinking tests are usually presented in a similar format no matter who the publisher is. A paragraph of information and data is given, with a statement that is under scrutiny.

Multiple-choice answers are presented for each statement, and there may be more than one question about the same paragraph.

While each question is presented in the same way, different aspects of critical thinking are assessed throughout the test.

Assessing Assumptions

For this type of question, there may be something ‘taken for granted’ in the information provided – and it might not be explicitly stated.

The candidate needs to evaluate the scenario and conclude whether any assumptions are present. The statement below the scenario may or may not support the statement and the answer selection will be about whether the stated assumption is made or not made in the scenario.

Example Question for Assessing Assumptions

Practice Critical Thinking Test with JobTestPrep

The mainstream media presents information that is supported by the political party in power.

Assumption: The information that the mainstream media presents is always correct.

a) Assumption made b) Assumption not made

Determining Inferences

Following a paragraph of information containing evidence, you will be presented with an inference and need to assess whether the inference is absolutely true, possibly true, possibly false, absolutely false, or it is not possible to reach a decision.

An inference is a conclusion that can be reached based on logical reasoning from the information. Although all the evidence to support (or not support) the inference is included in the passage, it will not be obvious or explicitly stated, which makes the inference harder to conclude.

Example Question for Determining Inferences

It has been snowing all night and there is thick snow on the ground. Today’s weather is sunny and bright.

Inference: The snow will melt today.

a) Possibly true b) Absolutely true c) Possibly false d) Absolutely false e) Not possible to reach a decision

Making Deductions

For this type of question, the information presented will be a set of factual statements and the candidate will need to decide if the deduction applies or does not apply.

This logical thinking is a top-down exercise where all the information is provided and needs to be read in the order it is presented.

If statement A = B, does B = C? There should be no grey areas – it either does or does not follow.

Example Question for Making Deductions

All plants have leaves. All leaves are green.

Proposed deduction: All plants are green.

a) Deduction follows b) Deduction does not follow

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Interpretation of Conclusions

Presented with information, the candidate needs to assess whether a given conclusion is correct based on the evidence provided.

For the purposes of the test, we need to believe that all the information provided in the paragraph is true, even if we have opinions about the correctness of the statement.

Example Question for Interpretation of Conclusions

When cooking a meal, one of the most important things to get right is the balance between major food groups. Satisfaction from a good meal comes from getting the most nutrition and can therefore be attributed to a wide variety of flavors, including vegetables, a good source of protein and carbohydrates. A balanced diet is about more than just everything in moderation and should be considered a scientific process with measuring of ingredients and efficient cooking methods.

Proposed conclusion: The best meals are those that are scientifically prepared.

a) Conclusion follows b) Conclusion does not follow

Evaluation of Arguments (Analysis of Arguments)

In this analysis section, the candidate is presented with a scenario and an argument that might be in favor of the scenario or against it.

The candidate needs to evaluate whether the argument itself is weak or strong. This needs to be based on the relevance to the scenario and whether it accurately addresses the question.

Example Question for Evaluation of Arguments

Should all drugs be made legal?

Proposed argument: No, all drugs are dangerous to everyone.

a) Argument is strong b) Argument is weak

Most Common Critical Thinking Tests in 2024

Watson glaser test.

Watson Glaser is the most commonly used test publisher for critical thinking assessments and is used by many industries.

When sitting a Watson Glaser test, your results will be compared against a sample group of over 1,500 test-takers who are considered representative of graduate-level candidates.

The test is usually 40 questions long, with 30 minutes to answer, but there is a longer version that asks 80 questions with a time limit of an hour.

Who Uses This Test?

The Watson Glaser Test is used in a wide variety of industries for different roles, especially in the legal and banking sectors. Some employers that use the Watson Glaser Test are:

• Bank of England
• Irwin Mitchell
• Simmons & Simmons

What Is the RED model?

The Watson Glaser Test is based on something called the ‘RED model’. The questions in the test are based on:

• Recognizing assumptions
• Evaluating arguments
• Drawing conclusions

The science behind the Watson Glaser Test shows that candidates who show strong critical thinking skills in these areas are more likely to perform well in roles where logical decisions and judgments have to be made.

Where to Take a Free Practice Test

Watson Glaser Tests have a specific layout and format. If you are going to be completing one of the assessments as part of your application, it’s best to practice questions that match the test format.

You can find Watson Glaser practice tests at JobTestPrep as well as a prep pack to give you all the tips, tricks and information you need to make the most of your practice time.

Take a Practice Watson Glaser Test

SHL Critical Reasoning Battery Test

The SHL Critical Reasoning Battery Test includes questions based on numerical, verbal and inductive reasoning. This test is usually used for managerial and supervisory roles, and can include mechanical comprehension if needed for the job role (usually in engineering or mechanical roles).

You can find out more on JobTestPrep’s SHL Critical Reasoning Battery pages .

Take a Practice SHL Test

The Graduate Management Admissions Test (GMAT) is an online adaptive test – using sophisticated algorithms to adjust the difficulty of the questions according to the answers already provided.

Questions include integrated, quantitative and verbal reasoning as well as an analytical writing assessment. The GMAT is widely used to predict performance in business or management programs in more than 1,700 universities and organizations.

Take a Practice GMAT

Preparation is key to success in any pre-employment assessment. While some people think critical reasoning is not a skill you can practice, there are some steps you can take to perform at your best.

Critical thinking tests are straightforward but not necessarily easy.

Step 1 . Consider Buying a Preparation Pack

If you can determine who the publisher is for the test you will take, it may be worthwhile investing in a prep pack from that particular publisher.

JobTestPrep offers prep packs for many major test publishers. These packs include realistic practice tests as well as study guides, tips and tricks to help you build your own question-solving strategies.

Step 2 . Use Practice Tests

Even if you decide not to purchase a prep pack, taking practice tests will help you focus on the areas where you need to improve to be successful.

It is important to find out the publisher of the test you will take because not all critical thinking tests are at the same level and they may not follow the same structure. Timings, answering methodologies and the number of questions will vary between publishers.

You can usually find out the test publisher before you take the assessment by asking the recruiter or searching online.

Step 3 . Practice Under Test Conditions

Critical thinking tests are timed. To give yourself the best chance of achieving a high score, you need to answer the questions quickly and efficiently.

Practicing under test conditions – including the time limit – will help you to understand how much time you need to spend on each question and will help you to develop efficient time management skills for the assessment.

Practicing under test conditions will also help you focus so you can make the most of the session.

Step 4 . Practice Abstract Reasoning

Abstract reasoning is a form of critical thinking that uses logic to form a conclusion. Some abstract reasoning tests are presented as word problems.

Practicing these is a good way to flex critical thinking muscles. You can find practice questions on the Psychometric Success website .

Step 5 . Practice Critical Thinking in Everyday Life

Reading widely, especially non-fiction, is a good way to practice your critical thinking skills in everyday life.

Newspaper articles, scientific or technical journals, and other sources of information present an opportunity to think about:

• The strength of arguments
• The perspective of the author
• Whether there are enough facts presented to draw the conclusion given
• Whether other conclusions could be drawn from the same information

Step 6 . Revise Logical Fallacies

Knowledge of logical fallacies will help you to judge the effectiveness of an argument. Fallacy describes ‘faulty reasoning’ in an argument and is often seen in hyperbole or opinion pieces in newspapers and magazines.

There are many types of fallacy that you might come across, such as:

• Strawman – An argument that doesn’t address the statement.
• False cause – An argument based on a connection that doesn’t exist.
• Ambiguity – An argument using a phrase that is unclear or that may have different meanings.
• Appeal to popularity – An argument that states it must be true because many people believe it.

There are many others, including red herrings, appeal to authority and false dichotomy. Learning these will help you to identify a weak argument.

Step 7 . Focus on Long-Term Practice

Cramming and panicking about a critical thinking assessment is rarely conducive to great performance.

If you are looking for a career in a sector where critical thinking skills are necessary, then long-term practice will have better results when you come to be assessed. Make critical thinking a part of life – so that every day can be a chance to practice recognizing assumptions.

Key Tips for Critical Thinking Test Success

Understand the format of the test and each question type.

Familiarity is important for any assessment, and in critical thinking tests, it is essential that you can recognize what the question is looking for. As mentioned above, this is usually one of the following:

• Assessing assumptions
• Determining inferences
• Making deductions
• Interpreting conclusions

Practice tests will help you become comfortable with the structure and format of the test, including ways to answer, and will also demonstrate what the question types look like.

Read Test Content Carefully

Taking time to read and understand the content provided in the question is important to ensure that you can answer correctly.

The information you need to determine the correct answer will be provided although it might not be explicitly stated. Careful reading is an important part of critical thinking.

Only Use the Information Provided

While some of the information provided in the critical thinking test might be related to the role you are applying for, or about something that you have existing knowledge of, you mustn't use this knowledge during the test.

A facet of critical thinking is avoiding subconscious bias and opinion, so only use the information that is provided to answer the question.

Look Out for Facts and Fallacies

Throughout the critical thinking test, look out for facts and fallacies in the information and arguments provided.

Identifying fallacies will help you decide if an argument is strong and will help you answer questions correctly.

Critical thinking tests are used as pre-employment assessments for jobs that require effective communication, good problem-solving and great decision-making, such as those in the legal sector and banking.

These tests assess the ability of candidates to question and scrutinize evidence, make logical connections between ideas, find alternative interpretations and decide on the strength of an argument.

All critical thinking tests are not the same, but they do have similar question types. Learning what these are and how to answer them will help you perform better. Practicing tests based on the specific publisher of your test will give you the best results.

You might also be interested in these other Psychometric Success articles:

Or explore the Aptitude Tests / Test Types sections.

• Open access
• Published: 09 March 2020

Rubrics to assess critical thinking and information processing in undergraduate STEM courses

• Gil Reynders 1 , 2 ,
• Juliette Lantz 3 ,
• Suzanne M. Ruder 2 ,
• Courtney L. Stanford 4 &
• Renée S. Cole   ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0002-2807-1500 1  

International Journal of STEM Education volume  7 , Article number:  9 ( 2020 ) Cite this article

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Process skills such as critical thinking and information processing are commonly stated outcomes for STEM undergraduate degree programs, but instructors often do not explicitly assess these skills in their courses. Students are more likely to develop these crucial skills if there is constructive alignment between an instructor’s intended learning outcomes, the tasks that the instructor and students perform, and the assessment tools that the instructor uses. Rubrics for each process skill can enhance this alignment by creating a shared understanding of process skills between instructors and students. Rubrics can also enable instructors to reflect on their teaching practices with regard to developing their students’ process skills and facilitating feedback to students to identify areas for improvement.

Here, we provide rubrics that can be used to assess critical thinking and information processing in STEM undergraduate classrooms and to provide students with formative feedback. As part of the Enhancing Learning by Improving Process Skills in STEM (ELIPSS) Project, rubrics were developed to assess these two skills in STEM undergraduate students’ written work. The rubrics were implemented in multiple STEM disciplines, class sizes, course levels, and institution types to ensure they were practical for everyday classroom use. Instructors reported via surveys that the rubrics supported assessment of students’ written work in multiple STEM learning environments. Graduate teaching assistants also indicated that they could effectively use the rubrics to assess student work and that the rubrics clarified the instructor’s expectations for how they should assess students. Students reported that they understood the content of the rubrics and could use the feedback provided by the rubric to change their future performance.

The ELIPSS rubrics allowed instructors to explicitly assess the critical thinking and information processing skills that they wanted their students to develop in their courses. The instructors were able to clarify their expectations for both their teaching assistants and students and provide consistent feedback to students about their performance. Supporting the adoption of active-learning pedagogies should also include changes to assessment strategies to measure the skills that are developed as students engage in more meaningful learning experiences. Tools such as the ELIPSS rubrics provide a resource for instructors to better align assessments with intended learning outcomes.

Introduction

Why assess process skills.

Process skills, also known as professional skills (ABET Engineering Accreditation Commission, 2012 ), transferable skills (Danczak et al., 2017 ), or cognitive competencies (National Research Council, 2012 ), are commonly cited as critical for students to develop during their undergraduate education (ABET Engineering Accreditation Commission, 2012 ; American Chemical Society Committee on Professional Training, 2015 ; National Research Council, 2012 ; Singer et al., 2012 ; The Royal Society, 2014 ). Process skills such as problem-solving, critical thinking, information processing, and communication are widely applicable to many academic disciplines and careers, and they are receiving increased attention in undergraduate curricula (ABET Engineering Accreditation Commission, 2012 ; American Chemical Society Committee on Professional Training, 2015 ) and workplace hiring decisions (Gray & Koncz, 2018 ; Pearl et al., 2019 ). Recent reports from multiple countries (Brewer & Smith, 2011 ; National Research Council, 2012 ; Singer et al., 2012 ; The Royal Society, 2014 ) indicate that these skills are emphasized in multiple undergraduate academic disciplines, and annual polls of about 200 hiring managers indicate that employers may place more importance on these skills than in applicants’ content knowledge when making hiring decisions (Deloitte Access Economics, 2014 ; Gray & Koncz, 2018 ). The assessment of process skills can provide a benchmark for achievement at the end of an undergraduate program and act as an indicator of student readiness to enter the workforce. Assessing these skills may also enable instructors and researchers to more fully understand the impact of active learning pedagogies on students.

A recent meta-analysis of 225 studies by Freeman et al. ( 2014 ) showed that students in active learning environments may achieve higher content learning gains than students in traditional lectures in multiple STEM fields when comparing scores on equivalent examinations. Active learning environments can have many different attributes, but they are commonly characterized by students “physically manipulating objects, producing new ideas, and discussing ideas with others” (Rau et al., 2017 ) in contrast to students sitting and listening to a lecture. Examples of active learning pedagogies include POGIL (Process Oriented Guided Inquiry Learning) (Moog & Spencer, 2008 ; Simonson, 2019 ) and PLTL (Peer-led Team Learning) (Gafney & Varma-Nelson, 2008 ; Gosser et al., 2001 ) in which students work in groups to complete activities with varying levels of guidance from an instructor. Despite the clear content learning gains that students can achieve from active learning environments (Freeman et al., 2014 ), the non-content-gains (including improvements in process skills) in these learning environments have not been explored to a significant degree. Active learning pedagogies such as POGIL and PLTL place an emphasis on students developing non-content skills in addition to content learning gains, but typically only the content learning is assessed on quizzes and exams, and process skills are not often explicitly assessed (National Research Council, 2012 ). In order to fully understand the effects of active learning pedagogies on all aspects of an undergraduate course, evidence-based tools must be used to assess students’ process skill development. The goal of this work was to develop resources that could enable instructors to explicitly assess process skills in STEM undergraduate classrooms in order to provide feedback to themselves and their students about the students’ process skills development.

Theoretical frameworks

The incorporation of these rubrics and other currently available tools for use in STEM undergraduate classrooms can be viewed through the lenses of constructive alignment (Biggs, 1996 ) and self-regulated learning (Zimmerman, 2002 ). The theory of constructivism posits that students learn by constructing their own understanding of knowledge rather than acquiring the meaning from their instructor (Bodner, 1986 ), and constructive alignment extends the constructivist model to consider how the alignment between a course’s intended learning outcomes, tasks, and assessments affects the knowledge and skills that students develop (Biggs, 2003 ). Students are more likely to develop the intended knowledge and skills if there is alignment between the instructor’s intended learning outcomes that are stated at the beginning of a course, the tasks that the instructor and students perform, and the assessment strategies that the instructor uses (Biggs, 1996 , 2003 , 2014 ). The nature of the tasks and assessments indicates what the instructor values and where students should focus their effort when studying. According to Biggs ( 2003 ) and Ramsden ( 1997 ), students see assessments as defining what they should learn, and a misalignment between the outcomes, tasks, and assessments may hinder students from achieving the intended learning outcomes. In the case of this work, the intended outcomes are improved process skills. In addition to aligning the components of a course, it is also critical that students receive feedback on their performance in order to improve their skills. Zimmerman’s theory of self-regulated learning (Zimmerman, 2002 ) provides a rationale for tailoring assessments to provide feedback to both students and instructors.

Zimmerman’s theory of self-regulated learning defines three phases of learning: forethought/planning, performance, and self-reflection. According to Zimmerman, individuals ideally should progress through these three phases in a cycle: they plan a task, perform the task, and reflect on their performance, then they restart the cycle on a new task. If a student is unable to adequately progress through the phases of self-regulated learning on their own, then feedback provided by an instructor may enable the students to do so (Butler & Winne, 1995 ). Thus, one of our criteria when creating rubrics to assess process skills was to make the rubrics suitable for faculty members to use to provide feedback to their students. Additionally, instructors can use the results from assessments to give themselves feedback regarding their students’ learning in order to regulate their teaching. This theory is called self-regulated learning because the goal is for learners to ultimately reflect on their actions to find ways to improve. We assert that, ideally, both students and instructors should be “learners” and use assessment data to reflect on their actions, although with different aims. Students need consistent feedback from an instructor and/or self-assessment throughout a course to provide a benchmark for their current performance and identify what they can do to improve their process skills (Black & Wiliam, 1998 ; Butler & Winne, 1995 ; Hattie & Gan, 2011 ; Nicol & Macfarlane-Dick, 2006 ). Instructors need feedback on the extent to which their efforts are achieving their intended goals in order to improve their instruction and better facilitate the development of process skills through course experiences.

