An approach to teaching critical thinking across disciplines using performance tasks with a common rubric

While there is large body of literature discussing critical thinking in higher education, there is a less substantial body of scholarship exploring methods for teaching it. There are several tests being used nationally to assess critical thinking. Rather than just assessing critical thinking, we explored the use of performance tasks with a common rubric as a way of raising student and instructor awareness of the tools and practices involved in critical thinking. In this exploratory study, faculty in three different fields, Teacher Education, Social Sciences, and Life Sciences, designed performance tasks in a problem-based learning environment that were appropriate to their disciplines and aligned to the skills of critical thinking. Although the tasks differed for each cohort, they were structured similarly and explicitly taught using a common rubric with corrective feedback, aiding both the development and assessment of critical thinking. Students completed a pre-post assessment on a critical thinking assessment test. Some cohorts evidenced measurable improvements in critical thinking skills with less discernable improvement among other cohorts. Qualitative results tended to confirm the value of student participation in rigorous and challenging performance tasks. We conclude that using performance tasks with corrective feedback on a common rubric may be useful in many fields. We further suggest that regular use of performance tasks in a problem-based learning environment can contribute to the transferability of critical thinking skills and dispositions.