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Many assessment experts believe it is essential to develop faculty-driven assessment tools in order to engage faculty in meaningful assessment that can improve student learning. Tennessee Technological University (TTU) has been involved in an extended effort during the last ten years to develop, refine, and nationally disseminate an instrument to assess critical thinking that meets this criterion. The Critical Thinking Assessment test (CAT) was developed by faculty from a wide variety of institutions and disciplines, with guidance from their colleagues in the cognitive/learning sciences and assessment.
These faculty identified a core set of skills they believed to be important components of critical thinking across disciplines (see text box below). They then guided the development of questions to assess those skills, which would be scored by an institution's own teaching corps. The extensive involvement of faculty in all phases of the instrument development and deployment has resulted in an assessment tool that engages them in meaningful assessment, helps them understand student weaknesses, and encourages discussion of methods to improve student learning.
Barry Stein co-directors of the Center for Assessment and Improvement of Learning (www.CriticalThinkingTest.org) at Tennessee Tech University, where Stein is also a professor of psychology and Haynes a professor of sociology. The Critical Thinking Assessment Test was developed with support from the National Science Foundation TUES (CCLI) Division (under grants 0404911, 0717654, and 1022789). However, the opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this article are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Science Foundation.
Ada Haynes co-directors of the Center for Assessment and Improvement of Learning (www.CriticalThinkingTest.org) at Tennessee Tech University, where Stein is also a professor of psychology and Haynes a professor of sociology. The Critical Thinking Assessment Test was developed with support from the National Science Foundation TUES (CCLI) Division (under grants 0404911, 0717654, and 1022789). However, the opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this article are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Science Foundation.
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