In accordance with the aforementioned theoretical frameworks, tools used to assess undergraduate STEM student process skills should be tailored to fit the outcomes that are expected for undergraduate students and be able to provide formative assessment and feedback to both students and faculty about the students’ skills. These tools should also be designed for everyday classroom use to enable students to regularly self-assess and faculty to provide consistent feedback throughout a semester. Additionally, it is desirable for assessment tools to be broadly generalizable to measure process skills in multiple STEM disciplines and institutions in order to increase the rubrics’ impact on student learning. Current tools exist to assess these process skills, but they each lack at least one of the desired characteristics for providing regular feedback to STEM students.

Current tools to assess process skills

Current tests available to assess critical thinking include the Critical Thinking Assessment Test (CAT) (Stein & Haynes, 2011 ), California Critical Thinking Skills Test (Facione, 1990a , 1990b ), and Watson Glaser Critical Thinking Appraisal (Watson & Glaser, 1964 ). These commercially available, multiple-choice tests are not designed to provide regular, formative feedback throughout a course and have not been implemented for this purpose. Instead, they are designed to provide summative feedback with a focus on assessing this skill at a programmatic or university level rather than for use in the classroom to provide formative feedback to students. Rather than using tests to assess process skills, rubrics could be used instead. Rubrics are effective assessment tools because they can be quick and easy to use, they provide feedback to both students and instructors, and they can evaluate individual aspects of a skill to give more specific feedback (Brookhart & Chen, 2014 ; Smit & Birri, 2014 ). Rubrics for assessing critical thinking are available, but they have not been used to provide feedback to undergraduate STEM students nor were they designed to do so (Association of American Colleges and Universities, 2019 ; Saxton et al., 2012 ). The Critical Thinking Analytic Rubric is designed specifically to assess K-12 students to enhance college readiness and has not been broadly tested in collegiate STEM courses (Saxton et al., 2012 ). The critical thinking rubric developed by the Association of American Colleges and Universities (AAC&U) as part its Valid Assessment of Learning in Undergraduate Education (VALUE) Institute and Liberal Education and America’s Promise (LEAP) initiative (Association of American Colleges and Universities, 2019 ) is intended for programmatic assessment rather than specifically giving feedback to students throughout a course. As with tests for assessing critical thinking, current rubrics to assess critical thinking are not designed to act as formative assessments and give feedback to STEM faculty and undergraduates at the course or task level. Another issue with the assessment of critical thinking is the degree to which the construct is measurable. A National Research Council report (National Research Council, 2011 ) has suggested that there is little evidence of a consistent, measurable definition for critical thinking and that it may not be different from one’s general cognitive ability. Despite this issue, we have found that critical thinking is consistently listed as a programmatic outcome in STEM disciplines (American Chemical Society Committee on Professional Training, 2015 ; The Royal Society, 2014 ), so we argue that it is necessary to support instructors as they attempt to assess this skill.

Current methods for evaluating students’ information processing include discipline-specific tools such as a rubric to assess physics students’ use of graphs and equations to solve work-energy problems (Nguyen et al., 2010 ) and assessments of organic chemistry students’ ability to “[manipulate] and [translate] between various representational forms” including 2D and 3D representations of chemical structures (Kumi et al., 2013 ). Although these assessment tools can be effectively used for their intended context, they were not designed for use in a wide range of STEM disciplines or for a variety of tasks.

Despite the many tools that exist to measure process skills, none has been designed and tested to facilitate frequent, formative feedback to STEM undergraduate students and faculty throughout a semester. The rubrics described here have been designed by the Enhancing Learning by Improving Process Skills in STEM (ELIPSS) Project (Cole et al., 2016 ) to assess undergraduate STEM students’ process skills and to facilitate feedback at the classroom level with the potential to track growth throughout a semester or degree program. The rubrics described here are designed to assess critical thinking and information processing in student written work. Rubrics were chosen as the format for our process skill assessment tools because the highest level of each category in rubrics can serve as an explicit learning outcome that the student is expected to achieve (Panadero & Jonsson, 2013 ). Rubrics that are generalizable to multiple disciplines and institutions can enable the assessment of student learning outcomes and active learning pedagogies throughout a program of study and provide useful tools for a greater number of potential users.

Research questions

This work sought to answer the following research questions for each rubric:

Does the rubric adequately measure relevant aspects of the skill?

How well can the rubrics provide feedback to instructors and students?

Can multiple raters use the rubrics to give consistent scores?

This work received Institutional Review Board approval prior to any data collection involving human subjects. The sources of data used to construct the process skill rubrics and answer these research questions were (1) peer-reviewed literature on how each skill is defined, (2) feedback from content experts in multiple STEM disciplines via surveys and in-person, group discussions regarding the appropriateness of the rubrics for each discipline, (3) interviews with students whose work was scored with the rubrics and teaching assistants who scored the student work, and (4) results of applying the rubrics to samples of student work.

Defining the scope of the rubrics

The rubrics described here and the other rubrics in development by the ELIPSS Project are intended to measure process skills, which are desired learning outcomes identified by the STEM community in recent reports (National Research Council, 2012 ; Singer et al., 2012 ). In order to measure these skills in multiple STEM disciplines, operationalized definitions of each skill were needed. These definitions specify which aspects of student work (operations) would be considered evidence for the student using that skill and establish a shared understanding of each skill by members of each STEM discipline. The starting point for this work was the process skill definitions developed as part of the POGIL project (Cole et al., 2019a ). The POGIL community includes instructors from a variety of disciplines and institutions and represented the intended audience for the rubrics: faculty who value process skills and want to more explicitly assess them. The process skills discussed in this work were defined as follows:

Critical thinking is analyzing, evaluating, or synthesizing relevant information to form an argument or reach a conclusion supported with evidence.

Information processing is evaluating, interpreting, and manipulating or transforming information.

Examples of critical thinking include the tasks that students are asked to perform in a laboratory course. When students are asked to analyze the data they collected, combine data from different sources, and generate arguments or conclusions about their data, we see this as critical thinking. However, when students simply follow the so-called “cookbook” laboratory instructions that require them to confirm pre-determined conclusions, we do not think students are engaging in critical thinking. One example of information processing is when organic chemistry students are required to re-draw molecules in different formats. The students must evaluate and interpret various pieces of one representation, and then they recreate the molecule in another representation. However, if students are asked to simply memorize facts or algorithms to solve problems, we do not see this as information processing.

Iterative rubric development

The development process was the same for the information processing rubric and the critical thinking rubric. After defining the scope of the rubric, an initial version was drafted based upon the definition of the target process skill and how each aspect of the skill is defined in the literature. A more detailed discussion of the literature that informed each rubric category is included in the “Results and Discussion” section. This initial version then underwent iterative testing in which the rubric was reviewed by researchers, practitioners, and students. The rubric was first evaluated by the authors and a group of eight faculty from multiple STEM disciplines who made up the ELIPSS Project’s primary collaborative team (PCT). The PCT was a group of faculty members with experience in discipline-based education research who employ active-learning pedagogies in their classrooms. This initial round of evaluation was intended to ensure that the rubric measured relevant aspects of the skill and was appropriate for each PCT member’s discipline. This evaluation determined how well the rubrics were aligned with each instructor’s understanding of the process skill including both in-person and email discussions that continued until the group came to consensus that each rubric category could be applied to student work in courses within their disciplines. There has been an ongoing debate regarding the role of disciplinary knowledge in critical thinking and the extent to which critical thinking is subject-specific (Davies, 2013 ; Ennis, 1990 ). This work focuses on the creation of rubrics to measure process skills in different domains, but we have not performed cross-discipline comparisons. This initial round of review was also intended to ensure that the rubrics were ready for classroom testing by instructors in each discipline. Next, each rubric was tested over three semesters in multiple classroom environments, illustrated in Table 1 . The rubrics were applied to student work chosen by each PCT member. The PCT members chose the student work based on their views of how the assignments required students to engage in process skills and show evidence of those skills. The information processing and critical thinking rubrics shown in this work were each tested in at least three disciplines, course levels, and institutions.

After each semester, the feedback was collected from the faculty testing the rubric, and further changes to the rubric were made. Feedback was collected in the form of survey responses along with in-person group discussions at annual project meetings. After the first iteration of completing the survey, the PCT members met with the authors to discuss how they were interpreting each survey question. This meeting helped ensure that the surveys were gathering valid data regarding how well the rubrics were measuring the desired process skill. Questions in the survey such as “What aspects of the student work provided evidence for the indicated process skill?” and “Are there edits to the rubric/descriptors that would improve your ability to assess the process skill?” allowed the authors to determine how well the rubric scores were matching the student work and identify necessary changes to the rubric. Further questions asked about the nature and timing of the feedback given to students in order to address the question of how well the rubrics provide feedback to instructors and students. The survey questions are included in the Supporting Information . The survey responses were analyzed qualitatively to determine themes related to each research question.

In addition to the surveys given to faculty rubric testers, twelve students were interviewed in fall 2016 and fall 2017. In the United States of America, the fall semester typically runs from August to December and is the first semester of the academic year. Each student participated in one interview which lasted about 30 min. These interviews were intended to gather further data to answer questions about how well the rubrics were measuring the identified process skills that students were using when they completed their assignments and to ensure that the information provided by the rubrics made sense to students. The protocol for these interviews is included in the Supporting Information . In fall 2016, the students interviewed were enrolled in an organic chemistry laboratory course for non-majors at a large, research-intensive university in the United States. Thirty students agreed to have their work analyzed by the research team, and nine students were interviewed. However, the rubrics were not a component of the laboratory course grading. Instead, the first author assessed the students’ reports for critical thinking and information processing, and then the students were provided electronic copies of their laboratory reports and scored rubrics in advance of the interview. The first author had recently been a graduate teaching assistant for the course and was familiar with the instructor’s expectations for the laboratory reports. During the interview, the students were given time to review their reports and the completed rubrics, and then they were asked about how well they understood the content of the rubrics and how accurately each category score represented their work.

In fall 2017, students enrolled in a physical chemistry thermodynamics course for majors were interviewed. The physical chemistry course took place at the same university as the organic laboratory course, but there was no overlap between participants. Three students and two graduate teaching assistants (GTAs) were interviewed. The course included daily group work, and process skill assessment was an explicit part of the instructor’s curriculum. At the end of each class period, students assessed their groups using portions of ELIPSS rubrics, including the two process skill rubrics included in this paper. About every 2 weeks, the GTAs assessed the student groups with a complete ELIPSS rubric for a particular skill, then gave the groups their scored rubrics with written comments. The students’ individual homework problem sets were assessed once with rubrics for three skills: critical thinking, information processing, and problem-solving. The students received the scored rubric with written comments when the graded problem set was returned to them. In the last third of the semester, the students and GTAs were interviewed about how rubrics were implemented in the course, how well the rubric scores reflected the students’ written work, and how the use of rubrics affected the teaching assistants’ ability to assess the student skills. The protocols for these interviews are included in the Supporting Information .

Gathering evidence for utility, validity, and reliability

The utility, validity, and reliability of the rubrics were measured throughout the development process. The utility is the degree to which the rubrics are perceived as practical to experts and practitioners in the field. Through multiple meetings, the PCT faculty determined that early drafts of the rubric seemed appropriate for use in their classrooms, which represented multiple STEM disciplines. Rubric utility was reexamined multiple times throughout the development process to ensure that the rubrics would remain practical for classroom use. Validity can be defined in multiple ways. For example, the Standards for Educational and Psychological Testing (Joint Committee on Standards for Educational Psychological Testing, 2014 ) defines validity as “the degree to which all the accumulated evidence supports the intended interpretation of test scores for the proposed use.” For the purposes of this work, we drew on the ways in which two distinct types of validity were examined in the rubric literature: content validity and construct validity. Content validity is the degree to which the rubrics cover relevant aspects of each process skill (Moskal & Leydens, 2000 ). In this case, the process skill definition and a review of the literature determined which categories were included in each rubric. The literature review was finished once the data was saturated: when no more new aspects were found. Construct validity is the degree to which the levels of each rubric category accurately reflect the process that students performed (Moskal & Leydens, 2000 ). Evidence of construct validity was gathered via the faculty surveys, teaching assistant interviews, and student interviews. In the student interviews, students were given one of their completed assignments and asked to explain how they completed the task. Students were then asked to explain how well each category applied to their work and if any changes were needed to the rubric to more accurately reflect their process. Due to logistical challenges, we were not able to obtain evidence for convergent validity, and this is further discussed in the “Limitations” section.

Adjacent agreement, also known as “interrater agreement within one,” was chosen as the measure of interrater reliability due to its common use in rubric development projects (Jonsson & Svingby, 2007 ). The adjacent agreement is the percentage of cases in which two raters agree on a rating or are different by one level (i.e., they give adjacent ratings to the same work). Jonsson and Svingby ( 2007 ) found that most of the rubrics they reviewed had adjacent agreement scores of 90% or greater. However, they noted that the agreement threshold varied based on the number of possible levels of performance for each category in the rubric, with three and four being the most common numbers of levels. Since the rubrics discussed in this report have six levels (scores of zero through five) and are intended for low-stakes assessment and feedback, the goal of 80% adjacent agreement was selected. To calculate agreement for the critical thinking and information processing rubrics, two researchers discussed the scoring criteria for each rubric and then independently assessed the organic chemistry laboratory reports.

Results and discussion

The process skill rubrics to assess critical thinking and information processing in student written work were completed after multiple rounds of revision based on feedback from various sources. These sources include feedback from instructors who tested the rubrics in their classrooms, TAs who scored student work with the rubrics, and students who were assessed with the rubrics. The categories for each rubric will be discussed in terms of the evidence that the rubrics measure the relevant aspects of the skill and how they can be used to assess STEM undergraduate student work. Each category discussion will begin with a general explanation of the category followed by more specific examples from the organic chemistry laboratory course and physical chemistry lecture course to demonstrate how the rubrics can be used to assess student work.

Information processing rubric

The definition of information processing and the focus of the rubric presented here (Fig. 1 ) are distinct from cognitive information processing as defined by the educational psychology literature (Driscoll, 2005 ). The rubric shown here is more aligned with the STEM education construct of representational competency (Daniel et al., 2018 ).

Rubric for assessing information processing

When solving a problem or completing a task, students must evaluate the provided information for relevance or importance to the task (Hanson, 2008 ; Swanson et al., 1990 ). All the information provided in a prompt (e.g., homework or exam questions) may not be relevant for addressing all parts of the prompt. Students should ideally show evidence of their evaluation process by identifying what information is present in the prompt/model, indicating what information is relevant or not relevant, and indicating why information is relevant. Responses with these characteristics would earn high rubric scores for this category. Although students may not explicitly state what information is necessary to address a task, the information they do use can act as indirect evidence of the degree to which they have evaluated all of the available information in the prompt. Evidence for students inaccurately evaluating information for relevance includes the inclusion of irrelevant information or the omission of relevant information in an analysis or in completing a task. When evaluating the organic chemistry laboratory reports, the focus for the evaluating category was the information students presented when identifying the chemical structure of their products. For students who received a high score, this information included their measured value for the product’s melting point, the literature (expected) value for the melting point, and the peaks in a nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) spectrum. NMR spectroscopy is a commonly used technique in chemistry to obtain structural information about a compound. Lower scores were given if students omitted any of the necessary information or if they included unnecessary information. For example, if a student discussed their reaction yield when discussing the identity of their product, they would receive a low Evaluating score because the yield does not help them determine the identity of their product; the yield, in this case, would be unnecessary information. In the physical chemistry course, students often did not show evidence that they determined which information was relevant to answer the homework questions and thus earned low evaluating scores. These omissions will be further addressed in the “Interpreting” section.

Interpreting

In addition to evaluating, students must often interpret information using their prior knowledge to explain the meaning of something, make inferences, match data to predictions, and extract patterns from data (Hanson, 2008 ; Nakhleh, 1992 ; Schmidt et al., 1989 ; Swanson et al., 1990 ). Students earn high scores for this category if they assign correct meaning to labeled information (e.g., text, tables, graphs, diagrams), extract specific details from information, explain information in their own words, and determine patterns in information. For the organic chemistry laboratory reports, students received high scores if they accurately interpreted their measured values and NMR peaks. Almost every student obtained melting point values that were different than what was expected due to measurement error or impurities in their products, so they needed to describe what types of impurities could cause such discrepancies. Also, each NMR spectrum contained one peak that corresponded to the solvent used to dissolve the students’ product, so the students needed to use their prior knowledge of NMR spectroscopy to recognize that peak did not correspond to part of their product.

