Predicting Everyday Critical Thinking: A Review of Critical Thinking Assessments

Abstract

Our ability to think critically and our disposition to do so can have major implications for our everyday lives. Research across the globe has shown the impact of critical thinking on decisions about our health, politics, relationships, finances, consumer purchases, education, work, and more. This chapter will review some of that research. Given the importance of critical thinking to our everyday lives, the fair and unbiased assessment of critical thinking is useful for guiding educators in their classrooms, for the sake of self-improvement, and in employment decisions. This chapter will also review the psychometric properties of several critical thinking assessments, with a special emphasis on the everyday behaviors predicted by these assessments. The practical challenges faced by test adopters and future directions in the assessment of critical thinking will be discussed.