Gaining Ground: Toward the Development of Critical Thinking Skills in a Social Problems Course

Authors

Ada Haynes, Tennessee Tech UniversityFollow
Jacob Kelley, Auburn UniversityFollow
Andrea Arce-Trigatti, Tennessee Tech UniversityFollow

Abstract

The purpose of this article is to contribute to the scholarship of teaching and learning in sociology by examining a set of course redesign improvements made in a Social Problems course at the undergraduate level. These improvements center on increasing students’ critical thinking skills by integrating research-based, innovation-driven learning and student-centered strategies into a four-part course assessment redesign. Using a primarily case study approach, we examine quantitative data in the form of an interdisciplinary pre- and post- Critical thinking Assessment Test (CAT) from students enrolled in one iteration of the redesign for this particular course. Results from this analysis highlight the potential of these pedagogical improvements to foster the development of critical thinking skills and as an example of how assessment data can be used to guide further iterations of a course.

Creative Commons License

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 4.0 License.

Recommended Citation

Haynes, Ada; Kelley, Jacob; and Arce-Trigatti, Andrea (2024) "Gaining Ground: Toward the Development of Critical Thinking Skills in a Social Problems Course," International Journal for the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning: Vol. 18: No. 1, Article 10.
Available at: https://doi.org/10.20429/ijsotl.2024.180110