In physical chemistry, the graduate teaching assistant often gave students low scores for inaccurately explaining changes to chemical systems such as changes in pressure or entropy. The graduate teaching assistant who assessed the student work used the rubric to identify both the evaluating and interpreting categories as weaknesses in many of the students’ homework submissions. However, the students often earned high scores for the manipulating and transforming categories, so the GTA was able to give students specific feedback on their areas for improvement while also highlighting their strengths.

Manipulating and transforming (extent and accuracy)

In addition to evaluating and interpreting information, students may be asked to manipulate and transform information from one form to another. These transformations should be complete and accurate (Kumi et al., 2013 ; Nguyen et al., 2010 ). Students may be required to construct a figure based on written information, or conversely, they may transform information in a figure into words or mathematical expressions. Two categories for manipulating and transforming (i.e., extent and accuracy) were included to allow instructors to give more specific feedback. It was often found that students would either transform little information but do so accurately, or transform much information and do so inaccurately; the two categories allowed for differentiated feedback to be provided. As stated above, the organic chemistry students were expected to transform their NMR spectral data into a table and provide a labeled structure of their final product. Students were given high scores if they converted all of the relevant peaks from their spectrum into the table format and were able to correctly match the peaks to the hydrogen atoms in their products. Students received lower scores if they were only able to convert the information for a few peaks or if they incorrectly matched the peaks to the hydrogen atoms.

Critical thinking rubric

Critical thinking can be broadly defined in different contexts, but we found that the categories included in the rubric (Fig. 2 ) represented commonly accepted aspects of critical thinking (Danczak et al., 2017 ) and suited the needs of the faculty collaborators who tested the rubric in their classrooms.

Rubric for assessing critical thinking

When completing a task, students must evaluate the relevance of information that they will ultimately use to support a claim or conclusions (Miri et al., 2007 ; Zohar et al., 1994 ). An evaluating category is included in both critical thinking and information processing rubrics because evaluation is a key aspect of both skills. From our previous work developing a problem-solving rubric (manuscript in preparation) and our review of the literature for this work (Danczak et al., 2017 ; Lewis & Smith, 1993 ), the overlap was seen between information processing, critical thinking, and problem-solving. Additionally, while the Evaluating category in the information processing rubric assesses a student’s ability to determine the importance of information to complete a task, the evaluating category in the critical thinking rubric places a heavier emphasis on using the information to support a conclusion or argument.

When scoring student work with the evaluating category, students receive high scores if they indicate what information is likely to be most relevant to the argument they need to make, determine the reliability of the source of their information, and determine the quality and accuracy of the information itself. The information used to assess this category can be indirect as with the Evaluating category in the information processing rubric. In the organic chemistry laboratory reports, students needed to make an argument about whether they successfully produced the desired product, so they needed to discuss which information was relevant to their claims about the product’s identity and purity. Students received high scores for the evaluating category when they accurately determined that the melting point and nearly all peaks except the solvent peak in the NMR spectrum indicated the identity of their product. Students received lower scores for evaluating when they left out relevant information because this was seen as evidence that the student inaccurately evaluated the information’s relevance in supporting their conclusion. They also received lower scores when they incorrectly stated that a high yield indicated a pure product. Students were given the opportunity to demonstrate their ability to evaluate the quality of information when discussing their melting point. Students sometimes struggled to obtain reliable melting point data due to their inexperience in the laboratory, so the rubric provided a way to assess the student’s ability to critique their own data.

In tandem with evaluating information, students also need to analyze that same information to extract meaningful evidence to support their conclusions (Bailin, 2002 ; Lai, 2011 ; Miri et al., 2007 ). The analyzing category provides an assessment of a student’s ability to discuss information and explore the possible meaning of that information, extract patterns from data/information that could be used as evidence for their claims, and summarize information that could be used as evidence. For example, in the organic chemistry laboratory reports, students needed to compare the information they obtained to the expected values for a product. Students received high scores for the analyzing category if they could extract meaningful structural information from the NMR spectrum and their two melting points (observed and expected) for each reaction step.

Synthesizing

Often, students are asked to synthesize or connect multiple pieces of information in order to draw a conclusion or make a claim (Huitt, 1998 ; Lai, 2011 ). Synthesizing involves identifying the relationships between different pieces of information or concepts, identifying ways that different pieces of information or concepts can be combined, and explaining how the newly synthesized information can be used to reach a conclusion and/or support an argument. While performing the organic chemistry laboratory experiments, students obtained multiple types of information such as the melting point and NMR spectrum in addition to other spectroscopic data such as an infrared (IR) spectrum. Students received high scores for this category when they accurately synthesized these multiple data types by showing how the NMR and IR spectra could each reveal different parts of a molecule in order to determine the molecule’s entire structure.

Forming arguments (structure and validity)

The final key aspect of critical thinking is forming a well-structured and valid argument (Facione, 1984 ; Glassner & Schwarz, 2007 ; Lai, 2011 ; Lewis & Smith, 1993 ). It was observed that students can earn high scores for evaluating, analyzing, and synthesizing, but still struggle to form arguments. This was particularly common in assessing problem sets in the physical chemistry course.

As with the manipulating and transforming categories in the information processing rubric, two forming arguments categories were included to allow instructors to give more specific feedback. Some students may be able to include all of the expected structural elements of their arguments but use faulty information or reasoning. Conversely, some students may be able to make scientifically valid claims but not necessarily support them with evidence. The two forming arguments categories are intended to accurately assess both of these scenarios. For the forming arguments (structure) category, students earn high scores if they explicitly state their claim or conclusion, list the evidence used to support the argument, and provide reasoning to link the evidence to their claim/conclusion. Students who do not make a claim or who provide little evidence or reasoning receive lower scores.

For the forming arguments (validity) category, students earn high scores if their claim is accurate and their reasoning is logical and clearly supports the claim with provided evidence. Organic chemistry students earned high scores for the forms and supports arguments categories if they made explicit claims about the identity and purity of their product and provided complete and accurate evidence for their claim(s) such as the melting point values and positions of NMR peaks that correspond to their product. Additionally, the students provided evidence for the purity of their products by pointing to the presence or absence of peaks in their NMR spectrum that would match other potential side products. They also needed to provide logical reasoning for why the peaks indicated the presence or absence of a compound. As previously mentioned, the physical chemistry students received lower scores for the forming arguments categories than for the other aspects of critical thinking. These students were asked to make claims about the relationships between entropy and heat and then provide relevant evidence to justify these claims. Often, the students would make clearly articulated claims but would provide little evidence to support them. As with the information processing rubric, the critical thinking rubric allowed the GTAs to assess aspects of these skills independently and identify specific areas for student improvement.

Validity and reliability

The goal of this work was to create rubrics that can accurately assess student work (validity) and be consistently implemented by instructors or researchers within multiple STEM fields (reliability). The evidence for validity includes the alignment of the rubrics with literature-based descriptions of each skill, review of the rubrics by content experts from multiple STEM disciplines, interviews with undergraduate students whose work was scored using the rubrics, and interviews of the GTAs who scored the student work.

The definitions for each skill, along with multiple iterations of the rubrics, underwent review by STEM content experts. As noted earlier, the instructors who were testing the rubrics were given a survey at the end of each semester and were invited to offer suggested changes to the rubric to better help them assess their students. After multiple rubric revisions, survey responses from the instructors indicated that the rubrics accurately represented the breadth of each process skill as seen in each expert’s content area and that each category could be used to measure multiple levels of student work. By the end of the rubrics’ development, instructors were writing responses such as “N/A” or “no suggestions” to indicate that the rubrics did not need further changes.

Feedback from the faculty also indicated that the rubrics were measuring the intended constructs by the ways they responded to the survey item “What aspects of the student work provided evidence for the indicated process skill?” For example, one instructor noted that for information processing, she saw evidence of the manipulating and transforming categories when “students had to transform their written/mathematical relationships into an energy diagram.” Another instructor elicited evidence of information processing during an in-class group quiz: “A question on the group quiz was written to illicit [sic] IP [information processing]. Students had to transform a structure into three new structures and then interpret/manipulate the structures to compare the pKa values [acidity] of the new structures.” For this instructor, the structures written by the students revealed evidence of their information processing by showing what information they omitted in the new structures or inaccurately transformed. For critical thinking, an instructor assessed short research reports with the critical thinking rubric and “looked for [the students’] ability to use evidence to support their conclusions, to evaluate the literature studies, and to develop their own judgements by synthesizing the information.” Another instructor used the critical thinking rubric to assess their students’ abilities to choose an instrument to perform a chemical analysis. According to the instructor, the students provided evidence of their critical thinking because “in their papers, they needed to justify their choice of instrument. This justification required them to evaluate information and synthesize a new understanding for this specific chemical analysis.”

Analysis of student work indicates multiple levels of achievement for each rubric category (illustrated in Fig. 3 ), although there may have been a ceiling effect for the evaluating and the manipulating and transforming (extent) categories in information processing for organic chemistry laboratory reports because many students earned the highest possible score (five) for those categories. However, other implementations of the ELIPSS rubrics (Reynders et al., 2019 ) have shown more variation in student scores for the two process skills.

Student rubric scores from an organic chemistry laboratory course. The two rubrics were used to evaluate different laboratory reports. Thirty students were assessed for information processing and 28 were assessed for critical thinking

To provide further evidence that the rubrics were measuring the intended skills, students in the physical chemistry course were interviewed about their thought processes and how well the rubric scores reflected the work they performed. During these interviews, students described how they used various aspects of information processing and critical thinking skills. The students first described how they used information processing during a problem set where they had to answer questions about a diagram of systolic and diastolic blood pressure. Students described how they evaluated and interpreted the graph to make statements such as “diastolic [pressure] is our y-intercept” and “volume is the independent variable.” The students then demonstrated their ability to transform information from one form to another, from a graph to a mathematic equation, by recognizing “it’s a linear relationship so I used Y equals M X plus B ” and “integrated it cause it’s the change, the change in V [volume]. For critical thinking, students described their process on a different problem set. In this problem set, the students had to explain why the change of Helmholtz energy and the change in Gibbs free energy were equivalent under a certain given condition. Students first demonstrated how they evaluated the relevant information and analyzed what would and would not change in their system. One student said, “So to calculate the final pressure, I think I just immediately went to the ideal gas law because we know the final volume and the number of moles won’t change and neither will the temperature in this case. Well, I assume that it wouldn’t.” Another student showed evidence of their evaluation by writing out all the necessary information in one place and stating, “Whenever I do these types of problems, I always write what I start with which is why I always have this line of information I’m given.” After evaluating and analyzing, students had to form an argument by claiming that the two energy values were equal and then defending that claim. Students explained that they were not always as clear as they could be when justifying their claim. For instance, one student said, “Usually I just write out equations and then hope people understand what I’m doing mathematically” but they “probably could have explained it a little more.”

Student feedback throughout the organic chemistry course and near the end of the physical chemistry course indicated that the rubric scores were accurate representations of the students’ work with a few exceptions. For example, some students felt like they should have received either a lower or higher score for certain categories, but they did say that the categories themselves applied well to their work. Most notably, one student reported that the forms and supports arguments categories in the critical thinking rubric did not apply to her work because she “wasn’t making an argument” when she was demonstrating that the Helmholtz and Gibbs energy values were equal in her thermodynamics assignment. We see this as an instance where some students and instructors may define argument in different ways. The process skill definitions and the rubric categories are meant to articulate intended learning outcomes from faculty members to their students, so if a student defines the skills or categories differently than the faculty member, then the rubrics can serve to promote a shared understanding of the skill.

As previously mentioned, reliability was measured by two researchers assessing ten laboratory reports independently to ensure that multiple raters could use the rubrics consistently. The average adjacent agreement scores were 92% for critical thinking and 93% for information processing. The exact agreement scores were 86% for critical thinking and 88% for information processing. Additionally, two different raters assessed a statistics assignment that was given to sixteen first-year undergraduates. The average pairwise adjacent agreement scores were 89% for critical thinking and 92% for information processing for this assignment. However, the exact agreement scores were much lower: 34% for critical thinking and 36% for information processing. In this case, neither rater was an expert in the content area. While the exact agreement scores for the statistics assignment are much lower than desirable, the adjacent agreement scores do meet the threshold for reliability as seen in other rubrics (Jonsson & Svingby, 2007 ) despite the disparity in expertise. Based on these results, it may be difficult for multiple raters to give exactly the same scores to the same work if they have varying levels of content knowledge, but it is important to note that the rubrics are primarily intended for formative assessment that can facilitate discussions between instructors and students about the ways for students to improve. The high level of adjacent agreement scores indicates that multiple raters can identify the same areas to improve in examples of student work.

Instructor and teaching assistant reflections

The survey responses from faculty members determined the utility of the rubrics. Faculty members reported that when they used the rubrics to define their expectations and be more specific about their assessment criteria, the students seemed to be better able to articulate the areas in which they needed improvement. As one instructor put it, “having the rubrics helped open conversations and discussions” that were not happening before the rubrics were implemented. We see this as evidence of the clear intended learning outcomes that are an integral aspect of achieving constructive alignment within a course. The instructors’ specific feedback to the students, and the students’ increased awareness of their areas for improvement, may enable the students to better regulate their learning throughout a course. Additionally, the survey responses indicated that the faculty members were changing their teaching practices and becoming more cognizant of how assignments did or did not elicit the process skill evidence that they desired. After using the rubrics, one instructor said, “I realize I need to revise many of my activities to more thoughtfully induce process skill development.” We see this as evidence that the faculty members were using the rubrics to regulate their teaching by reflecting on the outcomes of their practices and then planning for future teaching. These activities represent the reflection and forethought/planning aspects of self-regulated learning on the part of the instructors. Graduate teaching assistants in the physical chemistry course indicated that the rubrics gave them a way to clarify the instructor’s expectations when they were interacting with the students. As one GTA said, “It’s giving [the students] feedback on direct work that they have instead of just right or wrong. It helps them to understand like ‘Okay how can I improve? What areas am I lacking in?’” A more detailed account of how the instructors and teaching assistants implemented the rubrics has been reported elsewhere (Cole et al., 2019a ).

Student reflections

Students in both the organic and physical chemistry courses reported that they could use the rubrics to engage in the three phases of self-regulated learning: forethought/planning, performing, and reflecting. In an organic chemistry interview, one student was discussing how they could improve their low score for the synthesizing category of critical thinking by saying “I could use the data together instead of trying to use them separately,” thus demonstrating forethought/planning for their later work. Another student described how they could use the rubric while performing a task: “I could go through [the rubric] as I’m writing a report…and self-grade.” Finally, one student demonstrated how they could use the rubrics to reflect on their areas for improvement by saying that “When you have the five column [earn a score of five], I can understand that I’m doing something right” but “I really need to work on revising my reports.” We see this as evidence that students can use the rubrics to regulate their own learning, although classroom facilitation can have an effect on the ways in which students use the rubric feedback (Cole et al., 2019b ).

Limitations

The process skill definitions presented here represent a consensus understanding among members of the POGIL community and the instructors who participated in this study, but these skills are often defined in multiple ways by various STEM instructors, employers, and students (Danczak et al., 2017 ). One issue with critical thinking, in particular, is the broadness of how the skill is defined in the literature. Through this work, we have evidence via expert review to indicate that our definitions represent common understandings among a set of STEM faculty. Nonetheless, we cannot claim that all STEM instructors or researchers will share the skill definitions presented here.

There is currently a debate in the STEM literature (National Research Council, 2011 ) about whether the critical thinking construct is domain-general or domain-specific, that is, whether or not one’s critical thinking ability in one discipline can be applied to another discipline. We cannot make claims about the generalness of the construct based on the data presented here because the same students were not tested across multiple disciplines or courses. Additionally, we did not gather evidence for convergent validity, which is “the degree to which an operationalized construct is similar to other operationalized constructs that it theoretically should be similar to” (National Research Council, 2011 ). In other words, evidence for convergent validity would be the comparison of multiple measures of information processing or critical thinking. However, none of the instructors who used the ELIPSS rubrics also used a secondary measure of the constructs. Although the rubrics were examined by a multidisciplinary group of collaborators, this group was primarily chemists and included eight faculties from other disciplines, so the content validity of the rubrics may be somewhat limited.

Finally, the generalizability of the rubrics is limited by the relatively small number of students who were interviewed about their work. During their interviews, the students in the organic and physical chemistry courses each said that they could use the rubric scores as feedback to improve their skills. Additionally, as discussed in the “Validity and Reliability” section, the processes described by the students aligned with the content of the rubric and provided evidence of the rubric scores’ validity. However, the data gathered from the student interviews only represents the views of a subset of students in the courses, and further study is needed to determine the most appropriate contexts in which the rubrics can be implemented.

Conclusions and implications

Two rubrics were developed to assess and provide feedback on undergraduate STEM students’ critical thinking and information processing. Faculty survey responses indicated that the rubrics measured the relevant aspects of each process skill in the disciplines that were examined. Faculty survey responses, TA interviews, and student interviews over multiple semesters indicated that the rubric scores accurately reflected the evidence of process skills that the instructors wanted to see and the processes that the students performed when they were completing their assignments. The rubrics showed high inter-rater agreement scores, indicating that multiple raters could identify the same areas for improvement in student work.

