To What Extent Does Higher Education Foster Growth in Students' Evidence-Based Thinking?

• In Event: 66.027 - Ask for Evidence: Identifying, Preventing, and Counteracting Scientific and Educational Myths

Abstract

The goal of higher education is not only to increase students’ knowledge, but also to increase their fundamental critical thinking and problem-solving skills (e.g., AAC&U, 2008). This is especially true in psychology in the United States, where the American Psychological Association (APA) has articulated Scientific Inquiry and Critical Thinking as one of five essential learning outcomes for all psychology majors (APA, 2013). In this presentation, we will present data from students in the psychology department at a large public research-intensive university in the southeastern United States. Our goals are to (a) describe the critical and scientific thinking skills of 2 cohorts of students upon entering and leaving a four-year degree program, (b) explore the extent to which these skills change across the 4-year degree program, (c) explore the extent to which these skills have changed between the two cohorts of students, and (d) to explore and recommend curricular changes to better foster these skills among students.
As part of our ongoing curricular assessment, students enrolled in psychology courses complete measures of scientific and critical thinking at the beginning, middle, and end of the four-year curriculum, allowing us to track changes over time in these skills, as well as to compare outcomes between psychology majors (who complete a minimum of 10 courses in psychology) and other students who complete fewer psychology courses. Data from the 2013-2014 academic year collected from 1040 introductory psychology students, as well as from 290 upper-level (junior and senior) majors and 167 upper-level non-majors revealed that Upper-division psychology majors scored significantly higher than both upper-division non-majors and introductory students (ps < .01) on our test of critical thinking in psychology, and higher than non-majors on a test of scientific literacy (Gormally, Brickman, & Lutz, 2012). We also found that students who had completed a research methods course scored significantly higher than students who had not yet completed a research methods course on all measures (ps < .001). These data indicate that psychology majors do acquire the skills necessary to use scientific reasoning to interpret behavior, as evidenced by the higher scores of majors compared to non-majors and introductory students. The data also highlight the critical role of our research methods course(s) in teaching these skills to students. We will briefly highlight how these assessment data were used to inform the curricular revision that went into effect in Fall 2014.
Finally, we will present similar data (still under analysis) collected from students in 2017-2018 to determine the extent to which (a) this more recent cohort of students, whose educational experiences are likely to have been shaped by the current U.S. political climate, differ in their critical and scientific thinking skills and (b) our curricular revisions were successful in better fostering students’ skills.

Author

• Erin Hardin, The University of Tennessee - Knoxville