Michael Kane asks about the Watson-Glaser Critical Thinking Appraisal
(WGCTA, 1980).
>My questions are: 1) Does anyone out there know anything
>about this or related measures? 2) Has anyone out there
>done much in evaluating the broad success of your "thinking"
>courses, beyond the obvious course-related exams and papers?
>3) *Should* we be concerned in demonstrating transfer in
>thinking skills from our courses to other domains?
>
The Watson-Glaser is frequently used as a standardized assessment measure.
The Cornell Ctitical Thinking Test (Ennis & Millman, 1985) is another.
The two are very similar in scope. Several other standardized assessments
are described on the following web sites:
National Center for Education Statistics
(http://nces.ed.gov/npec/evaltests/ctandpsinfo.htm)
Medical College of Georgia (http://synergy2.mcg.edu/medtech/ll/CT/PT5.HTM)
and there is a good collection of ERIC abstracts at
http://ericae.net/faqs/crit_tnk.htm
I think we should be concerned about demonstrating that skills learned in
our classrooms have value in larger domains. Education absolutely should
have application outside the classroom. I am not arguing for vocational
training here. The "facts" and domain-specific skill training (even in
something as vocational as computer programming or accounting) change and
are replaced with new techniques fairly quickly. For example, the ability
to compute an ANOVA on a Monroe calculator - for those of us who first
encountered ANOVA in this antiquated form - has little value to any of us
now, except for bragging rights. Those computational skills are outdated
but our ability to evaluate statistical evidence and our appreciation of
the value of this for making decisions about hypotheses endures.
While these tests clearly tap components of critical thinking, they seem to
capture only a fraction of what we mean by critical thinking. Of course,
critical thinking is a slippery concept that has been defined in a variety
of ways. This has made evaluation that much more difficult. Holonen has a
good discussion of these issues.
Halonen, J. S. (1995). Demystifying critical thinking. Teaching of
Psychology, 22, 75-81.
Claudia Stanny
________________________________________________________
Claudia J. Stanny, Ph.D. e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Department of Psychology Phone: (850) 474 - 3163
University of West Florida FAX: (850) 857 - 6060
Pensacola, FL 32514 - 5751
Web: http://www.uwf.edu/psych/stanny.html