In terms of constructive alignment, courses should ideally have alignment between their intended learning outcomes, student and instructor activities, and assessments. By using the ELIPSS rubrics, instructors were able to explicitly articulate the intended learning outcomes of their courses to their students. The instructors were then able to assess and provide feedback to students on different aspects of their process skills. Future efforts will be focused on modifying student assignments to enable instructors to better elicit evidence of these skills. In terms of self-regulated learning, students indicated in the interviews that the rubric scores were accurate representations of their work (performances), could help them reflect on their previous work (self-reflection), and the feedback they received could be used to inform their future work (forethought). Not only did the students indicate that the rubrics could help them regulate their learning, but the faculty members indicated that the rubrics had helped them regulate their teaching. With the individual categories on each rubric, the faculty members were better able to observe their students’ strengths and areas for improvement and then tailor their instruction to meet those needs. Our results indicated that the rubrics helped instructors in multiple STEM disciplines and at multiple institutions reflect on their teaching and then make changes to better align their teaching with their desired outcomes.

Overall, the rubrics can be used in a number of different ways to modify courses or for programmatic assessment. As previously stated, instructors can use the rubrics to define expectations for their students and provide them with feedback on desired skills throughout a course. The rubric categories can be used to give feedback on individual aspects of student process skills to provide specific feedback to each student. If an instructor or department wants to change from didactic lecture-based courses to active learning ones, the rubrics can be used to measure non-content learning gains that stem from the adoption of such pedagogies. Although the examples provided here for each rubric were situated in chemistry contexts, the rubrics were tested in multiple disciplines and institution types. The rubrics have the potential for wide applicability to assess not only laboratory reports but also homework assignments, quizzes, and exams. Assessing these tasks provides a way for instructors to achieve constructive alignment between their intended outcomes and their assessments, and the rubrics are intended to enhance this alignment to improve student process skills that are valued in the classroom and beyond.

Availability of data and materials

The datasets used and/or analyzed during the current study are available from the corresponding author on reasonable request.

Abbreviations

American Association of Colleges and Universities

Critical Thinking Assessment Test

Comprehensive University

Enhancing Learning by Improving Process Skills in STEM

Liberal Education and America’s Promise

Nuclear Magnetic Resonance

Primary Collaborative Team

Peer-led Team Learning

Process Oriented Guided Inquiry Learning

Primarily Undergraduate Institution

Research University

Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics

Valid Assessment of Learning in Undergraduate Education

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We thank members of our Primary Collaboration Team and Implementation Cohorts for collecting and sharing data. We also thank all the students who have allowed us to examine their work and provided feedback.

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This work was supported in part by the National Science Foundation under collaborative grants #1524399, #1524936, and #1524965. Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this material are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Science Foundation.

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RC, JL, and SR performed an initial literature review that was expanded by GR. All authors designed the survey instruments. GR collected and analyzed the survey and interview data with guidance from RC. GR revised the rubrics with extensive input from all other authors. All authors contributed to reliability measurements. GR drafted all manuscript sections. RC provided extensive comments during manuscript revisions; JL, SR, and CS also offered comments. All authors read and approved the final manuscript.

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Reynders, G., Lantz, J., Ruder, S.M. et al. Rubrics to assess critical thinking and information processing in undergraduate STEM courses. IJ STEM Ed 7 , 9 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1186/s40594-020-00208-5

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Critical Thinking

Critical thinking is a widely accepted educational goal. Its definition is contested, but the competing definitions can be understood as differing conceptions of the same basic concept: careful thinking directed to a goal. Conceptions differ with respect to the scope of such thinking, the type of goal, the criteria and norms for thinking carefully, and the thinking components on which they focus. Its adoption as an educational goal has been recommended on the basis of respect for students’ autonomy and preparing students for success in life and for democratic citizenship. “Critical thinkers” have the dispositions and abilities that lead them to think critically when appropriate. The abilities can be identified directly; the dispositions indirectly, by considering what factors contribute to or impede exercise of the abilities. Standardized tests have been developed to assess the degree to which a person possesses such dispositions and abilities. Educational intervention has been shown experimentally to improve them, particularly when it includes dialogue, anchored instruction, and mentoring. Controversies have arisen over the generalizability of critical thinking across domains, over alleged bias in critical thinking theories and instruction, and over the relationship of critical thinking to other types of thinking.

2.1 Dewey’s Three Main Examples

2.2 dewey’s other examples, 2.3 further examples, 2.4 non-examples, 3. the definition of critical thinking, 4. its value, 5. the process of thinking critically, 6. components of the process, 7. contributory dispositions and abilities, 8.1 initiating dispositions, 8.2 internal dispositions, 9. critical thinking abilities, 10. required knowledge, 11. educational methods, 12.1 the generalizability of critical thinking, 12.2 bias in critical thinking theory and pedagogy, 12.3 relationship of critical thinking to other types of thinking, other internet resources, related entries.

Use of the term ‘critical thinking’ to describe an educational goal goes back to the American philosopher John Dewey (1910), who more commonly called it ‘reflective thinking’. He defined it as

active, persistent and careful consideration of any belief or supposed form of knowledge in the light of the grounds that support it, and the further conclusions to which it tends. (Dewey 1910: 6; 1933: 9)

and identified a habit of such consideration with a scientific attitude of mind. His lengthy quotations of Francis Bacon, John Locke, and John Stuart Mill indicate that he was not the first person to propose development of a scientific attitude of mind as an educational goal.

In the 1930s, many of the schools that participated in the Eight-Year Study of the Progressive Education Association (Aikin 1942) adopted critical thinking as an educational goal, for whose achievement the study’s Evaluation Staff developed tests (Smith, Tyler, & Evaluation Staff 1942). Glaser (1941) showed experimentally that it was possible to improve the critical thinking of high school students. Bloom’s influential taxonomy of cognitive educational objectives (Bloom et al. 1956) incorporated critical thinking abilities. Ennis (1962) proposed 12 aspects of critical thinking as a basis for research on the teaching and evaluation of critical thinking ability.

Since 1980, an annual international conference in California on critical thinking and educational reform has attracted tens of thousands of educators from all levels of education and from many parts of the world. Also since 1980, the state university system in California has required all undergraduate students to take a critical thinking course. Since 1983, the Association for Informal Logic and Critical Thinking has sponsored sessions in conjunction with the divisional meetings of the American Philosophical Association (APA). In 1987, the APA’s Committee on Pre-College Philosophy commissioned a consensus statement on critical thinking for purposes of educational assessment and instruction (Facione 1990a). Researchers have developed standardized tests of critical thinking abilities and dispositions; for details, see the Supplement on Assessment . Educational jurisdictions around the world now include critical thinking in guidelines for curriculum and assessment.

For details on this history, see the Supplement on History .

2. Examples and Non-Examples

Before considering the definition of critical thinking, it will be helpful to have in mind some examples of critical thinking, as well as some examples of kinds of thinking that would apparently not count as critical thinking.

Dewey (1910: 68–71; 1933: 91–94) takes as paradigms of reflective thinking three class papers of students in which they describe their thinking. The examples range from the everyday to the scientific.

Transit : “The other day, when I was down town on 16th Street, a clock caught my eye. I saw that the hands pointed to 12:20. This suggested that I had an engagement at 124th Street, at one o’clock. I reasoned that as it had taken me an hour to come down on a surface car, I should probably be twenty minutes late if I returned the same way. I might save twenty minutes by a subway express. But was there a station near? If not, I might lose more than twenty minutes in looking for one. Then I thought of the elevated, and I saw there was such a line within two blocks. But where was the station? If it were several blocks above or below the street I was on, I should lose time instead of gaining it. My mind went back to the subway express as quicker than the elevated; furthermore, I remembered that it went nearer than the elevated to the part of 124th Street I wished to reach, so that time would be saved at the end of the journey. I concluded in favor of the subway, and reached my destination by one o’clock.” (Dewey 1910: 68–69; 1933: 91–92)

Ferryboat : “Projecting nearly horizontally from the upper deck of the ferryboat on which I daily cross the river is a long white pole, having a gilded ball at its tip. It suggested a flagpole when I first saw it; its color, shape, and gilded ball agreed with this idea, and these reasons seemed to justify me in this belief. But soon difficulties presented themselves. The pole was nearly horizontal, an unusual position for a flagpole; in the next place, there was no pulley, ring, or cord by which to attach a flag; finally, there were elsewhere on the boat two vertical staffs from which flags were occasionally flown. It seemed probable that the pole was not there for flag-flying.

“I then tried to imagine all possible purposes of the pole, and to consider for which of these it was best suited: (a) Possibly it was an ornament. But as all the ferryboats and even the tugboats carried poles, this hypothesis was rejected. (b) Possibly it was the terminal of a wireless telegraph. But the same considerations made this improbable. Besides, the more natural place for such a terminal would be the highest part of the boat, on top of the pilot house. (c) Its purpose might be to point out the direction in which the boat is moving.

“In support of this conclusion, I discovered that the pole was lower than the pilot house, so that the steersman could easily see it. Moreover, the tip was enough higher than the base, so that, from the pilot’s position, it must appear to project far out in front of the boat. Moreover, the pilot being near the front of the boat, he would need some such guide as to its direction. Tugboats would also need poles for such a purpose. This hypothesis was so much more probable than the others that I accepted it. I formed the conclusion that the pole was set up for the purpose of showing the pilot the direction in which the boat pointed, to enable him to steer correctly.” (Dewey 1910: 69–70; 1933: 92–93)

Bubbles : “In washing tumblers in hot soapsuds and placing them mouth downward on a plate, bubbles appeared on the outside of the mouth of the tumblers and then went inside. Why? The presence of bubbles suggests air, which I note must come from inside the tumbler. I see that the soapy water on the plate prevents escape of the air save as it may be caught in bubbles. But why should air leave the tumbler? There was no substance entering to force it out. It must have expanded. It expands by increase of heat, or by decrease of pressure, or both. Could the air have become heated after the tumbler was taken from the hot suds? Clearly not the air that was already entangled in the water. If heated air was the cause, cold air must have entered in transferring the tumblers from the suds to the plate. I test to see if this supposition is true by taking several more tumblers out. Some I shake so as to make sure of entrapping cold air in them. Some I take out holding mouth downward in order to prevent cold air from entering. Bubbles appear on the outside of every one of the former and on none of the latter. I must be right in my inference. Air from the outside must have been expanded by the heat of the tumbler, which explains the appearance of the bubbles on the outside. But why do they then go inside? Cold contracts. The tumbler cooled and also the air inside it. Tension was removed, and hence bubbles appeared inside. To be sure of this, I test by placing a cup of ice on the tumbler while the bubbles are still forming outside. They soon reverse” (Dewey 1910: 70–71; 1933: 93–94).

Dewey (1910, 1933) sprinkles his book with other examples of critical thinking. We will refer to the following.

Weather : A man on a walk notices that it has suddenly become cool, thinks that it is probably going to rain, looks up and sees a dark cloud obscuring the sun, and quickens his steps (1910: 6–10; 1933: 9–13).

Disorder : A man finds his rooms on his return to them in disorder with his belongings thrown about, thinks at first of burglary as an explanation, then thinks of mischievous children as being an alternative explanation, then looks to see whether valuables are missing, and discovers that they are (1910: 82–83; 1933: 166–168).

Typhoid : A physician diagnosing a patient whose conspicuous symptoms suggest typhoid avoids drawing a conclusion until more data are gathered by questioning the patient and by making tests (1910: 85–86; 1933: 170).

Blur : A moving blur catches our eye in the distance, we ask ourselves whether it is a cloud of whirling dust or a tree moving its branches or a man signaling to us, we think of other traits that should be found on each of those possibilities, and we look and see if those traits are found (1910: 102, 108; 1933: 121, 133).

Suction pump : In thinking about the suction pump, the scientist first notes that it will draw water only to a maximum height of 33 feet at sea level and to a lesser maximum height at higher elevations, selects for attention the differing atmospheric pressure at these elevations, sets up experiments in which the air is removed from a vessel containing water (when suction no longer works) and in which the weight of air at various levels is calculated, compares the results of reasoning about the height to which a given weight of air will allow a suction pump to raise water with the observed maximum height at different elevations, and finally assimilates the suction pump to such apparently different phenomena as the siphon and the rising of a balloon (1910: 150–153; 1933: 195–198).

Diamond : A passenger in a car driving in a diamond lane reserved for vehicles with at least one passenger notices that the diamond marks on the pavement are far apart in some places and close together in others. Why? The driver suggests that the reason may be that the diamond marks are not needed where there is a solid double line separating the diamond lane from the adjoining lane, but are needed when there is a dotted single line permitting crossing into the diamond lane. Further observation confirms that the diamonds are close together when a dotted line separates the diamond lane from its neighbour, but otherwise far apart.

Rash : A woman suddenly develops a very itchy red rash on her throat and upper chest. She recently noticed a mark on the back of her right hand, but was not sure whether the mark was a rash or a scrape. She lies down in bed and thinks about what might be causing the rash and what to do about it. About two weeks before, she began taking blood pressure medication that contained a sulfa drug, and the pharmacist had warned her, in view of a previous allergic reaction to a medication containing a sulfa drug, to be on the alert for an allergic reaction; however, she had been taking the medication for two weeks with no such effect. The day before, she began using a new cream on her neck and upper chest; against the new cream as the cause was mark on the back of her hand, which had not been exposed to the cream. She began taking probiotics about a month before. She also recently started new eye drops, but she supposed that manufacturers of eye drops would be careful not to include allergy-causing components in the medication. The rash might be a heat rash, since she recently was sweating profusely from her upper body. Since she is about to go away on a short vacation, where she would not have access to her usual physician, she decides to keep taking the probiotics and using the new eye drops but to discontinue the blood pressure medication and to switch back to the old cream for her neck and upper chest. She forms a plan to consult her regular physician on her return about the blood pressure medication.

Candidate : Although Dewey included no examples of thinking directed at appraising the arguments of others, such thinking has come to be considered a kind of critical thinking. We find an example of such thinking in the performance task on the Collegiate Learning Assessment (CLA+), which its sponsoring organization describes as

a performance-based assessment that provides a measure of an institution’s contribution to the development of critical-thinking and written communication skills of its students. (Council for Aid to Education 2017)

A sample task posted on its website requires the test-taker to write a report for public distribution evaluating a fictional candidate’s policy proposals and their supporting arguments, using supplied background documents, with a recommendation on whether to endorse the candidate.

Immediate acceptance of an idea that suggests itself as a solution to a problem (e.g., a possible explanation of an event or phenomenon, an action that seems likely to produce a desired result) is “uncritical thinking, the minimum of reflection” (Dewey 1910: 13). On-going suspension of judgment in the light of doubt about a possible solution is not critical thinking (Dewey 1910: 108). Critique driven by a dogmatically held political or religious ideology is not critical thinking; thus Paulo Freire (1968 [1970]) is using the term (e.g., at 1970: 71, 81, 100, 146) in a more politically freighted sense that includes not only reflection but also revolutionary action against oppression. Derivation of a conclusion from given data using an algorithm is not critical thinking.

What is critical thinking? There are many definitions. Ennis (2016) lists 14 philosophically oriented scholarly definitions and three dictionary definitions. Following Rawls (1971), who distinguished his conception of justice from a utilitarian conception but regarded them as rival conceptions of the same concept, Ennis maintains that the 17 definitions are different conceptions of the same concept. Rawls articulated the shared concept of justice as

a characteristic set of principles for assigning basic rights and duties and for determining… the proper distribution of the benefits and burdens of social cooperation. (Rawls 1971: 5)

Bailin et al. (1999b) claim that, if one considers what sorts of thinking an educator would take not to be critical thinking and what sorts to be critical thinking, one can conclude that educators typically understand critical thinking to have at least three features.

• It is done for the purpose of making up one’s mind about what to believe or do.
• The person engaging in the thinking is trying to fulfill standards of adequacy and accuracy appropriate to the thinking.
• The thinking fulfills the relevant standards to some threshold level.

One could sum up the core concept that involves these three features by saying that critical thinking is careful goal-directed thinking. This core concept seems to apply to all the examples of critical thinking described in the previous section. As for the non-examples, their exclusion depends on construing careful thinking as excluding jumping immediately to conclusions, suspending judgment no matter how strong the evidence, reasoning from an unquestioned ideological or religious perspective, and routinely using an algorithm to answer a question.

