Development of critical thinking in freshmen: The influence of research integration. Invited symposium of Flemish Forum for Educational Research Critical thinking and research integration: A fruitful marriage?

The empirical grounds for the assumed positive effect of research integration on the development of critical thinking (CT) are limited. Therefore, this study aims at empirically investigating differences in CT development between first year students in various programmes, and whether these differences in CT development can be attributed to differences in research integration practices within the programmes. The study compared three programmes on their research integration practices by means of interviews with teachers (N = 27). In addition, a discipline-general CT measure (Scipio) was administered twice to 124 first year students registered in those three programmes, to measure their CT development. The findings showed that programmes differ in the frequency of a diverse set of research integration approaches and research-related learning outcomes. A paired-samples t-test revealed that students improved in their CT. However relationships between differences in research integration and the development of CT could not be retrieved. The results caution for assuming simplistic relationships between research integration and development of CT. More clarity is needed on the effect of different research integration practices on student learning before research integration, as a unified concept, is recommended as a panacea.

Publication year:2014