Stimulating critical thinking in higher education

Abstract

Critical thinking as an ideal of higher education is particularly important in the education of prospective teachers, who are expected to be critical thinkers capable of teaching others to think critically. Critical thinking is a complex and multidimensional concept encompassing a broad range of abilities and dispositions. Different approaches to critical thinking instruction are rooted in different understandings of the concept. Authors tend to debate the relative merits of three approaches: a separate module aimed at developing general critical thinking abilities, critical thinking instruction integrated into existing courses, or a combination of the two. A Likert-type scale was used to elicit the attitudes to the promotion of critical thinking in education of a sample of 539 pedagogy and education students of the University of Banja Luka. Factor analysis identified four ways of stimulating critical thinking in higher education: meaningful learning, thought-provoking questions, exploratory teaching and learning strategies, and stimulating practice. The results indicate that most students believe critical thinking is best promoted through meaningful learning in the classroom, while exploratory teaching and learning strategies are least cited. Differences were identified between students of different study programs and different years of study. The research findings indicate that there is a need for designing new models of critical thinking stimulation while taking into account different study programs, years of study and students' needs in terms of their future careers in education.