If the core of critical thinking is careful goal-directed thinking, conceptions of it can vary according to its presumed scope, its presumed goal, one’s criteria and threshold for being careful, and the thinking component on which one focuses. As to its scope, some conceptions (e.g., Dewey 1910, 1933) restrict it to constructive thinking on the basis of one’s own observations and experiments, others (e.g., Ennis 1962; Fisher & Scriven 1997; Johnson 1992) to appraisal of the products of such thinking. Ennis (1991) and Bailin et al. (1999b) take it to cover both construction and appraisal. As to its goal, some conceptions restrict it to forming a judgment (Dewey 1910, 1933; Lipman 1987; Facione 1990a). Others allow for actions as well as beliefs as the end point of a process of critical thinking (Ennis 1991; Bailin et al. 1999b). As to the criteria and threshold for being careful, definitions vary in the term used to indicate that critical thinking satisfies certain norms: “intellectually disciplined” (Scriven & Paul 1987), “reasonable” (Ennis 1991), “skillful” (Lipman 1987), “skilled” (Fisher & Scriven 1997), “careful” (Bailin & Battersby 2009). Some definitions specify these norms, referring variously to “consideration of any belief or supposed form of knowledge in the light of the grounds that support it and the further conclusions to which it tends” (Dewey 1910, 1933); “the methods of logical inquiry and reasoning” (Glaser 1941); “conceptualizing, applying, analyzing, synthesizing, and/or evaluating information gathered from, or generated by, observation, experience, reflection, reasoning, or communication” (Scriven & Paul 1987); the requirement that “it is sensitive to context, relies on criteria, and is self-correcting” (Lipman 1987); “evidential, conceptual, methodological, criteriological, or contextual considerations” (Facione 1990a); and “plus-minus considerations of the product in terms of appropriate standards (or criteria)” (Johnson 1992). Stanovich and Stanovich (2010) propose to ground the concept of critical thinking in the concept of rationality, which they understand as combining epistemic rationality (fitting one’s beliefs to the world) and instrumental rationality (optimizing goal fulfillment); a critical thinker, in their view, is someone with “a propensity to override suboptimal responses from the autonomous mind” (2010: 227). These variant specifications of norms for critical thinking are not necessarily incompatible with one another, and in any case presuppose the core notion of thinking carefully. As to the thinking component singled out, some definitions focus on suspension of judgment during the thinking (Dewey 1910; McPeck 1981), others on inquiry while judgment is suspended (Bailin & Battersby 2009, 2021), others on the resulting judgment (Facione 1990a), and still others on responsiveness to reasons (Siegel 1988). Kuhn (2019) takes critical thinking to be more a dialogic practice of advancing and responding to arguments than an individual ability.

In educational contexts, a definition of critical thinking is a “programmatic definition” (Scheffler 1960: 19). It expresses a practical program for achieving an educational goal. For this purpose, a one-sentence formulaic definition is much less useful than articulation of a critical thinking process, with criteria and standards for the kinds of thinking that the process may involve. The real educational goal is recognition, adoption and implementation by students of those criteria and standards. That adoption and implementation in turn consists in acquiring the knowledge, abilities and dispositions of a critical thinker.

Conceptions of critical thinking generally do not include moral integrity as part of the concept. Dewey, for example, took critical thinking to be the ultimate intellectual goal of education, but distinguished it from the development of social cooperation among school children, which he took to be the central moral goal. Ennis (1996, 2011) added to his previous list of critical thinking dispositions a group of dispositions to care about the dignity and worth of every person, which he described as a “correlative” (1996) disposition without which critical thinking would be less valuable and perhaps harmful. An educational program that aimed at developing critical thinking but not the correlative disposition to care about the dignity and worth of every person, he asserted, “would be deficient and perhaps dangerous” (Ennis 1996: 172).

Dewey thought that education for reflective thinking would be of value to both the individual and society; recognition in educational practice of the kinship to the scientific attitude of children’s native curiosity, fertile imagination and love of experimental inquiry “would make for individual happiness and the reduction of social waste” (Dewey 1910: iii). Schools participating in the Eight-Year Study took development of the habit of reflective thinking and skill in solving problems as a means to leading young people to understand, appreciate and live the democratic way of life characteristic of the United States (Aikin 1942: 17–18, 81). Harvey Siegel (1988: 55–61) has offered four considerations in support of adopting critical thinking as an educational ideal. (1) Respect for persons requires that schools and teachers honour students’ demands for reasons and explanations, deal with students honestly, and recognize the need to confront students’ independent judgment; these requirements concern the manner in which teachers treat students. (2) Education has the task of preparing children to be successful adults, a task that requires development of their self-sufficiency. (3) Education should initiate children into the rational traditions in such fields as history, science and mathematics. (4) Education should prepare children to become democratic citizens, which requires reasoned procedures and critical talents and attitudes. To supplement these considerations, Siegel (1988: 62–90) responds to two objections: the ideology objection that adoption of any educational ideal requires a prior ideological commitment and the indoctrination objection that cultivation of critical thinking cannot escape being a form of indoctrination.

Despite the diversity of our 11 examples, one can recognize a common pattern. Dewey analyzed it as consisting of five phases:

• suggestions , in which the mind leaps forward to a possible solution;
• an intellectualization of the difficulty or perplexity into a problem to be solved, a question for which the answer must be sought;
• the use of one suggestion after another as a leading idea, or hypothesis , to initiate and guide observation and other operations in collection of factual material;
• the mental elaboration of the idea or supposition as an idea or supposition ( reasoning , in the sense on which reasoning is a part, not the whole, of inference); and
• testing the hypothesis by overt or imaginative action. (Dewey 1933: 106–107; italics in original)

The process of reflective thinking consisting of these phases would be preceded by a perplexed, troubled or confused situation and followed by a cleared-up, unified, resolved situation (Dewey 1933: 106). The term ‘phases’ replaced the term ‘steps’ (Dewey 1910: 72), thus removing the earlier suggestion of an invariant sequence. Variants of the above analysis appeared in (Dewey 1916: 177) and (Dewey 1938: 101–119).

The variant formulations indicate the difficulty of giving a single logical analysis of such a varied process. The process of critical thinking may have a spiral pattern, with the problem being redefined in the light of obstacles to solving it as originally formulated. For example, the person in Transit might have concluded that getting to the appointment at the scheduled time was impossible and have reformulated the problem as that of rescheduling the appointment for a mutually convenient time. Further, defining a problem does not always follow after or lead immediately to an idea of a suggested solution. Nor should it do so, as Dewey himself recognized in describing the physician in Typhoid as avoiding any strong preference for this or that conclusion before getting further information (Dewey 1910: 85; 1933: 170). People with a hypothesis in mind, even one to which they have a very weak commitment, have a so-called “confirmation bias” (Nickerson 1998): they are likely to pay attention to evidence that confirms the hypothesis and to ignore evidence that counts against it or for some competing hypothesis. Detectives, intelligence agencies, and investigators of airplane accidents are well advised to gather relevant evidence systematically and to postpone even tentative adoption of an explanatory hypothesis until the collected evidence rules out with the appropriate degree of certainty all but one explanation. Dewey’s analysis of the critical thinking process can be faulted as well for requiring acceptance or rejection of a possible solution to a defined problem, with no allowance for deciding in the light of the available evidence to suspend judgment. Further, given the great variety of kinds of problems for which reflection is appropriate, there is likely to be variation in its component events. Perhaps the best way to conceptualize the critical thinking process is as a checklist whose component events can occur in a variety of orders, selectively, and more than once. These component events might include (1) noticing a difficulty, (2) defining the problem, (3) dividing the problem into manageable sub-problems, (4) formulating a variety of possible solutions to the problem or sub-problem, (5) determining what evidence is relevant to deciding among possible solutions to the problem or sub-problem, (6) devising a plan of systematic observation or experiment that will uncover the relevant evidence, (7) carrying out the plan of systematic observation or experimentation, (8) noting the results of the systematic observation or experiment, (9) gathering relevant testimony and information from others, (10) judging the credibility of testimony and information gathered from others, (11) drawing conclusions from gathered evidence and accepted testimony, and (12) accepting a solution that the evidence adequately supports (cf. Hitchcock 2017: 485).

Checklist conceptions of the process of critical thinking are open to the objection that they are too mechanical and procedural to fit the multi-dimensional and emotionally charged issues for which critical thinking is urgently needed (Paul 1984). For such issues, a more dialectical process is advocated, in which competing relevant world views are identified, their implications explored, and some sort of creative synthesis attempted.

If one considers the critical thinking process illustrated by the 11 examples, one can identify distinct kinds of mental acts and mental states that form part of it. To distinguish, label and briefly characterize these components is a useful preliminary to identifying abilities, skills, dispositions, attitudes, habits and the like that contribute causally to thinking critically. Identifying such abilities and habits is in turn a useful preliminary to setting educational goals. Setting the goals is in its turn a useful preliminary to designing strategies for helping learners to achieve the goals and to designing ways of measuring the extent to which learners have done so. Such measures provide both feedback to learners on their achievement and a basis for experimental research on the effectiveness of various strategies for educating people to think critically. Let us begin, then, by distinguishing the kinds of mental acts and mental events that can occur in a critical thinking process.

• Observing : One notices something in one’s immediate environment (sudden cooling of temperature in Weather , bubbles forming outside a glass and then going inside in Bubbles , a moving blur in the distance in Blur , a rash in Rash ). Or one notes the results of an experiment or systematic observation (valuables missing in Disorder , no suction without air pressure in Suction pump )
• Feeling : One feels puzzled or uncertain about something (how to get to an appointment on time in Transit , why the diamonds vary in spacing in Diamond ). One wants to resolve this perplexity. One feels satisfaction once one has worked out an answer (to take the subway express in Transit , diamonds closer when needed as a warning in Diamond ).
• Wondering : One formulates a question to be addressed (why bubbles form outside a tumbler taken from hot water in Bubbles , how suction pumps work in Suction pump , what caused the rash in Rash ).
• Imagining : One thinks of possible answers (bus or subway or elevated in Transit , flagpole or ornament or wireless communication aid or direction indicator in Ferryboat , allergic reaction or heat rash in Rash ).
• Inferring : One works out what would be the case if a possible answer were assumed (valuables missing if there has been a burglary in Disorder , earlier start to the rash if it is an allergic reaction to a sulfa drug in Rash ). Or one draws a conclusion once sufficient relevant evidence is gathered (take the subway in Transit , burglary in Disorder , discontinue blood pressure medication and new cream in Rash ).
• Knowledge : One uses stored knowledge of the subject-matter to generate possible answers or to infer what would be expected on the assumption of a particular answer (knowledge of a city’s public transit system in Transit , of the requirements for a flagpole in Ferryboat , of Boyle’s law in Bubbles , of allergic reactions in Rash ).
• Experimenting : One designs and carries out an experiment or a systematic observation to find out whether the results deduced from a possible answer will occur (looking at the location of the flagpole in relation to the pilot’s position in Ferryboat , putting an ice cube on top of a tumbler taken from hot water in Bubbles , measuring the height to which a suction pump will draw water at different elevations in Suction pump , noticing the spacing of diamonds when movement to or from a diamond lane is allowed in Diamond ).
• Consulting : One finds a source of information, gets the information from the source, and makes a judgment on whether to accept it. None of our 11 examples include searching for sources of information. In this respect they are unrepresentative, since most people nowadays have almost instant access to information relevant to answering any question, including many of those illustrated by the examples. However, Candidate includes the activities of extracting information from sources and evaluating its credibility.
• Identifying and analyzing arguments : One notices an argument and works out its structure and content as a preliminary to evaluating its strength. This activity is central to Candidate . It is an important part of a critical thinking process in which one surveys arguments for various positions on an issue.
• Judging : One makes a judgment on the basis of accumulated evidence and reasoning, such as the judgment in Ferryboat that the purpose of the pole is to provide direction to the pilot.
• Deciding : One makes a decision on what to do or on what policy to adopt, as in the decision in Transit to take the subway.

By definition, a person who does something voluntarily is both willing and able to do that thing at that time. Both the willingness and the ability contribute causally to the person’s action, in the sense that the voluntary action would not occur if either (or both) of these were lacking. For example, suppose that one is standing with one’s arms at one’s sides and one voluntarily lifts one’s right arm to an extended horizontal position. One would not do so if one were unable to lift one’s arm, if for example one’s right side was paralyzed as the result of a stroke. Nor would one do so if one were unwilling to lift one’s arm, if for example one were participating in a street demonstration at which a white supremacist was urging the crowd to lift their right arm in a Nazi salute and one were unwilling to express support in this way for the racist Nazi ideology. The same analysis applies to a voluntary mental process of thinking critically. It requires both willingness and ability to think critically, including willingness and ability to perform each of the mental acts that compose the process and to coordinate those acts in a sequence that is directed at resolving the initiating perplexity.

Consider willingness first. We can identify causal contributors to willingness to think critically by considering factors that would cause a person who was able to think critically about an issue nevertheless not to do so (Hamby 2014). For each factor, the opposite condition thus contributes causally to willingness to think critically on a particular occasion. For example, people who habitually jump to conclusions without considering alternatives will not think critically about issues that arise, even if they have the required abilities. The contrary condition of willingness to suspend judgment is thus a causal contributor to thinking critically.

Now consider ability. In contrast to the ability to move one’s arm, which can be completely absent because a stroke has left the arm paralyzed, the ability to think critically is a developed ability, whose absence is not a complete absence of ability to think but absence of ability to think well. We can identify the ability to think well directly, in terms of the norms and standards for good thinking. In general, to be able do well the thinking activities that can be components of a critical thinking process, one needs to know the concepts and principles that characterize their good performance, to recognize in particular cases that the concepts and principles apply, and to apply them. The knowledge, recognition and application may be procedural rather than declarative. It may be domain-specific rather than widely applicable, and in either case may need subject-matter knowledge, sometimes of a deep kind.

Reflections of the sort illustrated by the previous two paragraphs have led scholars to identify the knowledge, abilities and dispositions of a “critical thinker”, i.e., someone who thinks critically whenever it is appropriate to do so. We turn now to these three types of causal contributors to thinking critically. We start with dispositions, since arguably these are the most powerful contributors to being a critical thinker, can be fostered at an early stage of a child’s development, and are susceptible to general improvement (Glaser 1941: 175)

8. Critical Thinking Dispositions

Educational researchers use the term ‘dispositions’ broadly for the habits of mind and attitudes that contribute causally to being a critical thinker. Some writers (e.g., Paul & Elder 2006; Hamby 2014; Bailin & Battersby 2016a) propose to use the term ‘virtues’ for this dimension of a critical thinker. The virtues in question, although they are virtues of character, concern the person’s ways of thinking rather than the person’s ways of behaving towards others. They are not moral virtues but intellectual virtues, of the sort articulated by Zagzebski (1996) and discussed by Turri, Alfano, and Greco (2017).

On a realistic conception, thinking dispositions or intellectual virtues are real properties of thinkers. They are general tendencies, propensities, or inclinations to think in particular ways in particular circumstances, and can be genuinely explanatory (Siegel 1999). Sceptics argue that there is no evidence for a specific mental basis for the habits of mind that contribute to thinking critically, and that it is pedagogically misleading to posit such a basis (Bailin et al. 1999a). Whatever their status, critical thinking dispositions need motivation for their initial formation in a child—motivation that may be external or internal. As children develop, the force of habit will gradually become important in sustaining the disposition (Nieto & Valenzuela 2012). Mere force of habit, however, is unlikely to sustain critical thinking dispositions. Critical thinkers must value and enjoy using their knowledge and abilities to think things through for themselves. They must be committed to, and lovers of, inquiry.

A person may have a critical thinking disposition with respect to only some kinds of issues. For example, one could be open-minded about scientific issues but not about religious issues. Similarly, one could be confident in one’s ability to reason about the theological implications of the existence of evil in the world but not in one’s ability to reason about the best design for a guided ballistic missile.

Facione (1990a: 25) divides “affective dispositions” of critical thinking into approaches to life and living in general and approaches to specific issues, questions or problems. Adapting this distinction, one can usefully divide critical thinking dispositions into initiating dispositions (those that contribute causally to starting to think critically about an issue) and internal dispositions (those that contribute causally to doing a good job of thinking critically once one has started). The two categories are not mutually exclusive. For example, open-mindedness, in the sense of willingness to consider alternative points of view to one’s own, is both an initiating and an internal disposition.

Using the strategy of considering factors that would block people with the ability to think critically from doing so, we can identify as initiating dispositions for thinking critically attentiveness, a habit of inquiry, self-confidence, courage, open-mindedness, willingness to suspend judgment, trust in reason, wanting evidence for one’s beliefs, and seeking the truth. We consider briefly what each of these dispositions amounts to, in each case citing sources that acknowledge them.

