Critical Thinking in Political Science: Evidence from the Introductory Comparative Politics Course

ABSTRACT

Political Science programs have long seen part of their mission as the cultivation of “critical thinking” among their undergraduates. But what exactly does critical thinking mean in our Political Science courses? Can we foster critical thinking in our classes and, if so, how? This article, based on a yearlong systematic study of an introductory Comparative Politics course undertaken as part of a university-wide “Critical Thinking Project,” looks at these questions. In this article we consider how critical thinking can be defined, fostered and assessed in the introductory Comparative Politics course; the implications these may have for students' performance in other Political Science courses; and how students themselves view critical thinking. Our data suggests students define critical thinking broadly in accord with those definitions of teachers of Political Science, believe these skills were fostered in the introductory Comparative Politics course and are certain that they carry over into their academic experiences with upper-division Political Science courses and later life experiences more generally. Moreover, we argue here that the most important variable in fostering critical thinking skills in the introductory Comparative Politics course (and perhaps in all Political Science courses) is the development of students' ability to think as social scientists do and the opportunity to apply this thinking skill to concrete puzzles or problems from the real world of politics.

Keywords:

• scholarship of teaching and learning
• critical thinking
• assessment
• introductory course

The authors would like to thank our former colleague, Fred Monardi, for advice and help with the statistical analysis of our results. We would also like to thank Christian Cantir for help researching Political Science web sites.

Notes

Question 7: “POLS 103 has been redesigned to emphasize ‘critical thinking’ skills, including (although not limited to) the development of methodological skills in social science/political science through the Explorit workbook (such as framing hypotheses, operationalizing concepts, testing hypotheses, and interpreting the results of testing) as well as recognizing basic social science forms of argumentation (in various assigned articles). Given this, how well do you think POLS 103 prepared you–in terms of methodological or research skills–for POLS 200?

Question 9: “How well do you think POLS 103 prepared you–in terms of methodological skills (see above)–for POLS 206? Answer if applicable (i.e., if you have taken POLS 206).”

Question 11: “Overall, how effective was the emphasis on ‘Critical Thinking’ in POLS 103 in developing your critical thinking skills?

Question 12: “In the ‘real world’ with ‘real world’ applications–reading the newspaper, thinking about politics, discussing politics with your friends, in your job, etc.–how effective or helpful was POLS 103 and our emphasis on ‘Critical Thinking’?”

For an introduction to the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning, see inter alia, Bass (1999), Cambridge (1999), Hutchings et al. (2002), and Hutchings (1996; 2000).

Typing in “critical thinking, definition” on Google, for example, yielded 2,410,000 hits!

The authors defined critical thinking in Political Science as “the independent ability to take information and think about it in abstract and conceptual terms, to formulate and/or process arguments or theories using such conceptual abstractions, to analyze and assess the validity of these theories, and to link theories back to the world of empirical data.” As a kind of general consensus among the different members of the Critical Thinking Project, critical thinking was defined as “the ability to explicitly identify elements of thought and their relationships, and to assess the quality of one's own thinking and others' thinking. This is not a mysterious that which takes place in the recesses of the human brain, but a public activity that can be practiced, developed, assessed, and improved. In order to be meaningful and beneficial, critical thinking needs to be conducted purposefully, with an awareness of how it addresses the needs of self, other, and situation.”

We analyzed 72 departmental web sites from all regions of the United States, looking for key terms/concepts in these department's homepage mission statements. Other terms frequently cited as goals of undergraduate education in Political Science included “citizenship” (“civic responsibility,” “participation,” “being a good citizen,” “Being politically informed,” etc.); “Understanding” (“political understanding,” “political knowledge,” “comprehension,” etc.); and “Deep Thinking,” (“mental inquiry,” “systematic thought,” etc.)

For examples from the class, see Appendix 2.

For the rubric discussed here, see Appendix 1.

In fact, however, there was only one case in which there was a sharp difference between our separate assessments!

For examples from the class, see Appendix 3.

Since we wanted to measure both progress at the end of the semester as well as progress within the semester we thought that the t-test using the paired samples of exam 1-exam 2, exam 2-exam 3, and exam 1-exam 3 made more sense than using, for example, ANOVA.

For the questions asked in the focus groups, see Appendix 4.