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#TeachingCTinSTEM

Assessment of Critical Thinking and Logical Reasoning

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Your Thoughts...

Please take the next ~5 min. to post your response to one or both of the following questions to the Jamboard link below:
What do you see as the benefits of assessing CT/LR?
What are 1-2 challenges you face in assessing CT/LR?

Jamboard can be accessed here.

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Why Should We Assess CT/LR?

For students, CT/LR skills development will have practical implications for their future academic and professional advancement

For faculty, assessment of CT/LR can make the focus on these skills in the classroom explicit. Data can also inform planned/enacted curricula.

At the programmatic level, data can be used to evaluate CT/LR instruction that has been vertically integrated throughout the curriculum

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What Assessments Currently Exist?

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Assessment ..

“What gets measured gets managed, and what gets managed gets improved.”

Peter Drucker

Defining what we mean by assessment - though it is often an external, artificial, and scary idea, Assessment is vital for student learning.

There are things we want our students to learn. There are correct and incorrect understandings. When I assess, its evaluating their developing understanding so as to develop interventions to help my students meet specific learning objectives. In that sense - we are assessing to measure the learning and/or non-learning of students in the class.

The goal of assessment is the improvement of student learning, not determining funding, program directions, faculty lines, or anything like that.

The goal is simple, to both help me, as the teacher and individual students in the course to understand how the they (the students) are progressing in their understanding and use of critical thinking skills and logical reasoning along the way to their accomplishment of the course or program learning outcomes.

When students enroll in an introductory STEM course, we invite them into a culture of evidence-based investigation where educators reinforce the importance of providing reproducible support for every claim. That is, science education aims to impart to students systematic reasoning skills: the ability to determine what follows logically from one’s ideas and the available evidence; and the ability to present a strong or cogent argument to support one’s claim. This inquisitive disposition, an imperative in the sciences, is not only a key characteristic of critical thinking but increasingly it is the foundation that underpins every profession today–from corporate sales managers to athletic coaches, from physicians to probation officers–no profession is exempt.

Our concerns with the lack of logical reasoning training in undergraduate biology were echoed by Dr. Bruce Alberts (former President of the National Academy of Sciences) who called for: “a major rethinking of the goals and methods of science education at all levels, from kindergarten through college.” He contends that teaching our students to think “like a scientist–with an insistence on using evidence and logic for decision-making–should become the central goal of all science educators” (Alberts, B. (2017). Science for life. Science, 355[6332], 1353–1353. doi: 10.1126/science.aan2924).

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What Do We Propose?

Small

Brief (5-10 minute), contained, significant

Formative

Intentionally directed towards increasing student learning

Local

Starting with students’ understanding

Situated

Directly connected to classroom activities and concepts

Progressive

Students (and faculty) are making progress towards better understanding.

Small: This is brief, self-contained, not terrifying. Simple - easy to use. Easy to use often.

Formative: The goal is to help students learn deeply and effectively. More information on formative assessment is here.

Local: Assessment is of the actual students in the class, not generalized or generic students. The goal is to determine their understanding of these CT/LR concepts. For the purpose of their growth.

Situated: We are not advocating adding a philosophy module into STEM classes. Rather, we observe that CT/LR stand at the foundation of much specific knowledge required in the STEM disciplines. So, we suggest that the development of critical thinking and logical reasoning as they exist in STEM disciplines throughout the course is vital for student success.

Progressive: Students and faculty alike are developing their understanding through the course of the class. We’re all in flux as learners. Frequent and developmental assessment is critical to a learning focus. This is explicitly not a big pre- post- assessment using an abstracted measure.

The pre-existing things don’t measure the developmental aspects of critical thinking. They miss the back-stage, colloquial, every day critical thinking.

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Application

What might this type of assessment look like?

Low Stakes
Informal Presentation
Reflection

Several of these suggestions utilizes versions of active learning strategies. These strategies have proven to be effective in STEM courses - see https://www.pnas.org/content/111/23/8410.

Low stakes / anonymous feedback re: CT/LR concepts.

Either

likert style “I feel confident in my understanding of why assessment matters for CT/LR”?
Or content related questions: “formative assessment relies

Either closed or open:

Word cloud response - use one word to express your perception of the concept of assessing CT/LR in STEM classes.
I feel confident in my abilities to assess CT/LR in stem.

Non-formal presentation

Either written:

1 minute paper.

Or oral:

Think - pair - share

Note: Productive struggle - by declaring and thinking about answers to these questions students build the capacity for further learning. Simply put: assessment is not the end point, but the start of another conversation that contributes to learning.

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Low Stakes - (Anonymous)

Likert:

Perception: “I feel confident in my understanding of why assessment matters for CT/LR”?
Content: “formative assessment includes in-process evaluations of student comprehension, learning needs, and academic progress during a lesson, unit, or course.”

Open Response

Word cloud: “use one word to express your perception of the concept of assessing CT/LR in STEM classes.”
Short answer: “One thing I don’t quite understand about the assessment of CT/LR in STEM is …”

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Informal presentation

Short paper (1-5 minutes of writing)

“Describe one way you might assess your students developing CT/LR skills in one of your classes”

Or oral:

Think - pair - share: The biggest value for assessing CT/LR in my classes is …

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Reflection - General

What does critical thinking mean to you? How do you know when you are being critical in your thinking?
What does it mean to be logical? What’s the relationship between logical and critical thinking? Provide an example.
Do you believe that critical thinking is important for success in our quickly changing world? If so, how.
In your STEM courses, do you feel that you learn strategies for problem-solving, decision-making, evaluation, categorization, hypothesizing?

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Reflection - Task based

When did you think critically during this presentation? Provide as brief description of the context for your thinking and the type of thinking you did.
How did your use of CT/LR shape your understanding of the concepts we discussed?
What areas of your CT/LR do you feel need attention or improvement?

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Wrap-up

Learner centered assessment empowers both the instructor and learner.
Low time commitment allows for easier integration throughout a course
Makes CT/LR visible throughout the course.