Critical thinking is one of the most important skills deemed necessary for college graduates to become effective contributors in the global workforce. The first part of this article provides a comprehensive review of its definitions by major frameworks in higher education and the workforce, existing assessments and their psychometric qualities, and challenges surrounding the design, implementation, and use of critical thinking assessment. In the second part, we offer an operational definition that is aligned with the dimensions of critical thinking identified from the reviewed frameworks and discuss the key assessment considerations when designing a next‐generation critical thinking assessment. This article has important implications for institutions that are currently using, planning to adopt, or designing an assessment of critical thinking.

Though addressing sources of uncertainty is an important part of doing science, it has largely been neglected in assessing students' scientific argumentation. In this study, we initially defined a scientific argumentation construct in four structural elements consisting of claim, justification, uncertainty qualifier, and uncertainty rationale. We consulted literature to characterize and score different levels of student performances on each of these four argumentation elements. We designed a test comprised of nine scientific argumentation tasks addressing climate change, the search for life in space, and fresh water availability and administered it to 473 students from 9 high schools in the United States. After testing the local dependence and unidimensionality assumptions, we found that the uncertainty qualifier element was not aligned with the other three. After removing items related to uncertainty qualifier, we applied a Rasch analysis based on a Partial Credit Model. Results indicate that (1) claim, justification, and uncertainty rationale items form a unidimensional scale, (2) justification and uncertainty rationale items contribute the most on the unidimensional scientific argumentation scale as they cover much wider ranges of the scale than claim items, (3) average item difficulties increase in the order of claim, justification, and uncertainty rationale, (4) students' elaboration of uncertainty exhibits dual characteristics: self‐assessment of their own knowledge and ability versus scientific assessment of conceptual and empirical errors embedded in investigations, and (5) students who can make warrants between theory and evidence are more likely to think about uncertainty from scientific sources than those who cannot. We identified limitations of this study in terms of science topic coverage and sample selection and made suggestions on how these limitations might have affected results and interpretations. © 2014 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J Res Sci Teach 51: 581–605, 2014

Civic learning is increasingly recognized as important by the higher education and workforce communities. The development of high‐quality assessments that can be used to evaluate students' civic learning during the college years has become a priority. This paper presents a comprehensive review of existing frameworks, definitions, and assessments of civic‐related constructs from approximately 30 projects relevant to higher education, and includes a discussion of the challenges related to assessment design and implementation. Synthesizing information from the review, we propose an assessment framework to guide the design of a next‐generation assessment of individuals' civic learning that takes advantage of recent advances in assessment methods. The definition identifies 2 key domains within civic learning: civic competency and civic engagement. Civic competency encompasses 3 areas (civic knowledge; analytic skills; and participatory and involvement skills), and civic engagement also captures 3 areas (motivations, attitudes, and efficacy; democratic norms and values; and participation and activities). We discuss item formats and task types that would ensure fair and reliable scoring for the assessment. The review of definitions of civic learning and its components developed by organizations, the proposed assessment framework, and assessment considerations presented here have potential benefits for a range of higher education institutions. This includes institutions that currently have students engaged in relevant curricular or cocurricular activities and also institutions that would find assessments of civic competency and engagement helpful in program development or in evaluating students' accomplishments.

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