Teaching Critical Thinking
N.G. Holmes, Carl E. Wieman, and D.A. Bonn

TL;DR
This study demonstrates that repeated practice with data-based decision making and feedback in physics labs significantly enhances students' critical thinking, model evaluation, and experimental reasoning skills, with lasting effects.
Contribution
It introduces a structured approach for teaching quantitative critical thinking through repeated data analysis and feedback, showing its effectiveness in physics education.
Findings
Experimental students were 12 times more likely to improve their methods.
Experimental students were 4 times more likely to identify model limitations.
Enhanced reasoning persisted into subsequent courses.
Abstract
The ability to make decisions based on data, with its inherent uncertainties and variability, is a complex and vital skill in the modern world. The need for such quantitative critical thinking occurs in many different contexts, and while it is an important goal of education, that goal is seldom being achieved. We argue that the key element for developing this ability is repeated practice in making decisions based on data, with feedback on those decisions. We demonstrate a structure for providing suitable practice that can be applied in any instructional setting that involves the acquisition of data and relating that data to scientific models. This study reports the results of applying that structure in an introductory physics lab course. Students in an experimental condition were repeatedly instructed to make and act on quantitative comparisons between datasets, and between data and…
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