Intending to Teach Critical Thinking: A Study of the Learning Impacts over One Semester of Embedded Critical Thinking Learning Objects

Numerous studies from recent years and going back decades suggest that post-secondary students are failing to sufficiently improve their critical thinking (CT) skills during their undergraduate years (Abrami et al., 2015; Arum & Roksa, 2011; Huber & Kuncel, 2016). Meanwhile, institutions have increasingly embraced CT as a core competency and educational outcome. Several studies have demonstrated measurable within-semester increases in CT, but most often without a meaningful control group for comparison (Cargas et al. 2017; Grant & Smith 2018; Styers et al. 2018). This study asks if an intervention of embedding content-driven critical thinking exercises within courses would cause a measurable impact on critical thinking outcomes within one semester. All participating courses were paired with an instructor teaching a control section alongside an experimental section. All sections were exposed to pre- and post-assessments, using the Critical Thinking Assessment test. Pre-post results indicated statistically significant gains for experimental groups compared with control groups.