Improving Students' Critical Thinking: Empirical Support for Explicit Instructions Combined with Practice

Abstract

This experiment investigated the impact of different types of critical thinking instruction and dispositions on bias in economics students' (N = 141) reasoning performance. The following conditions were compared: (A) implicit instruction; (B) implicit instruction with practice; (C) implicit instruction with explicit instruction and practice; (D) implicit instruction with explicit instruction, practice, and self-explanation prompts; and (E) implicit instruction with explicit instruction, practice, and activation prompts. Results showed that explicit instruction combined with practice is required to improve critical thinking (i.e., conditions A/ B < C/D/E). Prompting during practice had no added performance benefits. Participants' dispositions toward actively openminded thinking predicted their pre-test and post-test scores but did not interact with instruction condition, suggesting that receiving explicit instruction combined with practice was equally effective for all students.

Effects of Self-Explaining on Learning and Transfer of Critical Thinking Skills

“…Previous research has shown that creating desirable difficulty in instruction by having learners generate explanations of a problem-solution to themselves (i.e., self-explaining) rather than simply answering tasks passively, is effective to foster learning and transfer in several domains (Fiorella and Mayer, 2016). Regarding unbiased reasoning, Heijltjes et al (2014b) demonstrated that self-explaining during practice had a positive effect on transfer of unbiased reasoning, but this effect was shortlived and not replicated in other studies (Heijltjes et al, 2014a(Heijltjes et al, , 2015. However, these findings were based on MC-answers only, and there are indications that effects of self-explaining on transfer may be detected when more sensitive MC-plus-motivation tests are used (Hoogerheide et al, 2014).…”

“…Several studies demonstrated that prompting self-explaining fostered learning and/or transfer of certain aspects of CT-skills, such as argumentation (e.g., Schworm and Renkl, 2007), complex judgments (e.g., Helsdingen et al, 2011), or logical reasoning (e.g., Berry, 1983). Studies on the effect of self-explanation prompts on unbiased reasoning (Heijltjes et al, 2014a(Heijltjes et al, ,b, 2015, however, showed mixed findings. One study found an effect on transfer performance on an immediate posttest (Heijltjes et al, 2014b), but this effect was short-lived (i.e., not retained on a delayed posttest) and not replicated in other studies (Heijltjes et al, 2014a(Heijltjes et al, , 2015.…”

“…Studies on the effect of self-explanation prompts on unbiased reasoning (Heijltjes et al, 2014a(Heijltjes et al, ,b, 2015, however, showed mixed findings. One study found an effect on transfer performance on an immediate posttest (Heijltjes et al, 2014b), but this effect was short-lived (i.e., not retained on a delayed posttest) and not replicated in other studies (Heijltjes et al, 2014a(Heijltjes et al, , 2015. This lack of (prolonged) effects of selfexplaining might have been due to the nature of the final tests, which were multiple-choice (MC) answers only.…”

Translation, adaptation, and validation of the Halpern Critical Thinking Assessment to Portugal: Effect of disciplinary area and academic level on critical thinking

“…In light of our data, CT scores vary according to disciplinary area; yet, it may be necessary to go beyond such label and identify the variables that are truly illustrative of the reasons why students (that happen to be) from different disciplinary areas are unlike in regard to CT. On the one hand, disciplinary differences could be due to a particular emphasis set on skills/dispositions related to CT in the form of learning contexts, classroom characteristics, course content, or pedagogical practices (Badcock et al, 2010;Brint et al, 2012;Mathews & Lowe, 2011). For instance, Heijltjes, Van Gog, and Paas (2014) found that learning CT skills is potentiated by the combination of explicit CT instruction and practice. On the other hand, disciplinary differences could be due to individual characteristics that impact when time comes to enroll in a particular course from a certain disciplinary area (Badcock et al, 2010), seeing that neurocognitive systems, in interaction with life experiences, are responsible for individual differences in CT (Bolger, Mackey, Wang, & Grigorenko, 2014).…”

How to Teach

“…These skills should be explicitly taught and practiced-there is evidence that simple exposure to this sort of work without explicit instruction is less effective (Abrami et al, 2008;Halpern, 1998;Heijltjes, Van Gog, & Paas, 2014). In addition, it is clear that educators will have to pick and choose which skills their students will learn.…”