Critical thinking is paramount in higher education: universities aim to provide students with transferable skills that enable them to become rational, effective employees and responsible citizens (Paul & Elder, 2019; Sternberg et al., 2007). Moreover, being central for shaping an effective global workforce, critical thinking is a skill sought-after by employers (Liu et al., 2014). Therefore, it is an expertise highly valued as a desirable learning outcome for higher education (HE; Elander et al., 2006) and as an employability skill (Halx & Reybold, 2005). 

Students, however, often struggle to understand and demonstrate CT in their work (Duro et al. 2013; Forbes, 2018). Worldwide expansion and diversification of HE has caused concern regarding students’ quality and learning outcomes (; Shavelson, 2010). And employers’ criticism has prompted policymakers and educators’ call for students to develop “twenty-first century skills” and for their reliable assessment (Tremblay et al.2012).

Theoretically, there is no consensus whether the ability to think critically can be taught and learned in one discipline and subsequently applied generically. Some researchers assert that CT is a general and transferable skill (Facione, 1990), whilst others argue against the ‘myth of general skills’ stating that CT is a domain-specific skill thus not transferable (Monteiro et al., 2018). Elucidate this distinction is fundamental because the notion of transferability is at the core of HE, permeating and shaping educational policy, curricula and assessment, learning outcomes, pedagogy, and teacher-learner relationship and responsibility.

Additionally, linked to the fact that CT is not universally seen as a transferable skill, disagreements exist regarding which is the best method to teach CT. Much debate has focused on whether CT should be taught as a separate discipline (general skill) or infused into a distinct subject (domain-specific skill). A meta-analysis by Abrami et al. (2008) grouped the methods of intervention in four different types finding a considerable difference in the effect size (g+) each methods had: General = .38; Subject-content infusion = .54; Subject-content immersion = .09; Mixed = .94. They suggested that teaching CT generally, as a standalone subject, can improve CT skill, however a robust gain is achieved with a Mixed method, thus seems crucial to include an explicit component.

In the UK context specifically, some researchers have focused on understanding the development and transferability of CT skill, in particular among A-level students and psychology undergraduate. A study by Black and Gill (2011) showed an association between the candidates who achieved reasonably good grades on CT at AS level and then performed well at A-level. And although found as an unintended consequence of delivering CT AS level, the authors also presented some evidence for the transferability of CT skills. They suggested that it would be interesting to investigate which mechanisms best foster transferability, and within which type of instruction. 

Recently, Prat et al. (2020) used a generic CT test (WGCTA, UK) in cross-sectional and longitudinal studies to examine whether critical thinking skills increase, throughout a university degree, when psychology students are not explicitly taught CT. They found that psychology students’ scores were higher for final-year than first-year undergrads, concluding that attending university on the whole improves students’ CT performance. However, the component contributing least to the overall WGCTA score was Evaluation of Arguments and Interpretation, thus suggesting that “although the long-term impact of these interventions is unknown, teaching psychology undergraduates explicitly how to critically evaluate arguments might help increase their overall critical thinking skills” (p. 7).

Consequently, as a long-term project, I am interested in investigating the relationship between teaching methods and the development, transferability and maintenance of CT skills. I am presenting here however only the first initial exploratory study.

This is just the initial exploratory study of the long-term project. As a starting point, this first study will explore whether taking a psychology degree has an effect on the students’ CT skills when they are not taught CT explicitly (not given explicit instruction). Study 1. Critical thinking is not explicitly taught | cross-sectional study This study will compare 3 independent variable (IV) to 1 dependent variable (DV). IVs 1. Year of study IV = year 1, year 3 and MSc 2. STEM A-level IV = only 1, more than 1 3. Gender IV = Female, Male, Other DV CT Questionnaire general score for the between measure, and subsections scores for the within measure: 1) Attitude toward CT, 2) Knowledge about CT, 3) Skills. Research questions: a) Effect of academic year on CT skills Do year 3 and MSc students show more developed CT skills than year 1 students? (which year scores higher) b) Effect of previous educational attainment, specifically science education, on CT skills Do STEM subjects have an effect on psychology students’ CT skills development? (which STEM group scores higher?) c) Effect of gender on CT skills Does gender have a differential effect on psychology students’ CT skills? (which gender scores higher?) Participants: Healthy adults. First year, third year and MSc students will be recruited from the undergraduate psychology population at the University of Liverpool, UK. Sample: Regarding the sample size, I do not know how many participants will be needed because a) this is a new area of study and b) we are using a new questionnaire that includes our own questions and questions adapted from one reliable source book (Cottrell, 2017). Hence it is not possible to use our own previous data to perform a power calculation. Taken this into consideration though, we will try to gather as much data as we possibly can, trying to aim to a minimum of 50 participants in each year of study (50 year 1, 50 year 3, 50 MSc). Questionnaire: A Qualtrics questionnaire will starts with a demographics section and then it is divided into three parts: first part inquiries about the students understanding of CT and its instruction; second part presents the Self-evaluation questionnaire from Cottrell (2017), that assess the student’s CT attitudes and knowledge ; and third part is an argument exercise, adapted from Cottrell’s (2017) book, that will assess the students’ current skills and understanding of argument analysis.

This initial study will examine whether undertaking a psychology degree is concomitant with students’ improvement in CT skills when they are not explicitly taught CT. This is my first exploration of the subject, and the first study of this kind at the University of Liverpool, hence there is no previous data available that can be used to formulate appropriate, and evidence-based, predictions. However, based on the findings from previous research described in the proposal above, I would expect to find some level of difference among the variables: a) year 3 and MSc students will probably scores higher than year 1 students, and b) students who have studied more STEM subjects will probably score higher than students reporting only 1 STEM subject. Yet it is not possible to predict whether these differences, or any interaction, will actually be found and/or be significant. And regarding gender, it will probably be very difficult to find any meaningful and comparably significant effect given the usual gender imbalance found in psychology students populations, which is heavily female-skewed, and the same difficulty applies for considering possible interactions (O’Dea, 2018; Stewart-Williams, 2021)

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