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- Title
Examining the Exam: A Critical Look at The California Critical Thinking Skills Test.
- Authors
Fawkes, Don; O'Meara, Bill; Weber, Dave; Flage, Dan
- Abstract
This paper examines the content of The California Critical Thinking Skills Test (1990). This report is not a statistical review. Instead it brings under scrutiny the content of the exam. This content will be of interest to the general reader, because the issues range from logic to ethics to pedagogy, and to questions of evidential and epistemological support. Anyone interested in clear thought and expression will find these issues of significance. Although the exam has a number of strengths and has the clearest instructions of all the presently available Critical Thinking exams, the content of 9 of the exam’s 34 questions is defective, namely the content of questions 6, 7, 8, 19, 21, 23, 24, 29, and 33. These questions make errors in critical thinking. Hence, no statistical results pertaining to the administration of these questions to students can be acceptable. The remaining questions are acceptable as to content. But until the problems are corrected, those who may use the exam should remove the defective questions from test administration or from data collection and reporting. The scope of the exam also is quite limited, but this may be unavoidable for any instrument designed to be completed in about an hour. Further, the scores resulting from any such testing can be understood only as a measure of minimal competency (below which remediation likely is needed) for the skills tested, but not as an adequate measure of critical thinking.
- Subjects
EDUCATIONAL tests &; measurements; CRITICAL thinking; THOUGHT &; thinking; EDUCATION; RATING of students
- Publication
Science & Education, 2005, Vol 14, Issue 2, p117
- ISSN
0926-7220
- Publication type
Article
- DOI
10.1007/s11191-005-6181-4