An Exploration in the Teaching of Critical Thinking in General-Psychology

EDUCATORS ARE becoming increasingly more interested in ways in which students ban be stimu lated to think critically. A considerable amount of research up to the present time has centered around such tasks as the definition of critical thinking, an alysis of the thinking process, and attempts at de velopment of instruments to measure such abilities. One of the more recent instruments for the meas urement of critical thinking abilities is A Test of Critical Thinking, Form G, development of the American Council on Education Cooperative Studies of Evaluation in General Education. ** The present study was designed to throw some light on the ques tion of classroom methods as related to changes in critical thinking abilities in students. Since the study was conducted in the early stages of the North Central Association study in liberal arts colleges of Illinois, it was largely exploratory in nature since one of the objectives was that of suggesting hypotheses which might be tested in better controll ed studies to follow.