Inquiry: Critical Thinking Across the Disciplines

Volume 28, Issue 3, Fall 2013

Assessing Teaching Critical Thinking with Validated Critical Thinking Inventories: The Learning Critical Thinking Inventory (LCTI) and the Teaching Critical Thinking Inventory (TCTI)

Critical thinking is viewed as an important outcome of undergraduate education by higher education institutions and potential employees of graduates. However, the lack of clarity and inadequate assessment of critical thinking development in higher education is problematic. The purpose of this study was to develop instruments to assess the competence of faculty to develop critical thinking of undergraduate students as perceived by students and by faculty themselves. The measures of critical thinking teaching were developed in two phases. Phase I focused on development of critical thinking items while Phase II focused on initial validation of the critical thinking inventories. Six brief instruments were developed, all with high reliability and validity. Scale length ranged from 10 to 13 items. Four measures captured students’ perceptions of learning critical thinking and constituted the Learning Critical Thinking Inventory (LCTI). Two scales were intended for faculty to assess their perceptions of the extent they facilitated learning critical thinking in their teaching, and these constituted the Teaching Critical Thinking Inventory (TCTI). The psychometric characteristics of the inventories meet high standards, the measures are sufficiently brief to make them suitable for repeated administration, and different parallel forms are of great value for multiple administrations.