Enhancing Undergraduates' Higher-Order Thinking Skills: Perceptions of College of Agriculture Faculty

This research was motivated by a need to understand faculty perceptions ofhigher-order thinking and the resources needed to incorporate critical thinking strategies into their undergraduate courses. Faculty of the Herbert College of Agriculture (Herbert) at The University of Tennessee (UT) participated in three focus groups to identify programmatic strengths of the current undergraduate program and to determine instructional professional development needs. Faculty perceived problem solving as the greatest strength and identified students' fear of failure as a barrier to teaching higher-order thinking skills. Faculty reported a need for professional development in teaching and assessing higher-order thinking, preferably in a hands-on workshop with a group discussion format.