| dc.description.abstract | One of the primary goals of higher education is to improve student critical thinking. Critical thought is a key factor in career readiness, a tool for survival that can enable one to escape oppression, and is ultimately a component of civic engagement. Even with this import, significant gains in critical thinking prove challenging to accomplish in the undergraduate setting. There is a growing body of research detailing which instructional interventions are most promising. While these studies have expanded our understanding of critical thinking instruction in the undergraduate classroom, there is scant data on undergraduate perceptions and preferences toward it. What is more, existing studies predominantly focus on traditionally aged, emerging adult learners. The number of adult undergraduate learners, however, is growing.
Undergraduate students are not empty vessels. They arrive in classrooms with life experiences, individual and group identities, and pre-conceptions about the world. Students process classroom instruction in light of these factors. Individual and group identity factors can aid or inhibit a learner’s ability to engage with and assimilate course information. Emerging adulthood is markedly a time for identity exploration and instability. Adulthood, on the other hand, is not. Ultimately, these differences could factor into differential attitudes, preferences, and needs for critical thinking instruction for the two life stages.
The purpose of this study was to explore the attitudes and preferences of undergraduate learners, both emerging and adult, toward critical thinking instruction in the college classroom. Critical thinking instruction is typically less common, less explicit, or ill-defined in the undergraduate classroom. This investigation provides context and additional perspective with emerging and adult student voices and experiences in mind.
Findings suggest that undergraduate learners had few classroom experiences with critical thinking instruction. These experiences, both positive and negative, informed the undergraduate learners’ attitudes and preferences for critical thinking instruction. Accordingly, learners’ sense of identity played an important role in their perspectives on critical thinking. Some identity components inhibited learners’ abilities to engage in critical thinking. Participants defined and self-identified life stages aligned with the theory of emergent adulthood, with some notable exceptions. Additional differences in life stage and religiosity appeared to coincide with the perceived acceptability of course topics. Undergraduate attitudes and preferences for critical thinking instruction aligned with research prescribed instructional interventions. These perceptions, however, added to the missing context and nuance in the literature.
The implications from this study indicate that critical thinking instruction is just as nuanced as the students themselves. Due to this nuance and complexity, critical thinking instruction requires training and practice. Additionally, just as learning is both an individual and social endeavor, critical thinking also appears to have both individual and social elements. Greater research into this interplay could deepen our understanding of this phenomenon. Undergraduate adult learners in this study reported significant exploration in some areas of their identity. Additional inquiry into this phenomenon is needed, as returning adult undergraduate learners could be different in this way from adults engaging in other forms of adult learning. Identity exploration could impact the learning process. The interplay between identity, politics, and religiosity appeared to greatly influence some participants’ ability to engage in critical thought. This reticence is unaccounted for in the undergraduate critical thinking literature and deserves greater scrutiny as well. | |
