Evidence
As educators who spend hours and hours of time with our students, we can tell when a student does or does not yet have the ability to self assess, make decisions, evaluate arguments, or create and support original arguments. However, the problem lies in proving it.
How do we go about collecting work from students that can stand alone as evidence of their skills in critical thinking?
What Kind of Critical Thinking?
As faculty at the University of West Florida can attest, any measure of critical thinking must begin with a definition of critical thinking (Peach, Mukherjee, & Hornyak, 2007). It isn’t easy; we must, to even begin to define it with clarity, pick a discipline and attempt to use the verbiage of that discipline to create our courses. Critical thinking crosses so many areas, it’s impossible to teach each and every aspect of each and every discipline’s discourse and skills related to critical thinking.
An English teacher may choose to approach critical thinking using the language of rhetoric or argumentation, whereas a business teacher may choose to approach critical thinking in terms of SWOT analysis or business solutions, and math teachers may want to approach critical thinking by presenting word problems that have multiple ways of getting to solutions, and philosophy teachers will probably want to approach critical thinking in terms of ethical decision-making, while sociologists may want to use an exploration and analysis of social issues! None of these are bad approaches, and all of these are excellent approaches, but no one person should ever try to teach all of these approaches in one class.
Creating Goals and Objectives
The second step is to create measurable learning goals and objectives. The difference between a goal and an objective is the scope of the outcome. For example, a goal in a class that emphasizes critical thinking might be for students to, by the end of a course, be able to evaluate and use credible, relevant, and timely evidence to support their own arguments or to defend claims. That’s a tall order, and it’s much too much to try to teach in one lesson or even one unit. It has to be broken down into much more manageable learning objectives, like “Students will find authoritative sources using the library subscription service,” and “Students will evaluate sources based on relevancy to a given issue or question.”
Problems occur when we try to measure BIG GOALS instead of little objectives, or when we try to measure what students know instead of what they do. “Merely having knowledge or information is not enough. To be effective in the workplace (and in their personal lives), students must be able to solve problems to make effective decisions; they must be able to think critically” (Snyder & Snyder, 2008, pg. 90).
Students meet expectations when they are aware of the expectations and see the value or reward in meeting or exceeding those expectations.
Writing Measurable Objectives
That leads to the third thorny issue, and that is how to write objectives that are truly measurable. Foremost, a measurable objective must be an objective and not a goal. The objective must also have some sort of qualifying modifier that can be evaluated. For example, in the learning objective stated above, “Students will find authoritative sources using the library subscription service,” there are two variables that are measured as yes/no. We can answer “yes” or “no” to the questions “Are the sources authoritative?” and “Are the sources from the library databases?” But what if some of the sources are authoritative and others are not? And how can we tell, in a final document (like a references page or annotated bibliography) whether or not the student actually used the library subscription services? Thorny.
The answer is to pair the objectives with clearly stated assignment expectations or requirements and a detailed rubric.
Requirements
Don’t give up on “Students will find authoritative sources using the library subscription service” as a measurable objective too soon. Pairing that objective with a specific set of assignment requirements and a rubric may be all you need to start proving students’ abilities to think critically.
Finding Authoritative Sources
The first modifier to assess in the learning objective is “authoritative.” We can generally look at either a References page or an annotated bibliography to determine whether or not the students’ sources are authoritative. However, the annotated bibliography offers an opportunity a References page does not: the opportunity for the student to take notes about the evaluation of an author’s or publication’s authority. Not only can we see whether or not the sources are authoritative, but we can see the students’ thought processes about the level of authority.
Using the Subscription Services
The two options I’ve already mentioned as documentation of this skill are the references page for a paper or an annotated bibliography. A References page will not allow us to tell if a student has or has not used the subscription databases to find sources. However, an annotated bibliography doesn’t have the strict formatting requirements a References page has, and we can require students to add information about a specifically used database to each source listed with their annotations.
With those two considerations in mind, we can see it’s more effective to ask for an annotated bibliography that requires students to add notes about the authority of a source and about the library database that was used to find each source.
Rubrics
The rubric for the specific assignment, then, must match the given requirements and help the teacher assess student skills on a continuum. The rubric can include all assignment requirements, or the rubric could simply be a tool used to evaluate the measurable objective.
A simple rubric for our example objective will need to have two line items based on our two modifiers.
The highest score a student can achieve on the rubric is an 8 (or an A), and the lowest is a 2 (or an F). A student would receive a 0 if an assignment is not completed. This rubric could then be used to give the students grades, or is could be used as an assessment document that is not linked to student grades. In that instance, the teacher grades the assignment as any other assignment, then uses the additional assessment rubric to look closely at whether or not the lesson about using the subscription services to find authoritative sources was, statistically or individually, successful. We can then use what we learn about our students’ learning to re-teach or rewrite curriculum. For, in the wise words of Marc Chun, “It is an empty exercise to assess student learning without providing a means to adjust teaching in response to deficiencies revealed through the information gleaned from that assessment” (2010, pg. 23).
Creating an Assessment System
Over time, an entire system of assessment, in which the same skills are measured in a variety of courses, can be built. Faculty and institutions can then look at the abilities of students over time, giving them a better understanding of a program or individual skills as a whole. For example, the annotated bibliography can be collected from any courses that require a research paper, including courses from a variety of disciplines. In that instance, the rubric might become more complicated, as the authority of sources will be gauged in relation to the issue or question the student is investigating.
Furthermore, standardized critical thinking exams can be used to test students entering and exiting a program or institution to also show where learning takes place (or does not take place) within the student body over time. An individual teacher can use assessment to change how learning takes place in a classroom, but it takes a bigger sample for an entire institution to change how learning takes place in a program, department, school, or institution.
Summary
Although is can be a challenge to assess students’ abilities to think critically, it can be tackled if we, as educators, spend time planning effective assessment projects. We must define critical thinking based on disciplinary skill sets, distinguish between goals and objectives, write measurable objectives, and link those measurements to lessons, student work, and rubrics.
References
Chun, M. (2010). Taking Teaching to (Performance) Task: Linking Pedagogical and Assessment Practices. Change, 42(2), 22-29.
Peach, B. E., Mukherjee, A., & Hornyak, M. (2007). Assessing Critical Thinking: A College’s Journey and Lessons Learned. Journal Of Education For Business, 82(6), 313-320.
Snyder, L., & Snyder, M. J. (2008). Teaching Critical Thinking and Problem Solving Skills. Delta Pi Epsilon Journal, 50(2), 90-99.
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