• Attentiveness : One will not think critically if one fails to recognize an issue that needs to be thought through. For example, the pedestrian in Weather would not have looked up if he had not noticed that the air was suddenly cooler. To be a critical thinker, then, one needs to be habitually attentive to one’s surroundings, noticing not only what one senses but also sources of perplexity in messages received and in one’s own beliefs and attitudes (Facione 1990a: 25; Facione, Facione, & Giancarlo 2001).
• Habit of inquiry : Inquiry is effortful, and one needs an internal push to engage in it. For example, the student in Bubbles could easily have stopped at idle wondering about the cause of the bubbles rather than reasoning to a hypothesis, then designing and executing an experiment to test it. Thus willingness to think critically needs mental energy and initiative. What can supply that energy? Love of inquiry, or perhaps just a habit of inquiry. Hamby (2015) has argued that willingness to inquire is the central critical thinking virtue, one that encompasses all the others. It is recognized as a critical thinking disposition by Dewey (1910: 29; 1933: 35), Glaser (1941: 5), Ennis (1987: 12; 1991: 8), Facione (1990a: 25), Bailin et al. (1999b: 294), Halpern (1998: 452), and Facione, Facione, & Giancarlo (2001).
• Self-confidence : Lack of confidence in one’s abilities can block critical thinking. For example, if the woman in Rash lacked confidence in her ability to figure things out for herself, she might just have assumed that the rash on her chest was the allergic reaction to her medication against which the pharmacist had warned her. Thus willingness to think critically requires confidence in one’s ability to inquire (Facione 1990a: 25; Facione, Facione, & Giancarlo 2001).
• Courage : Fear of thinking for oneself can stop one from doing it. Thus willingness to think critically requires intellectual courage (Paul & Elder 2006: 16).
• Open-mindedness : A dogmatic attitude will impede thinking critically. For example, a person who adheres rigidly to a “pro-choice” position on the issue of the legal status of induced abortion is likely to be unwilling to consider seriously the issue of when in its development an unborn child acquires a moral right to life. Thus willingness to think critically requires open-mindedness, in the sense of a willingness to examine questions to which one already accepts an answer but which further evidence or reasoning might cause one to answer differently (Dewey 1933; Facione 1990a; Ennis 1991; Bailin et al. 1999b; Halpern 1998, Facione, Facione, & Giancarlo 2001). Paul (1981) emphasizes open-mindedness about alternative world-views, and recommends a dialectical approach to integrating such views as central to what he calls “strong sense” critical thinking. In three studies, Haran, Ritov, & Mellers (2013) found that actively open-minded thinking, including “the tendency to weigh new evidence against a favored belief, to spend sufficient time on a problem before giving up, and to consider carefully the opinions of others in forming one’s own”, led study participants to acquire information and thus to make accurate estimations.
• Willingness to suspend judgment : Premature closure on an initial solution will block critical thinking. Thus willingness to think critically requires a willingness to suspend judgment while alternatives are explored (Facione 1990a; Ennis 1991; Halpern 1998).
• Trust in reason : Since distrust in the processes of reasoned inquiry will dissuade one from engaging in it, trust in them is an initiating critical thinking disposition (Facione 1990a, 25; Bailin et al. 1999b: 294; Facione, Facione, & Giancarlo 2001; Paul & Elder 2006). In reaction to an allegedly exclusive emphasis on reason in critical thinking theory and pedagogy, Thayer-Bacon (2000) argues that intuition, imagination, and emotion have important roles to play in an adequate conception of critical thinking that she calls “constructive thinking”. From her point of view, critical thinking requires trust not only in reason but also in intuition, imagination, and emotion.
• Seeking the truth : If one does not care about the truth but is content to stick with one’s initial bias on an issue, then one will not think critically about it. Seeking the truth is thus an initiating critical thinking disposition (Bailin et al. 1999b: 294; Facione, Facione, & Giancarlo 2001). A disposition to seek the truth is implicit in more specific critical thinking dispositions, such as trying to be well-informed, considering seriously points of view other than one’s own, looking for alternatives, suspending judgment when the evidence is insufficient, and adopting a position when the evidence supporting it is sufficient.

Some of the initiating dispositions, such as open-mindedness and willingness to suspend judgment, are also internal critical thinking dispositions, in the sense of mental habits or attitudes that contribute causally to doing a good job of critical thinking once one starts the process. But there are many other internal critical thinking dispositions. Some of them are parasitic on one’s conception of good thinking. For example, it is constitutive of good thinking about an issue to formulate the issue clearly and to maintain focus on it. For this purpose, one needs not only the corresponding ability but also the corresponding disposition. Ennis (1991: 8) describes it as the disposition “to determine and maintain focus on the conclusion or question”, Facione (1990a: 25) as “clarity in stating the question or concern”. Other internal dispositions are motivators to continue or adjust the critical thinking process, such as willingness to persist in a complex task and willingness to abandon nonproductive strategies in an attempt to self-correct (Halpern 1998: 452). For a list of identified internal critical thinking dispositions, see the Supplement on Internal Critical Thinking Dispositions .

Some theorists postulate skills, i.e., acquired abilities, as operative in critical thinking. It is not obvious, however, that a good mental act is the exercise of a generic acquired skill. Inferring an expected time of arrival, as in Transit , has some generic components but also uses non-generic subject-matter knowledge. Bailin et al. (1999a) argue against viewing critical thinking skills as generic and discrete, on the ground that skilled performance at a critical thinking task cannot be separated from knowledge of concepts and from domain-specific principles of good thinking. Talk of skills, they concede, is unproblematic if it means merely that a person with critical thinking skills is capable of intelligent performance.

Despite such scepticism, theorists of critical thinking have listed as general contributors to critical thinking what they variously call abilities (Glaser 1941; Ennis 1962, 1991), skills (Facione 1990a; Halpern 1998) or competencies (Fisher & Scriven 1997). Amalgamating these lists would produce a confusing and chaotic cornucopia of more than 50 possible educational objectives, with only partial overlap among them. It makes sense instead to try to understand the reasons for the multiplicity and diversity, and to make a selection according to one’s own reasons for singling out abilities to be developed in a critical thinking curriculum. Two reasons for diversity among lists of critical thinking abilities are the underlying conception of critical thinking and the envisaged educational level. Appraisal-only conceptions, for example, involve a different suite of abilities than constructive-only conceptions. Some lists, such as those in (Glaser 1941), are put forward as educational objectives for secondary school students, whereas others are proposed as objectives for college students (e.g., Facione 1990a).

The abilities described in the remaining paragraphs of this section emerge from reflection on the general abilities needed to do well the thinking activities identified in section 6 as components of the critical thinking process described in section 5 . The derivation of each collection of abilities is accompanied by citation of sources that list such abilities and of standardized tests that claim to test them.

Observational abilities : Careful and accurate observation sometimes requires specialist expertise and practice, as in the case of observing birds and observing accident scenes. However, there are general abilities of noticing what one’s senses are picking up from one’s environment and of being able to articulate clearly and accurately to oneself and others what one has observed. It helps in exercising them to be able to recognize and take into account factors that make one’s observation less trustworthy, such as prior framing of the situation, inadequate time, deficient senses, poor observation conditions, and the like. It helps as well to be skilled at taking steps to make one’s observation more trustworthy, such as moving closer to get a better look, measuring something three times and taking the average, and checking what one thinks one is observing with someone else who is in a good position to observe it. It also helps to be skilled at recognizing respects in which one’s report of one’s observation involves inference rather than direct observation, so that one can then consider whether the inference is justified. These abilities come into play as well when one thinks about whether and with what degree of confidence to accept an observation report, for example in the study of history or in a criminal investigation or in assessing news reports. Observational abilities show up in some lists of critical thinking abilities (Ennis 1962: 90; Facione 1990a: 16; Ennis 1991: 9). There are items testing a person’s ability to judge the credibility of observation reports in the Cornell Critical Thinking Tests, Levels X and Z (Ennis & Millman 1971; Ennis, Millman, & Tomko 1985, 2005). Norris and King (1983, 1985, 1990a, 1990b) is a test of ability to appraise observation reports.

Emotional abilities : The emotions that drive a critical thinking process are perplexity or puzzlement, a wish to resolve it, and satisfaction at achieving the desired resolution. Children experience these emotions at an early age, without being trained to do so. Education that takes critical thinking as a goal needs only to channel these emotions and to make sure not to stifle them. Collaborative critical thinking benefits from ability to recognize one’s own and others’ emotional commitments and reactions.

Questioning abilities : A critical thinking process needs transformation of an inchoate sense of perplexity into a clear question. Formulating a question well requires not building in questionable assumptions, not prejudging the issue, and using language that in context is unambiguous and precise enough (Ennis 1962: 97; 1991: 9).

Imaginative abilities : Thinking directed at finding the correct causal explanation of a general phenomenon or particular event requires an ability to imagine possible explanations. Thinking about what policy or plan of action to adopt requires generation of options and consideration of possible consequences of each option. Domain knowledge is required for such creative activity, but a general ability to imagine alternatives is helpful and can be nurtured so as to become easier, quicker, more extensive, and deeper (Dewey 1910: 34–39; 1933: 40–47). Facione (1990a) and Halpern (1998) include the ability to imagine alternatives as a critical thinking ability.

Inferential abilities : The ability to draw conclusions from given information, and to recognize with what degree of certainty one’s own or others’ conclusions follow, is universally recognized as a general critical thinking ability. All 11 examples in section 2 of this article include inferences, some from hypotheses or options (as in Transit , Ferryboat and Disorder ), others from something observed (as in Weather and Rash ). None of these inferences is formally valid. Rather, they are licensed by general, sometimes qualified substantive rules of inference (Toulmin 1958) that rest on domain knowledge—that a bus trip takes about the same time in each direction, that the terminal of a wireless telegraph would be located on the highest possible place, that sudden cooling is often followed by rain, that an allergic reaction to a sulfa drug generally shows up soon after one starts taking it. It is a matter of controversy to what extent the specialized ability to deduce conclusions from premisses using formal rules of inference is needed for critical thinking. Dewey (1933) locates logical forms in setting out the products of reflection rather than in the process of reflection. Ennis (1981a), on the other hand, maintains that a liberally-educated person should have the following abilities: to translate natural-language statements into statements using the standard logical operators, to use appropriately the language of necessary and sufficient conditions, to deal with argument forms and arguments containing symbols, to determine whether in virtue of an argument’s form its conclusion follows necessarily from its premisses, to reason with logically complex propositions, and to apply the rules and procedures of deductive logic. Inferential abilities are recognized as critical thinking abilities by Glaser (1941: 6), Facione (1990a: 9), Ennis (1991: 9), Fisher & Scriven (1997: 99, 111), and Halpern (1998: 452). Items testing inferential abilities constitute two of the five subtests of the Watson Glaser Critical Thinking Appraisal (Watson & Glaser 1980a, 1980b, 1994), two of the four sections in the Cornell Critical Thinking Test Level X (Ennis & Millman 1971; Ennis, Millman, & Tomko 1985, 2005), three of the seven sections in the Cornell Critical Thinking Test Level Z (Ennis & Millman 1971; Ennis, Millman, & Tomko 1985, 2005), 11 of the 34 items on Forms A and B of the California Critical Thinking Skills Test (Facione 1990b, 1992), and a high but variable proportion of the 25 selected-response questions in the Collegiate Learning Assessment (Council for Aid to Education 2017).

Experimenting abilities : Knowing how to design and execute an experiment is important not just in scientific research but also in everyday life, as in Rash . Dewey devoted a whole chapter of his How We Think (1910: 145–156; 1933: 190–202) to the superiority of experimentation over observation in advancing knowledge. Experimenting abilities come into play at one remove in appraising reports of scientific studies. Skill in designing and executing experiments includes the acknowledged abilities to appraise evidence (Glaser 1941: 6), to carry out experiments and to apply appropriate statistical inference techniques (Facione 1990a: 9), to judge inductions to an explanatory hypothesis (Ennis 1991: 9), and to recognize the need for an adequately large sample size (Halpern 1998). The Cornell Critical Thinking Test Level Z (Ennis & Millman 1971; Ennis, Millman, & Tomko 1985, 2005) includes four items (out of 52) on experimental design. The Collegiate Learning Assessment (Council for Aid to Education 2017) makes room for appraisal of study design in both its performance task and its selected-response questions.

Consulting abilities : Skill at consulting sources of information comes into play when one seeks information to help resolve a problem, as in Candidate . Ability to find and appraise information includes ability to gather and marshal pertinent information (Glaser 1941: 6), to judge whether a statement made by an alleged authority is acceptable (Ennis 1962: 84), to plan a search for desired information (Facione 1990a: 9), and to judge the credibility of a source (Ennis 1991: 9). Ability to judge the credibility of statements is tested by 24 items (out of 76) in the Cornell Critical Thinking Test Level X (Ennis & Millman 1971; Ennis, Millman, & Tomko 1985, 2005) and by four items (out of 52) in the Cornell Critical Thinking Test Level Z (Ennis & Millman 1971; Ennis, Millman, & Tomko 1985, 2005). The College Learning Assessment’s performance task requires evaluation of whether information in documents is credible or unreliable (Council for Aid to Education 2017).

Argument analysis abilities : The ability to identify and analyze arguments contributes to the process of surveying arguments on an issue in order to form one’s own reasoned judgment, as in Candidate . The ability to detect and analyze arguments is recognized as a critical thinking skill by Facione (1990a: 7–8), Ennis (1991: 9) and Halpern (1998). Five items (out of 34) on the California Critical Thinking Skills Test (Facione 1990b, 1992) test skill at argument analysis. The College Learning Assessment (Council for Aid to Education 2017) incorporates argument analysis in its selected-response tests of critical reading and evaluation and of critiquing an argument.

Judging skills and deciding skills : Skill at judging and deciding is skill at recognizing what judgment or decision the available evidence and argument supports, and with what degree of confidence. It is thus a component of the inferential skills already discussed.

Lists and tests of critical thinking abilities often include two more abilities: identifying assumptions and constructing and evaluating definitions.

In addition to dispositions and abilities, critical thinking needs knowledge: of critical thinking concepts, of critical thinking principles, and of the subject-matter of the thinking.

We can derive a short list of concepts whose understanding contributes to critical thinking from the critical thinking abilities described in the preceding section. Observational abilities require an understanding of the difference between observation and inference. Questioning abilities require an understanding of the concepts of ambiguity and vagueness. Inferential abilities require an understanding of the difference between conclusive and defeasible inference (traditionally, between deduction and induction), as well as of the difference between necessary and sufficient conditions. Experimenting abilities require an understanding of the concepts of hypothesis, null hypothesis, assumption and prediction, as well as of the concept of statistical significance and of its difference from importance. They also require an understanding of the difference between an experiment and an observational study, and in particular of the difference between a randomized controlled trial, a prospective correlational study and a retrospective (case-control) study. Argument analysis abilities require an understanding of the concepts of argument, premiss, assumption, conclusion and counter-consideration. Additional critical thinking concepts are proposed by Bailin et al. (1999b: 293), Fisher & Scriven (1997: 105–106), Black (2012), and Blair (2021).

According to Glaser (1941: 25), ability to think critically requires knowledge of the methods of logical inquiry and reasoning. If we review the list of abilities in the preceding section, however, we can see that some of them can be acquired and exercised merely through practice, possibly guided in an educational setting, followed by feedback. Searching intelligently for a causal explanation of some phenomenon or event requires that one consider a full range of possible causal contributors, but it seems more important that one implements this principle in one’s practice than that one is able to articulate it. What is important is “operational knowledge” of the standards and principles of good thinking (Bailin et al. 1999b: 291–293). But the development of such critical thinking abilities as designing an experiment or constructing an operational definition can benefit from learning their underlying theory. Further, explicit knowledge of quirks of human thinking seems useful as a cautionary guide. Human memory is not just fallible about details, as people learn from their own experiences of misremembering, but is so malleable that a detailed, clear and vivid recollection of an event can be a total fabrication (Loftus 2017). People seek or interpret evidence in ways that are partial to their existing beliefs and expectations, often unconscious of their “confirmation bias” (Nickerson 1998). Not only are people subject to this and other cognitive biases (Kahneman 2011), of which they are typically unaware, but it may be counter-productive for one to make oneself aware of them and try consciously to counteract them or to counteract social biases such as racial or sexual stereotypes (Kenyon & Beaulac 2014). It is helpful to be aware of these facts and of the superior effectiveness of blocking the operation of biases—for example, by making an immediate record of one’s observations, refraining from forming a preliminary explanatory hypothesis, blind refereeing, double-blind randomized trials, and blind grading of students’ work. It is also helpful to be aware of the prevalence of “noise” (unwanted unsystematic variability of judgments), of how to detect noise (through a noise audit), and of how to reduce noise: make accuracy the goal, think statistically, break a process of arriving at a judgment into independent tasks, resist premature intuitions, in a group get independent judgments first, favour comparative judgments and scales (Kahneman, Sibony, & Sunstein 2021). It is helpful as well to be aware of the concept of “bounded rationality” in decision-making and of the related distinction between “satisficing” and optimizing (Simon 1956; Gigerenzer 2001).

Critical thinking about an issue requires substantive knowledge of the domain to which the issue belongs. Critical thinking abilities are not a magic elixir that can be applied to any issue whatever by somebody who has no knowledge of the facts relevant to exploring that issue. For example, the student in Bubbles needed to know that gases do not penetrate solid objects like a glass, that air expands when heated, that the volume of an enclosed gas varies directly with its temperature and inversely with its pressure, and that hot objects will spontaneously cool down to the ambient temperature of their surroundings unless kept hot by insulation or a source of heat. Critical thinkers thus need a rich fund of subject-matter knowledge relevant to the variety of situations they encounter. This fact is recognized in the inclusion among critical thinking dispositions of a concern to become and remain generally well informed.

