This session was about developing critical thinking in undergraduate students. Students and staff cannot describe this well but say things like I know it when I see it.

Kuhn (1999) said there are different stages but students should arrive at evaluation at the top end of skills by the time they arrive at University. However students are often not there and so they wanted to look at how to get students to different stages. In the literature there is a lot of information about assessing critical thinking and tools but no good theoretical frameworks.

Kuhn’s (1999) framework had three levels:

• Meta strategic knowing – managing, selecting, monitoring strategies
• Metacognitive knowing – expressing what I know and how
• Epistemological knowing – understanding knowledge and knowing how anyone knows.

Kuhn’s work was around children and not adults but some relation can be drawn.

The speaker then focused on how critical thinking is viewed by cognitive evolution. Critical thinking is an evolved mind ability that arises from brain structures. More cranial volume leads to millions more neurons with connections and qualitative changes do occur in the brain during one’s lifetime and the process does not stop unless we stop unless we stop learning.

Kuhn’s further work looks at what students do in two further areas. So:

Realist to absolutist – students are unable to express their knowledge or use critical thinking. Students prepare their assessments as tutors tell them too rather than as a paper scientifically written. There is a need to create assessments that proliferate neural connections through complex reading/writing, expose them to the fact that theories can be wrong, reveal the possibility of false belief, require them to mix domains of knowledge and tell them this is what critical thinking is.

Absolutist to multiplist – students begin to express the source of their knowledge, begin to use critical thinking, can identify contributions and limitations of theories. Knowledge is still a set of judgements. Create assessments with more reading/writing, expose students to how theories are developed, require new associations of knowledge, try to use own theory and then share as many views as possible then they can pick one thing about theory.

Multiplist to evaluative – students think knowledge is indirectly accessible and believe opinions are equally right and abandon critical thinking, they can identify contributions and limitations of theory. They read more but change what they do rather than what they learn. Get them to generate their own knowledge but then grading wok is difficult it becomes unique work. You have to grade the process rather than the outcome.

The conclusions of this work I that getting students to evaluative stage is the most difficult to achieve. The process of change can be identified but not all students will achieve this stage.