Teaching critical thinking in domain-specific courses: Does an explicit instructional approach promote transfer?

• In Event: Critical pedagogy and curriculum

Proposal

Introduction

Critical thinking (CT) is considered as one of the major skills that prepare graduates to deal with the rapid and continuous changes of the 21st century (Halpern, 2014; Paul & Elder, 2014). Research has shown that individuals who are critical thinkers raise vital questions, gather relevant information and draw well-reasoned conclusions, test assumptions, judge the credibility of a source, communicate effectively, and most importantly are disposed to engage in thoughtful behavior (Halpern, 2014). Development of CT is thus a central concern of higher education in Africa and all over the world. Higher education in Ethiopia is no exception to this goal. Developing highly qualified, thoughtful and reasonable graduates that can contribute to the economic, social and political development of the country is a general goal of higher education in Ethiopia (Ministry of Education, 2010). Continuous curricula revisions that focus on student acquisition of higher-order thinking skills have been made in the higher education system (Ministry of Education, 2010). However, several studies have indicated that instruction in higher education remains largely teacher-centered, less engaging, and mostly inefficient in helping the ever-growing student population to develop higher-order thinking competency, such as CT (Rayner & Aschcroft, 2011).

Despite the large body of empirical research, there is also little consensus on how educators and practitioners best support CT development (Davies & Barnett, 2016). Some argue a well-designed subject-matter instruction by itself is sufficient to promote the development of relevant CT skills and can equip students to competently perform CT tasks across domains (Immersion approach), whereas several others contend that explicit emphasis on general principles of CT within specific subject-matter instruction is essential for the acquisition of transferrable CT skills across domains (Infusion approach).

The purpose of this study was to examine the effect of a systematic and explicit CT instructional approach on the acquisition of near- and far-transfer of CT skills. Following Perkins and Salomon (1994), we operationalized “near-transfer” as the application of acquired CT skills to solve novel tasks within similar context in which the skills were initially introduced, and “far-transfer” as the application of acquired CT skills to solve novel tasks beyond the context in which the CT skills were initially introduced. The following central research question was addressed: What is the effect of an explicit approach to design domain-specific instruction on near- and far-transfer of CT skills? It was hypothesized that an explicit CT instructional approach would result a significantly higher acquisition of near- and far-transfer of CT skills than a regular instructional approach.

Method

Participants
The study employed a quasi-experimental design involving two sections of 78 third-year educational science majors enrolled for the course statistical methods in education in a public university in northwest Ethiopia. The students in one of the sections (n = 40, Mage = 21.24 years) were randomly assigned into an experimental group and the other section into a control group (n = 38, Mage = 21.36 years).

Intervention
The design of the intervention focused on a senior statistical methods in education course. The First Principles of Instruction model (Merrill, 2013) was used as a framework to design the experimental lessons. In designing the experimental lessons, the CT components identified by Halpern (2014) were targeted: verbal reasoning, argument analysis, thinking as hypothesis testing, likelihood and uncertainty analysis, and decision making and problem solving. A team of instructional designers and content experts including two regular course instructors from the target university collaborated in designing the instructional intervention. The experimental group followed the designed intervention, while the control group followed the regular instruction for a period of 12 weeks (three lessons of two hours each per week).

Instruments
The Psychological CT Examination (Lawson, 2015) was administered both as a pretest and posttest to measure near-transfer of CT skills, while the Halpern Critical Thinking Assessment (HCTA: Halpern, 2010) was administered both as a pretest and a posttest to measure far-transfer of CT skills.

Results and conclusion, in brief
Initial comparisons of pretest PCTE and HCTA scores revealed no significant differences between the experimental and control groups, t(75) = .34, p = .67. To examine the effect of the instructional intervention on the near- and far-transfer of CT skills, a 2X2 mixed design ANOVA was conducted. The results revealed that the two groups together demonstrated a statistically significant improvement on both the PCTE and HCTA mean scores across the two time points (pre- and post-tests), F(1, 76) = 6.91, p = .018. Moreover, a significant interaction effect was found between the intervention type (experimental-control) and the testing time (pretest-posttest), F(1, 76) = 7.49, p = .013. In other words, in line with our hypothesis, both the PCTE and HCTA mean scores for the experimental group demonstrated a significant pretest-posttest improvement compared to the control group. This indicates that the experimental learning environment resulted in a significantly higher pretest–posttest improvement in the near- and far-transfer of CT skills compared to the control (regular) learning environment.

The findings provide support for the argument that a systematic and explicit approach to design domain-specific instruction can yield greater acquisition of near- and far-transfer of CT skills than a regular instructional approach. The literature largely depicts CT as an elusive concept with little direction on how to translate the diverse views into CT instructional practices. Acknowledging the longstanding controversies involved in defining, teaching, and assessing CT, efforts are made in this study to show how CT can be handled as an integral part of domain-specific instruction. We aim to share during the conference that embedding CT instruction in domain-specific instruction requires greater clarity about what CT is, what set of CT skills could be targeted in domain-specific instruction, how domain-specific instruction could systematically be designed considering CT as an integral part of a subject-matter, and how best CT outcomes be assessed. We will particularly discuss some design considerations for effective integration of CT skills within domain-specific instruction, which we hope to be useful for both practitioners and researchers.

Authors

• Dawit Tibebu Tiruneh, East China Normal University

• Xiaoqing Gu, East China Normal University

• J. Michael Spector, University of North Texas