Improving psychological critical thinking in Australian university students

This study tested the psychological critical thinking attributes of students undertaking an Australian Psychology Accreditation Council (APAC) approved course. It also assessed an instructional based teaching practice designed to improve psychological critical thinking skills. The participants were 84 second year and 60 fourth year psychology students enrolled at the University of Western Sydney, Australia. Participants were tested at the beginning and end of the semester with the Psychological Critical Thinking Exam (PCTE) ( Lawson, 1999 ) and only the second year group received specific critical thinking instructions. The results revealed a significant (p < .001) increase in mean PCTE score for the second year group, but no significant increase for the fourth year group. These results confirm the value of the instructional based teaching practice and support the graduate attributes expected by the APAC.     

“I'm Having a Little Struggle With This,Can You Help Me Out?”: Examining Impacts and Processes of a Social Capital Intervention for First‐Generation College Students

Social capital plays a key role in college and career success, and research indicates that a dearth of on‐campus connections contributes to challenges first‐generation college students face in effectively navigating the college environment. This study investigates a novel intervention that focuses on the development of skills and attitudes to empower first‐generation college students to cultivate social capital and on‐campus connections during the transition to college. A mixed methods, explanatory design was used to evaluate impacts and processes of the intervention among first‐generation college students (n = 164) in the context of an ethnically diverse, urban, public university in the Northeast. Results indicated that students who participated in the intervention demonstrated improved attitudes and behaviors around seeking support in college, closer relationships with instructors, and higher GPAs at the end of their first year in college. These results suggest the potential benefits of a relatively scalable approach to supporting the needs of first‐generation college students.     

Halpern Critical Thinking Assessment Predicts Real‐World Outcomes of Critical Thinking

Although educators and employers agree that it is important to assess the critical thinking skills of students and prospective employees, few assessments have been externally validated with real‐world outcomes of critical thinking. The Halpern Critical Thinking Assessment (HCTA) is a reliable measure of critical thinking skills and has been validated with multiple populations and measures of academic success. This study explored whether scores on the HCTA predicted real‐world outcomes in a wide range of domains, such as education, health, law, finance, and interpersonal relationships. Community adults (n = 50), state university students (n = 48), and community college students (n = 35) in the USA completed the HCTA and a behavioral inventory of life events. Overall, those with higher critical thinking scores reported fewer negative life events than those with lower critical thinking scores, r (131) = ?.38, p < .001. Implications for education are discussed. Copyright © 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Challenges and Gifts of Teaching Luther in a Lutheran College1

This article examines what can be learned from teaching Luther to American college students. It reviews several ways in which college students benefit from studying Luther. The article suggests that identifying the “operating principles” in Luther's thought can help students more carefully discern the contemporary significance of his thought. After discussing some challenges encountered when teaching Luther to college students, the article ends with reflections on the theological significance of the college context. While Luther's discovery of a gracious God remains central, the college setting promotes a retrieval of several broader themes in Luther's thinking that have often been neglected by Lutherans: ongoing creation, wisdom, the Bible as “torah,” the suffering of God, and societal reform.     

Multidimensional Future Time Perspective as Moderators of the Relationships between Suicide Motivation,Preparation, and Its Predictors

The moderating impact of future time perspective (FTP) components on the relationships of hopelessness, depressive symptoms, and psychache with suicide motivation and preparation was investigated. In a sample of first year college students (N = 87) recruited on the basis of elevated suicide ideation and depressive symptoms, future thinking, optimism, and future connectedness attenuated the relationship of suicide motivation with depressive symptoms and hopelessness. Future thinking moderated the impact of depressive symptoms on suicide preparation. No moderating effects were found for psychache. This study demonstrates that FTP may buffer against the worst effects of salient suicide predictors among high‐risk students.     

