IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/jfr/ijhe11/v2y2013i3p139.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Critical Thinking in College Freshmen: The Impact of Secondary and Higher Education

Author

Listed:
  • Marie Evens
  • An Verburgh
  • Jan Elen

Abstract

Critical thinking helps students to confront a multitude of challenges they will face in their carreers and personal lives. It is therefore an important task of higher education to promote students’ critical thinking. However, students do not enter higher education with a blank page. Background characteristics of students are important in developing instruction. The present study investigates the influence of an important background characteristic, namely students’ secondary education, and their current higher education programme on critical thinking in the first year of higher education. The critical thinking of college freshmen was measured by the SCIPIO, a test consisting of both constructed response items and forced choice items. The results indicate that (1) the growth in critical thinking during the first year of higher education is on average small, (2) students with a background in general secondary education have higher entrance performances and show more growth during the first year than students with other educational backgrounds, (3) critical thinking plays a role in the educational choice that students make when they enter higher education, and (4) students in a professional bachelor programme grow more in CT during the first year of higher education than students in an academic bachelor programme.

Suggested Citation

  • Marie Evens & An Verburgh & Jan Elen, 2013. "Critical Thinking in College Freshmen: The Impact of Secondary and Higher Education," International Journal of Higher Education, Sciedu Press, vol. 2(3), pages 139-139, August.
    • Handle: RePEc:jfr:ijhe11:v:2:y:2013:i:3:p:139
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.sciedupress.com/journal/index.php/ijhe/article/download/3002/1876
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://www.sciedupress.com/journal/index.php/ijhe/article/view/3002
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Lisa Tsui, 2002. "Fostering Critical Thinking through Effective Pedagogy," The Journal of Higher Education, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 73(6), pages 740-763, November.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Preeti Jaiswal, 2019. "Using Constructive Alignment to Foster Teaching Learning Processes," English Language Teaching, Canadian Center of Science and Education, vol. 12(6), pages 1-10, June.
    2. Siti Mujanah & Tri Ratnawati & Sumiati Sumiati & Rohani Mohd & Nor Intan Adha Hafid, 2023. "Analysis of critical thinking: potential variable differences between Malaysia and Indonesia," Technium Social Sciences Journal, Technium Science, vol. 43(1), pages 160-172, May.
    3. Wisam Chaleila & Iman Garra-Alloush, 2019. "The Most Frequent Errors in Academic Writing: A Case of EFL Undergraduate Arab Students in Israel," English Language Teaching, Canadian Center of Science and Education, vol. 12(7), pages 120-120, July.
    4. Schendel, Rebecca, 2015. "Critical thinking at Rwanda's public universities: Emerging evidence of a crucial development priority," International Journal of Educational Development, Elsevier, vol. 42(C), pages 96-105.
    5. D. Hallas & J. B. Fernandez & N. G. Herman & A. Moursi, 2015. "Identification of Pediatric Oral Health Core Competencies through Interprofessional Education and Practice," Nursing Research and Practice, Hindawi, vol. 2015, pages 1-7, January.

    More about this item

    JEL classification:

    • R00 - Urban, Rural, Regional, Real Estate, and Transportation Economics - - General - - - General
    • Z0 - Other Special Topics - - General

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:jfr:ijhe11:v:2:y:2013:i:3:p:139. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Sciedu Press (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/cepflch.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.