In today's post-contemporary society, the ability to think critically is in increasing demand. The world is changing to a more accelerated speed (Acharya, 2018), the media has been introduced with strength in all social strata (del Castillo & Sánchez, 2017), and the information available to the citizen is in an incessant modification, expansion, and rectification (Sabino, 2014). The excess of information is becoming a problem, not only for the lack of clarity, accuracy, logic or truthfulness that it may have but also for the possible mis using. It has been demonstrated that an important part of it serves the interests of individuals who, sometimes, have unethical and/or unfavourable benefits for citizens (Enderlein, 2017). A clear example is the media or advertising, whose main aim, far to promote a democratic ethos, is to obtain economic benefits (Golovina, 2014). Therefore, in this context, it is essential to place Critical Thinking (CT) at the heart of the culture to transform society into a community of thinkers.
The construct of CT is a laborious product of thought to define and understand, partly due to the variety of definitions that educators, philosophers, and psychologists have proffered to the field (Chen, 2017). Nevertheless, the numerous definitions of CT have exhibited a confluent view of an integration of skills, attitudes, values, and habits (Ku, Lee, & Elis, 2017). Or, what it is the same, a synthesis of skills and dispositions. CT skills involve a set of cognitive capacities such as analysing arguments, making inferences using inductive and deductive reasoning, judging or evaluating, and making decisions (Halpern, 2006; Alfaro-LeFevre, 2009; Martín & Barrientos, 2010; Roca, 2013). On the other hand, dispositions are understood as attitudes or habits of the mind and encompass intellectual perseverance, humility, empathy, inquisitiveness, and autonomy (Paul & Elder, 2006; Facione, 2007). Based on this, CT could be defined as a metacognitive process that provides us with the tools of logic and proper intellectual attributes that guide our ideas, beliefs, and actions (Chen, 2017; Ku, Lee, & Elis, 2017).
From this perspective, educating in CT implies enabling life-long learners to process information, evaluate ideas, and reason by means of arguments (Pascarella & Terenzini, 2005).
Regarding the college community, the cultivation of CT becomes one of the most valued learning goals (Pithers & Soden, 2000; Gellin, 2003). Despite recent syntheses on CT and college students, it remains unknown whether this thought increases linearly through the college years (Pascarella & Terenzini, 2005) or if its main development occurs just in the first years (Aurum & Roska, 2011). Furthermore, the role of CT in students’ achievement, sex or area of knowledge have yet to be explored meta-analytically. For what it has been argued, in the research study that is presented, framed in the thematic area of the psychological aspects of education and the quality and evaluation of educational institutions, the implication and relevance of CT within college education is highlighted.
The study is guided by one main aim: to analyse and compare CT skills and dispositions among Spanish undergraduate students. From this aim, several specific objectives are arisen: (1) to examine the different ways in which CT has been defined by researchers; (2) to elaborate a definition of the CT based on the agreement among the philosophical, cognitive psychological, and educational approaches; (3) to explore how CT can be developed in the context of college education; (4) to design and develop an assessment tool to measure college students’ CT skills and dispositions, and (5) to analyse differences of CT skills and dispositions depending on the students’ achievement, sex, area of knowledge, and/or academic course.