Development of Self-regulation Abilities as Predictors of Psychological Adjustment Across the First Year of College

The first year of college can be a difficult developmental transition for many students, although it is also a time of personal growth and maturation. Little is known about how self-regulation abilities mature across this transition, nor whether maturation predicts better adjustment across the first year. We investigated the development of three self-regulation abilities (constructive thinking, emotional regulation, and mastery) and relations of this development to adjustment (depression, anxiety, and stress) in a sample of 162 first-year students. Data were gathered at two time points: just prior to their attendance at a large public northeastern university and then again at the end of the first year. Results indicated that, on average, students did not increase in their constructive thinking or emotion regulation abilities and actually decreased in their sense of mastery. In bivariate analyses, increases in all three self-regulation abilities were related to better adjustment across the year, effects that remained when examined simultaneously in multiple regression analyses. Further, analyses showed that change in self-regulation abilities, rather than mean levels per se, predicted changes in adjustment over the first year. Implications for interventions to assist students in the development of these self-regulation skills in regard to adjustment are discussed.     

Creativity versus conscientiousness: which is a better predictor of student performance?

This paper examines the extent to which the incremental validity of creative thinking (over and above personality) in the prediction of academic performance may be a function of assessment methods. British university students (N = 307) completed the Alternate Uses Test and Big Five personality inventory at the beginning of the first academic year. Students' academic performance was assessed throughout a 4‐year period via written exams, continuous assessment (tutored seminars) and a supervised dissertation in the final year. Creative thinking was more related to final dissertation marks than to exam and continuous assessment performance (which were associated with Conscientiousness, rather than creative thinking). A follow‐up questionnaire on preferences for different assessment methods revealed that creative thinking was positively related to preference for viva voce (oral) exams, group projects and final dissertation, but negatively associated with preferences for multiple‐choice and essay‐type exams, as well as continuous assessment. Implications are discussed with regard to educational settings, in particular assessment methods. Copyright © 2005 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

The Familiar Made Strange: An Orientation to Biblical Study in Vancouver

Abstract. This paper originated in a Wabash‐funded colloquium organized by Richard Ascough and Leif Vaage, on the theme: “Teaching the Bible for Leadership in the United Church of Canada.” Professors teaching biblical studies at United Church seminaries and theological schools met over three years to share pedagogy, things that have worked and not worked in the classroom, changes in teaching Bible over the years, and the role of context in shaping teaching. In the final year they presented their philosophy of teaching to one another; this paper arose from that meeting. The paper describes an orientation to teaching New Testament Studies at Vancouver School of Theology, a theologically liberal school in the context of Vancouver, Canada – paradoxically one of the most secular and multi‐religious cities in the world. Guided by Denise Levertov's poem, “Overland to the Islands,” it explores the promises and challenges of biblical study grounded in the material reality of the world, amidst older students who bear the marks of secularity, who are impatient with traditional orthodoxies, and who long more for life before the grave than after it. Adopting ideas from Roland Barthes, Paul Ricoeur, and Julia Kristeva, it explores teaching the Bible in a way that promotes the polyvalence, strangeness, and irreducibility of biblical texts, in order to move students away from exegetical and hermeneutical theories content with recovering authorial intent and reconstructing historical origins as the primary tasks of biblical study. The paper describes a model of teaching that celebrates the materiality of the New Testament together with its textual, social, theological, and historical complexity, as well as a tradition‐constituted means of apprehending the world, and which treasures students as living texts who in the course of interpretation awaken ever‐fresh meanings relevant to their own communal and personal identities.     

Teaching Exodus as “Problem Text”

This essay explores how one might use the “problem” of the hardening of Pharaoh's heart as a learning opportunity in the classroom. The author identifies two pedagogical aims: (1) cultivating more sophisticated, critical readers of the Bible; and (2) helping students reflect on the contextual nature of interpretation. The essay discusses in some detail various ways of teaching the text, including an exercise in close reading, examination of sources, and a selective study of the history of interpretation. It also explores various lessons to be learned from these exercises, and addresses applicability of the approaches to other teaching contexts. An earlier version of this paper was prepared for the “Problem Texts” group of the consultation “Teaching the Bible in the 21st Century,” held at the Wabash Center in Crawfordsville, Indiana.     

