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Developing the Critical Thinking Skills of Students in Civil and Building Engineering at
Loughborough University
Dr Lynda GibbinsDr Glynis Perkin
Professor Graham Sander
Overview• Background
• What is Critical Thinking (CT)?
• The importance of CT
• Research methods – 4 strands
• Programme Directors’ views on the CT skills of students
• Modules which specify CT
• Students’ understanding of CT
• Staff perspective on the CT skills of students
• The role of tutorials in promoting CT
• Conclusions
Background • Programme Directors in Civil and Building Engineering
(CBE) at Loughborough University expressed concerns that students are not demonstrating CT thinking skills when undertaking research-based tasks and final year projects
• Undergraduate students in five out of the seven CBE programmes at Loughborough University take a communications module in their first year which explicitly teaches aspects of critical thinking
What is Critical Thinking?• For our project we identified CT as the ability to:
– Analyse situations, problems and claims
– Identify assumptions and bias
– Judge credibility of evidence or claims
– Evaluate arguments
– Produce well-founded arguments
– Draw well-founded conclusions
The Importance of Critical Thinking
• Employers require employees to have the ability to adapt quickly to change, be able to analyse new and complex situations, challenge accepted wisdom and make rational decisions
• Engineering accrediting bodies expect students to demonstrate CT; for example, “…critically evaluate arguments, assumptions, abstract concepts and data (that may be incomplete), to make judgements and to frame appropriate questions to achieve a solution - or identify a range of solutions - to a problem”
(Engineering Council (2014), UK-SPEC http://www.engc.org.uk/ukspec.aspx )
Research Methods – 4 Strands• In-depth discussions with four Programme Directors
to gain an insight into the perceived problem
• Analysis of 93 CBE non-finalist undergraduate module specifications
• Questionnaires completed by 39 undergraduate students
• Interviews undertaken with ten academic staff
Programme Directors’ Views on the Critical Thinking Skills of Students
4 Interviews • The Programme Directors agreed that there was a wide variation in
students’ CT skills• The majority of students had to be prompted to undertake a literature
review• They were also described as poor at critiquing the literature they read
and quoted
• There was only one programme, on which students are sponsored by Companies, where CT skills were described as good
Modules that Include Critical Thinking Skills
Analysis
• Where possible all non-finalist undergraduate modules were investigated for CT content. For modules where some element was explicitly stated in the specification we examined the assessment criteria and associated tasks to determine where and how often CT skills were being assessed
• From the available information it appears that 21 out of 93 non-final year undergraduate modules explicitly teach and, to some extent, assess CT
• Tutorials were mentioned as providing an opportunity for CT skills to be developed
• Two CBE programmes, BEng and MEng have less exposure to CT
Students’ Understanding of Critical Thinking
39 Completed Questionnaires• Most respondents understand the term CT
• Most respondents believe that CT is important, however, when asked why it is important 31% of students did not provide an answer
• Students on the BEng and MEng programmes reported less teaching of CT than students on other programmes which agrees with our investigation of module content
Staff Perspective on the Critical Thinking Skills of Students
10 Interviews• Most staff described students’ CT skills as ranging from very poor to extremely
proficient, with many students requiring a lot of help when undertaking research-based projects
• Some staff believe that school background may account for certain differences, with private schools seen as requiring pupils to do more critiquing than UK state schools
• Now this issue has been raised, the prevailing view is that lecturers need to mention CT skills more frequently and students need to have CT skills embedded in more modules throughout their undergraduate study
• If students are going to employ CT there needs to be more tasks that assess these skills
The Role of Tutorials in Promoting Critical Thinking
Analysis and Questionnaires
• In several module specifications the use of tutorial time to promote development of CT skills was explicitly mentioned
• Almost all of the BEng and MEng respondents stated that their tutorials do not provide opportunity for CT
• Most of the respondents from the other programmes believed that tutorials do offer opportunity for CT
Conclusions• From the student perspective, there is
understanding of the meaning and importance of CT
• From the staff perspective, most students do not use CT unless explicitly asked to do so and then many of them require help and advice
• CT needs to be embedded and assessed in more modules as it is a skill that is developed over time
