CHAPTER 4

CRITICAL THINKING MEASURES

• Critical thinking is important in every aspect of living, therefore, the assessment of these skills is important.

• For some countries and in some learning areas, critical thinking test play an important role.

• E.g. The State Board for Educator Certification of Texas, USA requires all educator preparation programmes to screen for critical thinking skills as a part of admission criteria to be accepted into the educator preparation programme.

• The University of Texas screens the student candidates for critical thinking skills by administering the Cornell Critical Thinking Test.

• A student must score above the 20th percentile to be admitted into the Educator Preparation Program.

• If the students score below the 20th percentile, he/she must retake the test.

• Usually these tests are used to assess student’s critical thinking skills.

• These critical thinking tests consist of short reading passages & multiple choice questions.

• They ask respondents to perform higher thinking tasks such as making inferences, evaluating arguments and recognizing assumptions.

• By scoring at least minimum score, a student will be exempted from certain level critical thinking course.

• Three widely used instruments of critical thinking are:1. The Watson-Glaser Critical Thinking Appraisal2. The Cornell Critical Thinking Test3. The New Jersey Test of Reasoning Skills

1. THE WATSON-GLASER CRITICAL THINKING APPRAISAL

• Most widely used instruments of critical thinking.

• There are five subtests in the WCTGA and it consists of a total 80 statements of fact.

• It requires forty minutes to complete.

• The sub-test is inference, recognition of assumptions, deduction, interpretation and evaluation of arguments.

1. INFERENCEIt consists of three statements of fact that have to be regarded as true.

After each statements of fact there are several possible inferences, the conclusion that some people might draw from the stated facts.

The respondent is asked to make a decision to determine the degree of truth or falsity.

For each inference the respondents is asked to mark the appropriate answer on the answer sheet.

2. RECOGNITION OF ASSUMPTIONSConsists of six short statements.

Each of the statements is followed by several proposed assumptions.

The respondent is asked to make a decision to determine whether a person in making the given statement is really making that assumption that is taking it for granted, justifiably or not.

For each assumption, the respondent is asked to choose the appropriate answer.

3. DEDUCTIONConsist of four statements or premises, followed by several suggested conclusions.

The respondents is asked to consider the statements as true without exception, then make a decision to determine whether the suggested conclusion is really a conclusion for the statements given.

4. INTERPRETATIONConsists of six short paragraphs followed by several suggested conclusions.

For the purpose of this test, all of the statements in the paragraph have to be regarded as true.

The respondent is asked to judge whether or not each of the proposed conclusions logically follows beyond a reasonable doubt from the information given in the paragraph.

5. EVALUATION OF ARGUMENTSIt consists of five questions.

Each question is followed by several arguments.

The respondent is asked to determine whether it is strong or a weak argument.

Advantages of Watson-Glaser Critical Thinking Appraisal:

1. Its application to measure critical thinking in classroom settings.

2. The actual test items have high face validity in that they draw upon classroom and general life situations.

2. THE CORNELL CRITICAL THINKING TEST

• There are three types of Cornell Critical thinking test.

– The Cornell Class Reasoning Test, – The Cornell Conditional Reasoning Test– The Cornell Critical Thinking Test

• The cornel critical thinking test is a philosophically based critical thinking test.

• The test was designed to measure the following skills:1. Deduction2. Induction3. Semantics4. Credibility5. Prediction in planning experiments6. Definition7. Identification of assumptions

• The test is available in two level.

• LEVEL X– Is appropriate for secondary school (grade 7) and beyond.– Has 71 questions.– 50 minutes of time limit.– Contains four sections.

– First section contains items asking for the bearing, if any of information on a hypothesis. Examinees must indicate whether a particular hypothesis is warranted by the data.

– The second section measures the ability to judge the reliability of information on the basis of its source and the conditions under which it is obtained.

– The third section measures students ability to judge whether a statement follows from its premises.

– The fourth section involves identification of assumptions.

• LEVEL Z– Is primarily for college students.

– Has 52 questions.

– 50 minutes of time limit.

• Level Z contains seven sections. • It measures the examinees’ ability to:

1. Indicate whether a statement follows from its premises.2. Detect equivocal arguments.3. Evaluate reliability of observations and authenticity of

sources.4. Judge the direction of support, if any, for a given

hypothesis.5. Focus on choosing of useful predictions for the

hypothesis resting.6. Define terms.7. Spot gaps in arguments.

3. THE NEW JERSEY TEST OF REASONING SKILLS• The test was developed by Shipman (1983).

• This test is a 50 item inventory purporting to measure 22 different skills

1. converting statements2. translating into logical form3. inclusion-exclusion4. recognizing improper questions5. avoiding jumping to conclusions6. analogical reasoning7. detecting underlying assumptions8. eliminating alternatives9. inductive reasoning10. reasoning with relationships11. detecting ambiguities12. discerning casual relationships

13. identifying good reasons14. recognizing symmetrical relationships15. categorical syllogistic reasoning16. distinguish differences of kind and degree17. recognizing transtative relationship18. recognizing dubious authority19. reasoning with four-possibilities matrices20. contradicting statements21. whole-part and part-whole reasoning 22. conditional syllogistic reasoning.

• The weaknesses of the test is the examinees need to have a fairly high level of verbal comprehension to understand and score high in the test.

• According to Sternberg (1986), the test is highly verbal loaded and one might well wonder as to the extent that what they measure is separable from general verbal skills.

4. THE CAAP CRITICAL THINKING TEST

• The CAAP (Collegiate Assessment of Academic Proficiency) Critical Thinking Test is used to measure skills in clarifying, analysing, evaluating and extending arguments.

• About 60% of this 32 item, 40 minute multiple choice test focuses on the analysis of the elements of an argument, with about 20% covering each of the other two areas (Evaluation of an arguments and extension of an arguments).

The CAAP Critical Thinking Test

Content Area– Analysis of the Elements

of an Arguments– Evaluation of an

Arguments– Extension of an

Arguments

Total

Number of items= 20

= 6

= 6

= 32

• An argument is defined as a sequence of statements that includes a claim that one of the statements, the conclusions follows from the other statements.

• The test consists of four passages that are representative of the kind of issues commonly found in a college curriculum.

• A passage typically presents a series of sub-arguments in support of a more arguments and uses a variety of formats including case studies, debates, dialogues, overlapping positions, statistical arguments, experimental results and editorials.

• The CAAP measures individual and group achievement to provide greater information for institutional use.

• The CAAP is an assessment of higher order skills which takes students beyond recall of facts.