Identifying obstacles to transfer of critical thinking skills

Abstract

This study investigated whether unsuccessful transfer of critical thinking (CT) would be due to recognition, recall, or application problems (cf. three-step model of transfer). In two experiments (laboratory: N = 196; classroom: N = 104), students received a CT-skills pretest (including learning, near transfer, and far transfer items), CT-instructions, practice problems, and a CT-skills posttest. On the posttest transfer items, students either (1) received no support, (2) received recognition support, (3) were prompted to recall acquired knowledge, or (4) received recall support. Results showed that CT could be fostered through instruction and practice: we found learning, near transfer, and (albeit small) far transfer performance gains and reduced test-taking time. There were no significant differences between the four support conditions, however, suggesting that the difficulty of transfer of CT-skills lies in problems with application/mapping acquired knowledge onto new tasks. Additionally, exploratory results on free recall data suggested suboptimal recall can be a problem as well.