Assessing the Effectiveness of Critical Thinking Instruction

There has been a growing trend among colleges in the United States and Canada to require all students to fulfill a requirement in "critical thinking" as part of their general education program. Critical thinking is a widely used term that includes skills in applying, analyzing, synthesizing, and evaluating information and the disposition to apply these skills (National Center for Excellence in Critical Thinking Instruction, 1991). The ability to think critically is almost always listed as one of the desirable outcomes of undergraduate education (Halpern, 1988). Although there is considerable disagreement over who should teach such courses, whether they should be "stand-along" generic courses or incorporated into specific content areas, and what sorts of thinking skills students should be learning in these courses, there is virtually no disagreement over the need to help college students improve how they think (e.g., Perkins & Solomon, 1989). The debate over thinking-skills instruction at the postsecondary level is particularly timely because the goal of increasing the number of college students who can think effectively and solve problems is one component of the National Education Goals advanced by the National Governors' Association and President Bush.