A case study to determine critical thinking skills of university students

Abstract
Critical thinking is a process which aims to explain the main topics, to
see the interactions between these topics, to reach correct conclusions
by these data, to analyze the data and to evaluate the proofs. It contains
all or some of these personal skills. With the help of critical thinking,
people might find effective solutions to the problem in addition to
making sound decisions. In this study, it is aimed to evaluate the critical
thinking abilities of Vocational School Students. Business department at
Faculty of Economics and Administrative Sciences. The study was
carried out on the students of Economics and Administrative Sciences
Business Department. While evaluating the questionnaires, parametric
and nonparametric statistical analysis techniques were applied by
making use of SPSS. As a result of the study, it has been concluded that
critical thinking abilities of the students who study at Faculty of
Economics and Administrative Sciences is different when compared to
the students who study at Vocational School.
A review of the literature on measuring critical thinking skills (Behar-
Horensein :2011) indicates that there are many ways to measure the
improvement of critical thinking in higher education systems. They
include the Cornell critical thinking test (CCTT) , Watson-Glaser
Critical thinking Appraisal-FS (WGCTA-FS) and California Critical
Thinking Skills Test (CCTST).
A standard CCTT will be used to monitor the critical thinking skills of
students for this research project. The CCTT Level Z develops a clear
picture of critical thinking abilities. The tests can be used to teach
critical thinking skills, to predict student performance on state
proficiency exams, or for honours/AP programmes. Level Z covers the
skills of semantics, definition and prediction in planning experiments.
Students will be given a pre-test upon entry of the program and a post-
test upon completion of their modules. Student demographic data will be
gathered as is currently the practice of BUiD. A validated questionnaire
will be used to gather student opinions and comments after the
completion of the second administration of the critical thinking test.
Permission will be sought from BUiD for the use of student
demographic data from student records. Confidentiality will be
maintained as the proposed project will be implemented within the
university. Thirty two students participated in this first stage of the test.
Only eighteen of these managed to take the test after completion of their
master’s degree. Five from the Faculty of Education (FoEd) undertook
education progtrammes, nine from the Faculty of Engineering and IT
(FoE & IT) undertook Masters of Sustainable Design of Built
Environment and four students from the Faculty of Business (FoB)
undertook the MBA programme. All students were given fifty minutes to
finish the exam for both the first and second test. Testing took place in
2013, at the end of 2014 and then at the beginning of 2015 when they
had completed their master’s dissertation. Critical thinking
improvement percentages were calculated based on the second stage
results relation to those from the first.
An online survey was sent to all the current students at BUiD in
different departments. The aim was to examine their progress in terms
of developing critical thinking skills during their studies. 214 viewed the
electronic survey, 151 students started and then fifty one dropped out
leaving a hundred students who completed the survey in its entirety. The
response rate was high at some sixty six per cent. For a full list of
questions, please refer to Appendix (A).
The survey was also sent electronically to BUiD academics. The aim of
the survey was to obtain their thinking on the results and to explore
whether they were implementing methods of critical thinking in their
teaching style and discussing ways to improve. Twenty seven academics
viewed the survey, seventeen began to complete it and just five dropped
out. This meant that twelve academics completed the survey,
representing a seventy per cent response rate. For a full list of
questions, please refer to Appendix (B).
As a method of triangulation, interviews were conducted with four
Deans at BUiD as well as two decision makers after presenting them
with a copy of the results. For a full list of questions of the interview,
please refer to Appendices (C) and (D).
The aim was to investigate their potential to promote critical thinking
and find more ways to stimulate it among academics. Qualitative
Triangulation involves a conscious combination of quantitative and
qualitative methodologies as a powerful solution to strengthening a
research design based on the fact that a single method can never
adequately solve the problem of rival causal factors( De Vos: 1998). It
is worth mentioning here that Methodological Triangulation entails
combining both quantitative and qualitative data collection methods
(Banister, Burman, Parker, Taylor, M. & Tindall,:1994). This is based
on the rationale that a single data collection method is insufficient to
provide adequate and accurate research results. Outside the
quantitative section, this study is focused on assessing critical thinking
level for students, so it will adopt qualitative methods for analysis.
There are many types of qualitative analysis including: basic,
phenomenology, ethnography, ground theory, narrative analysis.
This study has, however, adopted the critical research approach where
the goal is not only to study and understand but rather to critique,
challenge, transform and empower (Merriam, 2011). For the interview
with the Deans and their constrained time, a structured interview was
used. This method features a rigorous set of questions from which one is
not permitted to divert. For a full list of interview questions with Deans,
please refer to Appendix (C).
When the two decision makers were interviewed, a semi-structured
interview method was used. This is an open method, allowing new ideas
to be brought up during the interview as a result of what the interviewee
says. The interviewer in a semi-structured interview generally has a
framework of themes to be explored. For a full list of interview
questions, please refer to Appendix (D). In writing the questions, many
sources helped with setting them and most came from a book on
research design (Creswell,2014).
RESULTS
In this section results will be presented from the students, academics
and Deans. The last section will be devoted to the decision maker
interviews. It was decided to leave some questions open-ended because
this offers many advantages including acquiring an unlimited number of
possible answers, revealing the logic of a respondent logic, thought
processes, frames of reference and finally some unanticipated findings
may be discovered.
References
Banister, P., Burman, E., Parker, I., Taylor, M. & Tindall, C. (1994).
Quality methods in Psychology. Buckingham: Open University Press.
Creswell, J. W. (2014). Research Design: Qualitative and quantitative
mixed methods appraoches. London: SAGE publications.
De Vos, A.S. (1998). Research at grass root. Academic: J.L. van Schaik.