Experimental educational interventions, with control groups, have shown that education can improve critical thinking skills and dispositions, as measured by standardized tests. For information about these tests, see the Supplement on Assessment .

What educational methods are most effective at developing the dispositions, abilities and knowledge of a critical thinker? In a comprehensive meta-analysis of experimental and quasi-experimental studies of strategies for teaching students to think critically, Abrami et al. (2015) found that dialogue, anchored instruction, and mentoring each increased the effectiveness of the educational intervention, and that they were most effective when combined. They also found that in these studies a combination of separate instruction in critical thinking with subject-matter instruction in which students are encouraged to think critically was more effective than either by itself. However, the difference was not statistically significant; that is, it might have arisen by chance.

Most of these studies lack the longitudinal follow-up required to determine whether the observed differential improvements in critical thinking abilities or dispositions continue over time, for example until high school or college graduation. For details on studies of methods of developing critical thinking skills and dispositions, see the Supplement on Educational Methods .

12. Controversies

Scholars have denied the generalizability of critical thinking abilities across subject domains, have alleged bias in critical thinking theory and pedagogy, and have investigated the relationship of critical thinking to other kinds of thinking.

McPeck (1981) attacked the thinking skills movement of the 1970s, including the critical thinking movement. He argued that there are no general thinking skills, since thinking is always thinking about some subject-matter. It is futile, he claimed, for schools and colleges to teach thinking as if it were a separate subject. Rather, teachers should lead their pupils to become autonomous thinkers by teaching school subjects in a way that brings out their cognitive structure and that encourages and rewards discussion and argument. As some of his critics (e.g., Paul 1985; Siegel 1985) pointed out, McPeck’s central argument needs elaboration, since it has obvious counter-examples in writing and speaking, for which (up to a certain level of complexity) there are teachable general abilities even though they are always about some subject-matter. To make his argument convincing, McPeck needs to explain how thinking differs from writing and speaking in a way that does not permit useful abstraction of its components from the subject-matters with which it deals. He has not done so. Nevertheless, his position that the dispositions and abilities of a critical thinker are best developed in the context of subject-matter instruction is shared by many theorists of critical thinking, including Dewey (1910, 1933), Glaser (1941), Passmore (1980), Weinstein (1990), Bailin et al. (1999b), and Willingham (2019).

McPeck’s challenge prompted reflection on the extent to which critical thinking is subject-specific. McPeck argued for a strong subject-specificity thesis, according to which it is a conceptual truth that all critical thinking abilities are specific to a subject. (He did not however extend his subject-specificity thesis to critical thinking dispositions. In particular, he took the disposition to suspend judgment in situations of cognitive dissonance to be a general disposition.) Conceptual subject-specificity is subject to obvious counter-examples, such as the general ability to recognize confusion of necessary and sufficient conditions. A more modest thesis, also endorsed by McPeck, is epistemological subject-specificity, according to which the norms of good thinking vary from one field to another. Epistemological subject-specificity clearly holds to a certain extent; for example, the principles in accordance with which one solves a differential equation are quite different from the principles in accordance with which one determines whether a painting is a genuine Picasso. But the thesis suffers, as Ennis (1989) points out, from vagueness of the concept of a field or subject and from the obvious existence of inter-field principles, however broadly the concept of a field is construed. For example, the principles of hypothetico-deductive reasoning hold for all the varied fields in which such reasoning occurs. A third kind of subject-specificity is empirical subject-specificity, according to which as a matter of empirically observable fact a person with the abilities and dispositions of a critical thinker in one area of investigation will not necessarily have them in another area of investigation.

The thesis of empirical subject-specificity raises the general problem of transfer. If critical thinking abilities and dispositions have to be developed independently in each school subject, how are they of any use in dealing with the problems of everyday life and the political and social issues of contemporary society, most of which do not fit into the framework of a traditional school subject? Proponents of empirical subject-specificity tend to argue that transfer is more likely to occur if there is critical thinking instruction in a variety of domains, with explicit attention to dispositions and abilities that cut across domains. But evidence for this claim is scanty. There is a need for well-designed empirical studies that investigate the conditions that make transfer more likely.

It is common ground in debates about the generality or subject-specificity of critical thinking dispositions and abilities that critical thinking about any topic requires background knowledge about the topic. For example, the most sophisticated understanding of the principles of hypothetico-deductive reasoning is of no help unless accompanied by some knowledge of what might be plausible explanations of some phenomenon under investigation.

Critics have objected to bias in the theory, pedagogy and practice of critical thinking. Commentators (e.g., Alston 1995; Ennis 1998) have noted that anyone who takes a position has a bias in the neutral sense of being inclined in one direction rather than others. The critics, however, are objecting to bias in the pejorative sense of an unjustified favoring of certain ways of knowing over others, frequently alleging that the unjustly favoured ways are those of a dominant sex or culture (Bailin 1995). These ways favour:

• reinforcement of egocentric and sociocentric biases over dialectical engagement with opposing world-views (Paul 1981, 1984; Warren 1998)
• distancing from the object of inquiry over closeness to it (Martin 1992; Thayer-Bacon 1992)
• indifference to the situation of others over care for them (Martin 1992)
• orientation to thought over orientation to action (Martin 1992)
• being reasonable over caring to understand people’s ideas (Thayer-Bacon 1993)
• being neutral and objective over being embodied and situated (Thayer-Bacon 1995a)
• doubting over believing (Thayer-Bacon 1995b)
• reason over emotion, imagination and intuition (Thayer-Bacon 2000)
• solitary thinking over collaborative thinking (Thayer-Bacon 2000)
• written and spoken assignments over other forms of expression (Alston 2001)
• attention to written and spoken communications over attention to human problems (Alston 2001)
• winning debates in the public sphere over making and understanding meaning (Alston 2001)

A common thread in this smorgasbord of accusations is dissatisfaction with focusing on the logical analysis and evaluation of reasoning and arguments. While these authors acknowledge that such analysis and evaluation is part of critical thinking and should be part of its conceptualization and pedagogy, they insist that it is only a part. Paul (1981), for example, bemoans the tendency of atomistic teaching of methods of analyzing and evaluating arguments to turn students into more able sophists, adept at finding fault with positions and arguments with which they disagree but even more entrenched in the egocentric and sociocentric biases with which they began. Martin (1992) and Thayer-Bacon (1992) cite with approval the self-reported intimacy with their subject-matter of leading researchers in biology and medicine, an intimacy that conflicts with the distancing allegedly recommended in standard conceptions and pedagogy of critical thinking. Thayer-Bacon (2000) contrasts the embodied and socially embedded learning of her elementary school students in a Montessori school, who used their imagination, intuition and emotions as well as their reason, with conceptions of critical thinking as

thinking that is used to critique arguments, offer justifications, and make judgments about what are the good reasons, or the right answers. (Thayer-Bacon 2000: 127–128)

Alston (2001) reports that her students in a women’s studies class were able to see the flaws in the Cinderella myth that pervades much romantic fiction but in their own romantic relationships still acted as if all failures were the woman’s fault and still accepted the notions of love at first sight and living happily ever after. Students, she writes, should

be able to connect their intellectual critique to a more affective, somatic, and ethical account of making risky choices that have sexist, racist, classist, familial, sexual, or other consequences for themselves and those both near and far… critical thinking that reads arguments, texts, or practices merely on the surface without connections to feeling/desiring/doing or action lacks an ethical depth that should infuse the difference between mere cognitive activity and something we want to call critical thinking. (Alston 2001: 34)

Some critics portray such biases as unfair to women. Thayer-Bacon (1992), for example, has charged modern critical thinking theory with being sexist, on the ground that it separates the self from the object and causes one to lose touch with one’s inner voice, and thus stigmatizes women, who (she asserts) link self to object and listen to their inner voice. Her charge does not imply that women as a group are on average less able than men to analyze and evaluate arguments. Facione (1990c) found no difference by sex in performance on his California Critical Thinking Skills Test. Kuhn (1991: 280–281) found no difference by sex in either the disposition or the competence to engage in argumentative thinking.

The critics propose a variety of remedies for the biases that they allege. In general, they do not propose to eliminate or downplay critical thinking as an educational goal. Rather, they propose to conceptualize critical thinking differently and to change its pedagogy accordingly. Their pedagogical proposals arise logically from their objections. They can be summarized as follows:

• Focus on argument networks with dialectical exchanges reflecting contesting points of view rather than on atomic arguments, so as to develop “strong sense” critical thinking that transcends egocentric and sociocentric biases (Paul 1981, 1984).
• Foster closeness to the subject-matter and feeling connected to others in order to inform a humane democracy (Martin 1992).
• Develop “constructive thinking” as a social activity in a community of physically embodied and socially embedded inquirers with personal voices who value not only reason but also imagination, intuition and emotion (Thayer-Bacon 2000).
• In developing critical thinking in school subjects, treat as important neither skills nor dispositions but opening worlds of meaning (Alston 2001).
• Attend to the development of critical thinking dispositions as well as skills, and adopt the “critical pedagogy” practised and advocated by Freire (1968 [1970]) and hooks (1994) (Dalgleish, Girard, & Davies 2017).

A common thread in these proposals is treatment of critical thinking as a social, interactive, personally engaged activity like that of a quilting bee or a barn-raising (Thayer-Bacon 2000) rather than as an individual, solitary, distanced activity symbolized by Rodin’s The Thinker . One can get a vivid description of education with the former type of goal from the writings of bell hooks (1994, 2010). Critical thinking for her is open-minded dialectical exchange across opposing standpoints and from multiple perspectives, a conception similar to Paul’s “strong sense” critical thinking (Paul 1981). She abandons the structure of domination in the traditional classroom. In an introductory course on black women writers, for example, she assigns students to write an autobiographical paragraph about an early racial memory, then to read it aloud as the others listen, thus affirming the uniqueness and value of each voice and creating a communal awareness of the diversity of the group’s experiences (hooks 1994: 84). Her “engaged pedagogy” is thus similar to the “freedom under guidance” implemented in John Dewey’s Laboratory School of Chicago in the late 1890s and early 1900s. It incorporates the dialogue, anchored instruction, and mentoring that Abrami (2015) found to be most effective in improving critical thinking skills and dispositions.

What is the relationship of critical thinking to problem solving, decision-making, higher-order thinking, creative thinking, and other recognized types of thinking? One’s answer to this question obviously depends on how one defines the terms used in the question. If critical thinking is conceived broadly to cover any careful thinking about any topic for any purpose, then problem solving and decision making will be kinds of critical thinking, if they are done carefully. Historically, ‘critical thinking’ and ‘problem solving’ were two names for the same thing. If critical thinking is conceived more narrowly as consisting solely of appraisal of intellectual products, then it will be disjoint with problem solving and decision making, which are constructive.

Bloom’s taxonomy of educational objectives used the phrase “intellectual abilities and skills” for what had been labeled “critical thinking” by some, “reflective thinking” by Dewey and others, and “problem solving” by still others (Bloom et al. 1956: 38). Thus, the so-called “higher-order thinking skills” at the taxonomy’s top levels of analysis, synthesis and evaluation are just critical thinking skills, although they do not come with general criteria for their assessment (Ennis 1981b). The revised version of Bloom’s taxonomy (Anderson et al. 2001) likewise treats critical thinking as cutting across those types of cognitive process that involve more than remembering (Anderson et al. 2001: 269–270). For details, see the Supplement on History .

As to creative thinking, it overlaps with critical thinking (Bailin 1987, 1988). Thinking about the explanation of some phenomenon or event, as in Ferryboat , requires creative imagination in constructing plausible explanatory hypotheses. Likewise, thinking about a policy question, as in Candidate , requires creativity in coming up with options. Conversely, creativity in any field needs to be balanced by critical appraisal of the draft painting or novel or mathematical theory.

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How to cite this entry . Preview the PDF version of this entry at the Friends of the SEP Society . Look up topics and thinkers related to this entry at the Internet Philosophy Ontology Project (InPhO). Enhanced bibliography for this entry at PhilPapers , with links to its database.

• Association for Informal Logic and Critical Thinking (AILACT)
• Critical Thinking Across the European Higher Education Curricula (CRITHINKEDU)
• Critical Thinking Definition, Instruction, and Assessment: A Rigorous Approach
• Critical Thinking Research (RAIL)
• Foundation for Critical Thinking
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• Partnership for 21st Century Learning (P21)
• The Critical Thinking Consortium
• The Nature of Critical Thinking: An Outline of Critical Thinking Dispositions and Abilities , by Robert H. Ennis

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Critical Thinking Assessment: 4 Ways to Test Applicants

In the current age of information overload, critical thinking (CT) is a vital skill to sift fact from fiction. Fake news, scams, and disinformation can have a negative impact on individuals as well as businesses. Ultimately, those with finer CT skills can help to lead their team with logical thinking, evidence-based motivation, and smarter decisions.

Today, most roles require critical thinking skills. And understanding how to test and evaluate critical thinking skills can not only help to differentiate candidates but may even predict job performance .

This article will cover:

What is critical thinking?

• Critical thinking vs problem-solving
• 5 critical thinking sub-skills
• The importance of assessing critical thinking skills
• 4 ways to leverage critical thinking assessments

Critical thinking is the process of analyzing and evaluating information in a logical way. And though a valuable skill since as far back as the early philosophers’ era, it is just as vital today. For candidates to succeed in the digital economy , they need modern thinking skills that help them think critically.

Whether we realize it or not, we process tons of data and information on a daily basis. Everything from social media to online news, data from apps like Strava – and that’s on top of all the key metrics in relation to our professional role.

Without a shadow of a doubt, correctly interpreting information — and recognizing disinformation — is an essential skill in today’s workplace and everyday life. And that’s also why teaching critical thinking skills in education is so important to prepare the next generation for the challenges they will face in the modern workplace.

Critical thinking isn’t about being constantly negative or critical of everything. It’s about objectivity and having an open, inquisitive mind. To think critically is to analyze issues based on hard evidence (as opposed to personal opinions, biases, etc.) in order to build a thorough understanding of what’s really going on. And from this place of thorough understanding, you can make better decisions and solve problems more effectively. Bernard Marr | Source

Today, candidates with CT skills think and reason independently, question data, and use their findings to contribute actively to their team rather than passively taking in or accepting information as fact.

Why are critical thinking skills important?

In the workplace, those with strong CT skills no longer rely on their gut or instinct for their decisions. They’re able to problem-solve more effectively by analyzing situations systematically.

With these skills, they think objectively about information and other points of view and look for evidence to support their findings rather than simply accepting opinions or conclusions as facts.

When employees can turn critical thinking into a habit, it ultimately reduces personal bias and helps them be more open to their teammates’ suggestions — improving how teams collaborate and collectively solve problems.

Critical thinking vs. Problem solving – what’s the difference?

Let’s explore the difference between these two similar concepts in more detail.

Critical thinking is about processing and analyzing information to reach an objective, evidence-based conclusion. Let’s take a look at an example of critical thinking in action:

• A member of the team suggests using a new app they’ve heard about to automate and speed up candidate screening . Some like the idea, but others in the team share reasons why they don’t support the idea. So you visit the software website and look at the key features and benefits yourself, then you might look for reviews about it and ask your HR counterparts what they think of it. The reviews look promising, and a few of your fellow practitioners say it’s worked well for them. Next, you look into the costs compared to the solution your team is already using and calculate that the return on investment (ROI) is good. You arrive at the conclusion that it’d be worth testing the platform with the free trial version and recommend this to your team.

On the other hand, problem solving can involve many of the same skills as critical thinking, such as observing and evaluating. Still, it focuses on identifying business obstacles and coming up with solutions. So, let’s return to the example of the candidate screening software and see how it might work differently in the context of problem-solving :

• For weeks, the talent acquisition team has complained about how long it takes to screen candidates manually. One of the team members decides to look for a solution to their problem. They assess the team’s current processes and resources and how to best solve the issues. In their research, they discover the new candidate screening platform and test out its functionality for a few days. They feel it would benefit the team and suggest it at the next meeting. Great problem solving, HR leader!

What are the 5 sub-skills that make up critical thinking?

Now that we’ve established what CT is, let’s break it down into the 5 core sub-skills that make up a critical thinking mindset .

• Observation : Being observant of your environment is the first step to thinking critically. Observant employees can even identify a potential problem before it becomes a problem.
• Analysis : Once you’ve observed the issue or problem, you can begin to analyze its parts. It’s about asking questions, researching, and evaluating the findings objectively. This is an essential skill, especially for someone in a management role.
• Inference : Also known as construct validity, is about drawing a conclusion from limited information. To do this effectively may require in-depth knowledge of a field. Candidates with this skill can contribute a lot of value to a startup, for instance, where initially, there may be little data available for information processing.
• Communication : This pertains to expressing ideas and your reasoning clearly and persuasively, as well as actively listening to colleagues’ suggestions or viewpoints. When all members of a team or department can communicate and consider different perspectives, it helps tasks (and, well, everything) move along swiftly and smoothly.
• Problem solving : Once you begin implementing a chosen solution, you may still encounter teething problems. At that point, problem solving skills will help you decide on the best solution and how to overcome the obstacles to bring you closer to your goal.

