News

ISSN Number

2632-6779 (Print)  

2633-6898 (Online)

Abstracting/Indexing/Listing

Scopus

Ulrich’s Periodicals Directory (ProQuest)

MLA International Bibliography

MLA Directory of Periodicals

Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ)

QOAM (Quality Open Access Market)

British National Bibliography

WAC Clearinghouse Journal Listings

EBSCO Education

ICI Journals Master List

ERIH PLUS

CNKI Scholar

Gale-Cengage

WorldCat

Crossref

Baidu Scholar

British Library

J-Gate

ROAD

BASE

Publons

Google Scholar

Semantic Scholar

ORE Directory

TIRF

China National Center for Philosophy and Social Sciences Documentation

 

Home Journal Index 2023-1

An Evaluation of Critical Reflective Thinking Instruction and Assessment in a General Education Course

Download Full PDF

Julian Azfar
Sarah Yi Xuan Tan
National University of Singapore, Singapore


Abstract
Critical reflective thinking has been conceptualised as a means to apply “reflective judgment” in the application of knowledge and information (Dwyer et al., 2014) to understand complex situations (Korucu Kis & Kartal, 2019). While regarded to be an essential skill (Tsui, 2002), it has been posited as a difficult skill to teach in first-year higher education courses (Procter, 2020). This study aimed to examine the effectiveness of strategies employed in both lectures and tutorials to facilitate critical reflective thinking in a first-year general education course in Singapore. Students’ views on teaching methods and assessments were gathered through two anonymous feedback administered mid-(n=59) and at the end of the course (n=40). Two independent researchers thematically coded these responses according to the integrated critical thinking framework by Dwyer and colleagues (Dwyer et al., 2014), and reflected on the methods of teaching and assessing critical reflective thinking in the present paper. Through this discussion, we suggest that student feedback could play an important role in informing both the instruction and assessment of critical reflective thinking in a higher education setting. We leveraged on existing literature to provide recommendations to circumvent the barriers to critical reflective thinking raised by the students. This paper seeks to contribute towards bridging the divide between the expectations of students and those of teaching faculty (Schilling & Schilling, 1999) in the teaching and assessment of critical reflective thinking.


Keywords
Undergraduate, critical reflective thinking, feedback, instruction, assessment