The Monash Critical Thinking Study
2. Standard version
Description
This was a standard version of the course, following the same syllabus as other semesters, but without any special pedagogical technique. Peter Singer's book The President of Good and Evil (Singer 2004) was used as a text for the course. Students were required to read a chapter each week. The arguments from each chapter were then discussed and analysed in tutorials. Homework exercises consisted of LSAT questions and further passages from Singer's text for analysis and evaluation.
Click here for a sample of tutorial and homework exercises.
Results
Students showed a statistically significant improvement on critical thinking scores on the GSA.
Effect size: 0.30 standard deviations (n=63). Significant at the 0.05 level.
Students showed a slight improvement on critical thinking scores on the CCTST.
Effect size: 0.19 standard deviations (n=65). Significant at the 0.1 level.
Sample characteristics
|
Semester 2, 2004 sample (Standard) | |
| Sample size | 65 |
| Sex | Female: 38 Male: 27 |
| Age (Years) | Range: 17 (1) - 41 (1) |
| Median: 20 | |
| Mode: 19 | |
| Year level | - |
| Faculty | Arts: 25 (38.5%) |
| Arts + (Commerce, Education, Law, IT, Engineering, Music, Science): 20 (30.8%) | |
| Science: 9 (13.8%) | |
| Exchange: 6 (9.2%) | |
| Business/commerce : 3 (4.6%) | |
| Medical sciences: 2 (3.1%) | |
Gains on critical thinking tests
|
CCTST (Max. score = 34) | |||
| N = 65 | Mean | 95% confidence interval | Standard deviation |
| Pre-test | 19.769 (58%) |
[18.75, 20.79] |
4.13 |
|
Post-test |
20.615 (60.6%) |
[19.29, 21.94] | 5.35 |
| Gain | 0.846 |
[-0.04, 1.74] |
3.61 |
|
Effect size |
0.19 |
[-0.01, 0.39] | |
| Proportional gain | 7.9% | [2.31, 13.53] | 22.64 |
|
GSA (Scaled scores) | |||
| N = 63 | Mean | 95% confidence interval | Standard deviation |
| Pre-test | 421.35 |
[397.87, 444.83] | 93.24 |
| Post-test | 452.49 |
[427.61, 477.38] |
98.81 |
|
Gain |
31.14 | [12.91, 49.38] | 72.41 |
| Effect size | 0.30 | [0.13, 0.48] | |
| Proportional gain | 6.13% | [1.94, 10.31] |
16.63 |
Effect sizes calculated using pre-test standard deviation estimates of 4.45 CCTST points and 102.76 GSA (scaled) points.
Proportional gain is the gain score score expressed as a percentage of how many points a student could have gained (or lost) relative to the maximum test score (or pre-test score if gain was negative).
Comparison with other studies
 |
| Gains for all studies measured using the CCTST. |
| * Two semester course. |