A Course Designed to Improve Psychological Critical Thinking

Abstract

We developed a 1-credit freshman-level course designed to enhance psychological critical thinking. We based the new curriculum on Stanovich's (2004) text, with an emphasis on active learning and critically evaluating claims by applying scientific concepts. To assess the effectiveness of this course, we used a pretest–posttest design with a quasi-experimental control group. At posttest, students in the psychological science course showed greater improvement on psychological critical thinking than students in a comparison group. Therefore, we recommend the techniques used in this instructional intervention to help college students improve their critical thinking skills.