Teaching Critical Thinking without (Much) Writing: Multiple‐Choice and Metacognition

In this essay, I explore an exam format that pairs multiple‐choice questions with required rationales. In a space adjacent to each multiple‐choice question, students explain why or how they arrived at the answer they selected. This exercise builds the critical thinking skill known as metacognition, thinking about thinking, into an exam that also engages students in the methods of the academic study of religion by asking them to compare familiar excerpts and images. As a form of assessment, the exam provides a record of students' knowledge and their thought processes, and as a learning strategy, it encourages students to examine the thought processes they use to understand religion(s) and its many manifestations.     

Increase in counselling communication skills after basic and advanced microskills training

Background Mastering counselling communication skills is one of the requirements that lead to the diploma of a registered European psychologist. The microcounseling method proves to be effective in training these skills. Aim Research into the effectiveness of the microcounseling method often reports overall effect sizes only. The aim of this study was to investigate the adequate use of separate counselling communication skills (seven basic skills: minimal encouragements; asking questions; paraphrasing; reflection of feeling; concreteness; summarizing; and situation clarification and five advanced skills: advanced accurate empathy; confrontation; positive relabelling; examples of one's own; and directness) after respectively a basic and an advanced training in these skills. Sample Participants were 583 first year or second year bachelor students in psychology who took the counselling communication skills progress test (CSPT). The participants are divided in a group of freshmen, who had not received any training in counselling communication skills; first year students, who had received a training in basic skills; second year students who had followed a training in advanced skills and a control group. Method A between‐subject design, a within‐subject design and a pre‐test–post‐test‐control group design were used to examine the scores on these skills. Results Seven basic skills and four advanced skills had large effect sizes. One advanced skill had a moderate effect size. Conclusio The microcounseling method is very effective on the level of separate microskills. However, students perform better on the basic skills than on the advanced skills. More training seems to be needed in the latter to achieve the same level of mastery.     

Taken with Surprise: Critical Incidents in Teaching

Abstract. This collection of essays tackles thorny questions related to critical incidents in teaching. By using different pedagogical methods and techniques, each author provokes creative thinking about how to address specific concerns common to teaching. The authors demonstrate that the teaching and learning process must make room for – if not celebrate – the surprises that happen not only to the students, but to the teachers as well. The discussion of critical incidents helps to promote reflection on teaching practice and prompt insights into the intricate dynamics shaping the increasingly diverse learning community. Each individual essay is accompanied by reflection questions that can be used to spark conversation among colleagues and/or prompt further personal reflection on teaching and learning.     

Psychological types of male and female Bible College students in England

A sample of 278 male and 213 female Bible College students in England completed Form G (Anglicized) of the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI). The data demonstrated clear preferences for introversion over extraversion, for sensing over intuition, and for judging over perceiving among both male and female Bible College students. Among females there was also a clear preference for feeling over thinking. The two predominant types among female Bible College students emerged as ISFJ (23%) and ESFJ (17%). The two predominant types among male Bible college students emerged as ISTJ (15%) and ISFJ (13%).     

Doing It Differently: Unleashing Student Creativity

Student assignments and assessment – is there life beyond the ten‐page essay? Drawing on the theory of multiple intelligences and experience with an assignment in which students were asked to address course content in anything but an essay, the author considers the challenges and virtues of a creative format that does not rely exclusively on linguistic intelligence. The process, presentations, and evaluative approach employed in an assignment that called upon student creativity in a “Women and the Bible” course are described, and pedagogical and practical considerations explored. The analysis of a particularly memorable student submission reveals layers of complexity seldom achieved in a conventional essay format.     

From Sole Learning to Soul Learning

Abstract. Is it effective or even possible to teach an introductory course in religious studies that not only provides first‐year university students with the fundamental vocabulary, concepts, and critical tools of religious inquiry but also invites and stimulates the transformation of the religious imagination? In what kind of teaching and learning method could the process of personal transformation occur and how might one assess it? These are the questions that led to an experiment in teaching religion the objective of which was to prepare beginning students for the academic approach to religion and, at the same time, transmit the experience of learning as an embodied process that engages personal narrative within a community context. This essay is based on a three‐year project that has made considerable progress in meeting these goals and answering these questions. (Supplementary materials for this essay are available on the Wabash Center for Teaching and Learning in Theology and Religion web site http://www.wabashcenter.wabash.edu/journal/baldwin.html .)     

