Critical Thinking Assessment of College Students

Abstract

This paper presents a framework for the assessment of critical thinking in college students. Unfortunately, due to the complex nature of critical thinking and the lack of a consensus definition, no single assessment instrument completely captures critical thinking ability. As a result, we propose a multi-method approach focused on the assessment of three major components of critical thinking—knowledge, thinking skills, and attitudes. Each of these components is a fundamental ingredient of critical thinking, and each requires its own assessment. Knowledge is discipline specific and will require a customized assessment tool However, our experience with three assessment tools shows the Reflective Thinking Appraisal (Wood, 1994) is useful for assessing thinking skills, and the California Critical Thinking Dispositions Inventory ([CCTDI] Facione, Facione, & Sanchez, 1994) is useful for assessing attitudes. We also examined the Learning Environment Preferences Survey (Moore, 1988), but it does not seem to be as robust as the CCTDI in assessing attitudes. This multidimensional assessment framework is a viable solution to the problem of using a single instrument to assess critical thinking in college students.