What is a critical thinking assessment test?

Though there are a few different ways to assess critical thinking, such as the Collegiate Learning Assessment, one of the most well-known tests is the Watson Glaser™ Critical Thinking Appraisal .

Critical thinking tests, or critical reasoning tests, are psychometric tests used in recruitment at all levels, graduate, professional and managerial, but predominantly in the legal sector. However, it is not uncommon to find companies in other sectors using critical thinking tests as part of their selection process. This is an intense test, focusing primarily on your analytical, or critical thinking, skills. Source

These tests are usually timed and typically include multiple choice items, short answers or short scenario-based questions to assess students or prospective candidates. They test candidates’ ability to interpret data without bias, find logical links between information, and separate facts from false data .

But how do these tests measure critical thinking?

In addition to educational and psychological testing, many employers today use critical thinking tests to assess a person’s ability to question information — to ask What , Why , and How of the data. A standard critical thinking test breaks down this aptitude by examining the following 5 components:

• assumption – analyzing a scenario to determine if there are any assumptions made
• deduction – the ability to choose which deductions are logical
• evaluating evidence – in support of and against something
• inference – conclusions, drawn from observed facts
• interpretation – interpreting the accuracy of a stated conclusion (based on a scenario)

Why is it important to assess critical thinking skills during the recruitment process?

Critical thinking skills may be considered a soft skill , but it’s become a prerequisite in certain industries, like software, and for many roles. Marketing managers, project managers, accountants, and healthcare professionals, for example, all require a degree of CT skills to perform their roles.

The kinds of businesses that require critical thinking include technology , engineering , healthcare , the legal sector , scientific research, and education . These industries are typically very technical and rely on data . People working in these fields research and use data to draw logical conclusions that help them work smarter and more efficiently.

In the hiring process, test takers with good critical thinking skills stand out . Why? Because they are able to demonstrate their ability to collaborate, problem-solve, and manage pressure in a rational, logical manner. As a result, they’re more likely to make the right business decisions that boost efficiency and, ultimately, a business’s bottom line.

Examples of jobs that rely on critical thinking skills

Critical thinking is not rocket science, but it is an important skill when making decisions — especially when the correct answer is not obvious. Here are a few examples of job roles that rely on critical thinking dispositions:

• computer programmers or developers : may use critical thinking and other advanced skills in a variety of ways, from debugging code to analyzing the problem, finding potential causes, and coming up with suitable solutions. They also use CT when there is no clear roadmap to rely on, such as when building a new app or feature.
• criminologists : must have critical thinking abilities to observe criminal behavior objectively and to analyze the problem in such a way that they can be confident in the conclusions they present to the authorities.
• medical professionals : need to diagnose their patients’ condition through observation, communication, analysis and solving complex problems to decide on the best treatment.
• air traffic controllers: need a super clear, calm head to deal with their high-stress job. They observe traffic, communicate with pilots, and constantly problem-solve to avoid airplane collisions.
• legal professionals : use logic and reasoning to analyze various cases – even before deciding whether they’ll take on a case – and then use their excellent communication skills to sway people over to their reasoning in a trial setting.
• project managers : have to deal with a lot of moving parts at the same time. To successfully keep projects on time and budget, they continually observe and analyze the progress of project components, communicate continually with the team and external stakeholders and work to solve any problems that crop up.

What are the risks of not testing for critical thinking?

By not evaluating critical thinking beforehand, you may end up hiring candidates with poor CT skills. Especially when hiring business leaders and for key positions, this has the potential to wreak havoc on a business. Their inaccurate assumptions are more likely to lead to bad decisions , which could cost the company money .

Weak critical thinking can result in a number of issues for your organization and justifies the expense or added effort of asking your candidate to complete critical thinking tests in the hiring process. For example, poor CT skills may result in:

• making mistakes
• not being able to take action when needed
• working off false assumptions
• unnecessary strain on work relationships

4 ways to assess critical thinking skills in candidates

Now that we’ve seen how important it is for most candidates today to have strong critical thinking skills, let’s take a look at some of the assessment instruments the talent acquisition team can use.

#1 – A homework assignment

A homework assignment is a task that assesses whether test takers have the right skills for a role. If critical thinking is essential for a particular job, you could provide candidates with a homework assignment that specifically tests their ability to:

• accurately interpret relevant evidence
• reach logical conclusions
• judge information skeptically
• communicate their own viewpoint and others’ backed by facts

Tip : use Toggl Hire’s skills screening tests to easily filter out the good candidates first and speed up your hiring process.

#2 – Behavioral and situational interview questions

Ask the candidate to provide examples of situations when they used CT for solving problems or making a decision. This can provide insight into the candidate’s ability to analyze information and make informed decisions. For example:

Critical thinking example questions:

• Tell me about a time when you had to make a really difficult decision at work.
• What would you do in a situation where your manager made a mistake in a presentation or report?
• How would you respond if a colleague shared a new idea or solution with you?
• How do you evaluate the potential outcomes of different actions or decisions?
• Can you describe a situation where you had to think on your feet and come up with a creative solution to a problem?
• How do you ensure that your decision-making is based on relevant and accurate information?

#3 – Discuss the candidate’s critical thinking skills with their references

Additionally, the hiring manager can ask the candidate’s references about how the candidate demonstrated CT skills in the past.

• Can you recall a time when (the candidate) had to convince you to choose an alternative solution to a problem?
• Tell me about a time when (the candidate) had to solve a team disagreement regarding a project.

#4 – Critical thinking tests

Ask the candidate to complete a critical thinking test and score against critical thinking rubrics. You can then share feedback on their test scores with them and explore their willingness to improve their score, if necessary. Or compare their score to other applicants, and prioritize those with higher scores if the role truly requires a critical thinker.

Create your next critical thinking assessment with Toggl Hire

Assessing critical thinking skills is becoming a key component in the hiring process, especially for roles that require a particularly advanced skillset. Critical thinking is a sign of future performance. Candidates that clearly demonstrate these skills have a lot to offer companies, from better decision-making to more productive relationships and cost savings.

If your team needs help automating the screening process, and creating custom skills tests based on specific roles, try Toggl Hire’s skills test questions engine or the Custom Test Builder to create the exact questions you want from scratch.

Juste loves investigating through writing. A copywriter by trade, she spent the last ten years in startups, telling stories and building marketing teams. She works at Toggl Hire and writes about how businesses can recruit really great people.

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Critical Thinking test

By 123test team . Updated May 12, 2023

Critical Thinking test reviews

This Critical Thinking test measures your ability to think critically and draw logical conclusions based on written information. Critical Thinking tests are often used in job assessments in the legal sector to assess a candidate's  analytical critical  thinking skills. A well known example of a critical thinking test is the Watson-Glaser Critical Thinking Appraisal .

Need more practice?

Score higher on your critical thinking test.

The test comprises of the following five sections with a total of 10 questions:

• Analysing Arguments
• Assumptions
• Interpreting Information

Instructions Critical Thinking test

Each question presents one or more paragraphs of text and a question about the information in the text. It's your job to figure out which of the options is the correct answer.

Below is a statement that is followed by an argument. You should consider this argument to be true. It is then up to you to determine whether the argument is strong or weak. Do not let your personal opinion about the statement play a role in your evaluation of the argument.

Statement: It would be good if people would eat vegetarian more often. Argument: No, because dairy also requires animals to be kept that will have to be eaten again later.

Is this a strong or weak argument?

Strong argument Weak argument

Statement: Germany should no longer use the euro as its currency Argument: No, because that means that the 10 billion Deutschmark that the introduction of the euro has cost is money thrown away.

Overfishing is the phenomenon that too much fish is caught in a certain area, which leads to the disappearance of the fish species in that area. This trend can only be reversed by means of catch reduction measures. These must therefore be introduced and enforced.

Assumption: The disappearance of fish species in areas of the oceans is undesirable.

Is the assumption made from the text?

Assumption is made Assumption is not made

As a company, we strive for satisfied customers. That's why from now on we're going to keep track of how quickly our help desk employees pick up the phone. Our goal is for that phone to ring for a maximum of 20 seconds.

Assumption: The company has tools or ways to measure how quickly help desk employees pick up the phone.

• All reptiles lay eggs
• All reptiles are vertebrates
• All snakes are reptiles
• All vertebrates have brains
• Some reptiles hatch their eggs themselves
• Most reptiles have two lungs
• Many snakes only have one lung
• Cobras are poisonous snakes
• All reptiles are animals

Conclusion: Some snakes hatch their eggs themselves.

Does the conclusion follow the statements?

Conclusion follows Conclusion does not follow

(Continue with the statements from question 5.)

Conclusion: Some animals that lay eggs only have one lung.

In the famous 1971 Stanford experiment, 24 normal, healthy male students were randomly assigned as 'guards' (12) or 'prisoners' (12). The guards were given a uniform and instructed to keep order, but not to use force. The prisoners were given prison uniforms. Soon after the start of the experiment, the guards made up all kinds of sentences for the prisoners. Insurgents were shot down with a fire extinguisher and public undressing or solitary confinement was also a punishment. The aggression of the guards became stronger as the experiment progressed. At one point, the abuses took place at night, because the guards thought that the researchers were not watching. It turned out that some guards also had fun treating the prisoners very cruelly. For example, prisoners got a bag over their heads and were chained to their ankles. Originally, the experiment would last 14 days. However, after six days the experiment was stopped.

The students who took part in the research did not expect to react the way they did in such a situation.

To what extent is this conclusion true, based on the given text?

True Probably true More information required Probably false False

(Continue with the text from 'Stanford experiment' in question 7.)

The results of the experiment support the claim that every young man (or at least some young men) is capable of turning into a sadist fairly quickly.

• A flag is a tribute to the nation and should therefore not be hung outside at night. Hoisting the flag therefore happens at sunrise, bringing it down at sunset. Only when a country flag is illuminated by spotlights on both sides, it may remain hanging after sunset. There is a simple rule of thumb for the time of bringing down the flag. This is the moment when there is no longer any visible difference between the individual colors of the flag.
• A flag may not touch the ground.
• On the Dutch flag, unless entitled to do so, no decorations or other additions should be made. Also the use of a flag purely for decoration should be avoided. However, flag cloth may be used for decoration - for example in the form of drapes.
• The orange pennant is only used on birthdays of members of the Royal House and on King's Day. The orange pennant should be as long or slightly longer than the diagonal of the flag.

Conclusion: One can assume that no Dutch flag will fly at government buildings at night, unless it is illuminated by spotlights on both sides.

Does the conclusion follow, based on the given text?

(Continue with the text from 'Dutch flag protocol' in question 9.)

Conclusion: If the protocol is followed, the orange pennant will always be longer than the horizontal bands/stripes of the flag.

Please answer the questions below. Not all questions are required but it will help us improve this test.

My educational level is

-- please select -- primary school high school college university PhD other

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• How it Works

Critical Thinking Test: Sample Questions with Explanations (2024)

Employers value and seek candidates who demonstrate advanced critical thinking skills. They often administer critical thinking tests as part of their hiring process. Critical thinking tests can be very difficult for those who don’t prepare. A great way to start practicing is by taking our critical thinking free practice test.

What Does The Critical Thinking Test Include?

The Critical Thinking Test assesses your capacity to think critically and form logical conclusions when given written information. Critical thinking tests are generally used in job recruitment processes, in the legal sector. These tests measure the analytical critical thinking abilities of a candidate.

Why Is Critical Thinking Useful?

Critical thinking is put into action in various stages of decision-making and problem-solving tasks:

• Identify the problem
• Choose suitable information to find the solution
• Identify the assumptions that are implied and written in the text
• Form hypotheses and choose the most suitable and credible answers
• Form well-founded conclusions and determine the soundness of inferences

What is Watson Glaser Test and what Critical Thinking Skills it Measures?

The most common type of critical thinking test is the Watson-Glaser Critical Thinking Appraisal (W-GCTA). Typically used by legal and financial organizations, as well as management businesses, a Watson Glaser test is created to assess candidates’ critical thinking skills.

The test consists of 10 questions to be answered in 10 minutes approx (although there is no timer on the test itself). Our test is slightly harder than the real thing, to make it sufficiently challenging practice.

You need to get 70% correct to pass the test. Don’t forget to first check out the test techniques section further down this page beforehand.

Questions          25

Pass percentage          70%.

The test is broken down into five central areas:

• Assumptions
• Interpretation

Critical Thinking Course

• 1 BONUS Interview Prep Video Guide Buy this Course: Get full access to all lessons, practice tests and guides.

The Five Critical Thinking Skills Explained

1. recognition of assumption.

You’ll be presented with a statement. The statement is then followed by several proposed assumptions. When answering, you must work out if an assumption was made or if an assumption was not made in the statement. An assumption is a proclamation that an individual takes for granted. This section of the tests measures your ability to withhold from forming assumptions about things that are not necessarily correct.

• 1: Assumption Made
• 2: Assumption Not Made

Although the passage does state that Charlie’s fundraising team is doing its best so that the charity event can meet its goal, nowhere did it state that their team is leading the event.

2. Evaluation of Arguments

You will be presented with an argument. You will then be asked to decide whether the argument is strong or weak. An argument is considered strong if it directly connects to the statement provided, and is believed to be significant.

No, participation awards should not be given in every competition because studies have shown that this would cause the participants to put in less effort because they will get a prize no matter what the outcome is.

• 1: Strong Argument
• 2: Weak Argument

This is a strong argument as it provides evidence as to why participation awards should not be given in every competition

3. Deductions

In deduction questions, you will need to form conclusions based solely on the information provided in the question and not based on your knowledge. You will be given a small passage of information and you will need to evaluate a list of deductions made based on that passage. If the conclusion cannot be formed for the information provided, then the conclusion does not follow. The answer must be entirely founded on the statements made and not on conclusions drawn from your knowledge.

In a surprise party for Donna, Edna arrived after Felix and Gary did. Kelly arrived before Felix and Gary did.

• 1: Conclusion Follows
• 2: Conclusion Does not Follow

For questions like this, jot down the clues to help you out. Use initials as a quick reference.

K | F&G | E

Looking at the simple diagram, “K”, which stands for “Kelly,” arrived before Edna “E” did. The answer is A.

4. Interpretation

In these questions, you are given a passage of information followed by a list of possible conclusions. You will need to interpret the information in the paragraph and determine whether or not each conclusion follows, based solely on the information given.

A number of students were given the following advice:

“The use of powerful words is a technique, which makes you a better writer. Your choice of words is very important in molding the way people interaction with the article. You should use powerful words to spice up your article. Power words should be used liberally to enhance the flavor of what you write! ”

In the fourth sentence, it is stated, “Power words should be used liberally to enhance the flavor of what you write!”

Thus, if you were to write an essay, using powerful words can give more flavor to it.

5. Inferences

An inference is a conclusion made from observed or supposed facts and details. It is information that is not apparent in the information provided but rather is extracted from it. In this section, you will be provided with a passage of information about a specific scene or event. A list of possible inferences will then be given, and you will need to decide if they are ‘true’, ‘false’, ‘possibly true’, ‘possibly false’, or whether it is not possible to say based on the information provided.

With the advancement of technology, the need for more infrastructure has never been higher. According to the plan of the current U.S. Administration, it aims to put a $1 trillion investment on improving infrastructure, a portion of which will include priority projects and technologies that can strengthen its economic competitiveness such as transportation, 5G wireless communication technology, rural broadband technologies, advanced manufacturing technologies, and even artificial intelligence.

It stated that it expects to work with Congress to develop a comprehensive infrastructure package, which is expected to have a budget of $200 billion for certain priorities.

• 2: Probably True
• 3: Not Enough Information
• 4: Probably False

Although it was mentioned in the passage that the U.S. government is to allocate $200 billion on certain priorities, it did not specify if these certain priorities were for ‘transportation, 5G wireless communication technology, rural broadband technologies, advanced manufacturing technologies, and artificial intelligence’ or if the aforementioned priorities will have a different allocation.

What we can be sure of, however, is that at least a portion of the $1 trillion infrastructure budget will be used on the mentioned priorities regardless, meaning that there is a chance that $200 billion will be used on those aforementioned areas.

Improve Your Score with Prepterminal’s Critical Thinking Course

The Critical Thinking test is difficult, but not impossible to overcome with practice. At PrepTerminal our psychometric test experts have developed a critical thinking preparatory test to provide you with the material you need to practice for your critical thinking test. Prepare with us to increase your chance of successfully overcoming this hurdle in the recruitment process.

Prepterminal’s preparatory critical thinking course features a structured study course along with critical thinking practice tests to help you improve your exam score. Our course includes video and text-based information presented in a clear and easy-to-understand manner so you can follow along at your own pace with ease.

Created by: Matt

Psychometric tutor, prepterminal test expert, 414 students, 4.7 , 73 reviews.