1. Baseline Gains on Critical Thinking Assessment Test (CAT)
Enhancing Critical Thinking in STEM Disciplines: A Faculty Development Model Greg Light, Susanna Calkins, Denise Drane, Stanley Lo, Marina Micari Northwestern University, Evanston, IL 60208
Project Goals
Methods
Results to Date
Three types of teaching approach: Transmission, Acquisition & Conceptual Change1. Progress to Type 3 is most problematic2.
1. To engage faculty in promoting student critical thinking (higher-order learning) to encourage faculty change to type 3 teaching approach.
2. To motivate faculty to make changes to their teaching with data on their students’ critical thinking.
3. To examine changes faculty make in their teaching in terms of changes in students critical thinking skills.
Faculty were highly engaged in the project.
All faculty made changes to their teaching.
Faculty reported that being able to see their students’ responses to the CAT test motivated them to change their teaching.
All faculty developed 2-4 course specific critical thinking assessment tasks modeled on the CAT test.
Our Hypotheses
Baseline Gains on Critical Thinking Assessment Test (CAT)
This project is supported by TUES
Measurement Tools
References
Prosser & Trigwell 1999
Light & Calkins 2008
Trigwell, Prosser & Ginns. 2005
Brown 2002
Stein, Haynes & Redding 2006
Faculty Conceptions, Teaching
Approaches & Practice
Approaches to Teaching Inventory3
Conceptions of Assessment Survey4
Interviews on conceptions of critical thinking
Syllabus analysis
Structured observation of classroom teaching
Student Critical Thinking
Critical Thinking Assessment Test5
Compared to faculty in standard faculty development programs, faculty who conduct an experiment on their own teaching will make greater changes in:
Their approaches & conceptions of teaching: they will move from a focus on transmitting content to changing student conceptions
Their approaches to teaching critical thinking
The gains that their students make in critical thinking over a semester or quarter
p<0.001
Baseline gains:
Varied across courses
4 out of 19 faculty made statistically significant gains
The average effect size was 0.12
The largest effect size was 0.8