Teaching the Material and Teaching the Students: Reflections on Introductory Courses for Non‐Majors

Teaching a required introductory Bible course to non‐majors at a church‐related college presents a number of pedagogical challenges. When considering how to teach such a course in the context of concerns common to the liberal arts, I find myself reflecting on authority. My thoughts on the teaching of this course in my own context are organized around authority understood as a developmental issue, an educational issue, and a religious issue. In each case, I seek to use my discipline and the primary and secondary materials of the course as occasions for the development of capacities that will contribute to the life of students as critical thinkers, creative problem‐solvers, and responsible global citizens.     

Effects of a ‘Learn to Think’ intervention programme on primary school students

Background. Methods for teaching thinking may be described as out‐of‐context or infusion. Both approaches have potential to raise students’ general cognitive processing ability and so raise academic achievement, but each has disadvantages. Aims. To describe and evaluate a theory‐based learn to think (LTT) curriculum for primary school students, which draws on the strengths of both out‐of‐context and infusion approaches. Sample. One‐hundred and sixty‐six students in three classes of Grade 1 (6+ years old), Grade 2 (7+ years old), and Grade 3 (8+ years old) in a primary school in Shanxi province, China, randomly ascribed to experimental (90) and control (76) groups. Methods. All students were pre‐tested for non‐verbal intelligence and academic achievement. Experimental students followed the LTT curriculum (one activity every 2 weeks) for 4 school years. All were post‐tested on three occasions for thinking ability and four times for academic achievement. Results. Grade 1 and Grade 2 students showed effects of LTT from 1 year after their start and increasing: on thinking ability d= .78–1.45; on Chinese d= .68–1.07; on maths .58–.87. Grade 3 students showed effects from 6 months after their start: on thinking ability .90–1.37; Chinese .77–1.32; maths .65–1.29. The effects were concentrated in students in the middle band of initial ability. Conclusions. A curriculum for teaching thinking based on a structured theoretical model that combines elements of out‐of‐context and infusion methods has been shown to have long‐term far transfer effects on students’ thinking ability and academic achievement. More work is needed to meet the needs of a wider range of abilities.     

Theological Educators,Technology and the Path Ahead

Abstract. Digital technology offers a host of opportunities and challenges for theological education. In this essay the author considers possible futures for theological education through creative uses of technology. The first half of the essay identifies five areas in which theological educators have had to gain technology skills in the last several years: 1. Individual facility with a personal computer; 2. Functioning capably in a connected world; 3. Information literacy for research and ministry; 4. Technology for face‐to‐face instruction; and 5. Technology for asynchronous teaching and learning. The second half of the essay identifies the forces that will likely drive technology learning for theological educators in the coming few years: 1. The pressure to meet student expectations; 2. The pressure to enrich the classroom experience by engaging the visual learner; 3. The pressure to enhance the traditional course through richer pedagogical strategies available with technology; and 4. The pressure to offer distance programs.     

Personality traits and critical thinking skills in college students: empirical tests of a two-factor theory

The two-factor theory defines critical thinking skills as a combined effect of cognitive abilities and personality dispositions. Although the available research supports the association between critical thinking and measures of cognitive ability, the specific traits contained in the dispositional factor have not been clearly identified through empirical research. In Study 1,101 undergraduate students completed the Watson-Glaser Critical Thinking Appraisal (WGCTA), three subtests of the Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale-Third Edition, and the revised NEO Personality Inventory. Hierarchical multiple regression analyses showed that Openness to Experience scores accounted for significant incremental variance in WGCTA scores beyond that accounted for by Similarities subtest scores. In Study 2, similar analyses of data from 105 students also showed significant incremental effects for Openness to Experience, even after more variance in the cognitive factor was accounted for by the Verbal Comprehension Index. Implications of these findings for the enhancement of critical thinking skills in college students are discussed.