Improving Critical Thinking Skills Development in a University Classroom

The improvement of critical thinking ability among university students is widely accepted as a goal of higher learning. However, as an objective it frequently remains loosely defined in curriculum, and there is little agreement regarding how best to encourage its development in learners. This dissertation investigated the use of a pedagogy that infused explicit critical thinking learning objectives into subject matter instruction, and utilized formative feedback to encourage learning and metacognition. Two groups were recruited for this study, which was conducted over twelve weeks of a semester. The treatment group received modified assignments that featured infused critical thinking instruction, and the control group was immersed in course content with no explicit critical thinking instruction or feedback. Although there were no significant differences between the two groups in class performance measures, the treatment group displayed significant gains in critical thinking ability that was not seen in the control group. In addition, treatment participants reported changes in metacognition in response to their instruction, despite the metacognitive measures failing to indicate a significant difference from the control. The implications of the findings on future research into this instructional approach were discussed.