Abstract

MANASSERO-MAS, María Antonia  and  VAZQUEZ-ALONSO, Ángel. Assessment of Thinking Skills in Secondary Education: Psychometric Properties of a Culture-fair Instrument. Rev. Fac. Cienc. Tecnol. [online]. 2023, n.53, pp.14-41.  Epub Jan 02, 2023. ISSN 0121-3814.  https://doi.org/10.17227/ted.num53-15830.

Teaching thinking skills is a growing demand for educational systems due to its transversal role regarding competencies and learning and its functionality for persons and jobs in current knowledge societies. In psychological research, these skills are conceptualized as critical thinking, where teaching programs and some assessment tests, mainly aimed at adults, have been created. This study displays a culture-fair critical thinking assessment instrument, which addresses young people and includes figurative components, unlike other evaluation tools that are focused on specific learning. The instrument assesses four thinking skills, deduction, assumptions, sequences, and decision-making, and aims to students of secondary education (15-16 years). Its empirical validation considers students’ school marks and the comparison between the participants’ two grades, as external criteria, together with other procedures. The results show the psychometric characteristics of the assessment instrument for diagnosing students thinking skills; the most important findings are the significant and high correlations between school marks and thinking skills and the instrument discrimination for the differential diagnosis of two successive educational grades. Further, the validity and reliability of the figurative items are better than those of the verbal items, despite the latter being drawn from standardized instruments. Finally, the educational importance of creating a culture fair critical thinking assessment instrument and a common language that allows the development of the teaching thinking skills and their culture-free assessment within the classroom; further, some revision proposals for improving the instrument validity and reliability are suggested.

Keywords : critical thinking; skill assessment; validity; reliability.

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