How to Test for Critical Thinking Skills

 

Deciding which way to go can really alter your results. This is a map of a hiking trail near my home.

"The value of a college education is not the learning of facts, 

but the training of the mind to think." ~ Albert Einstein

 

You have an education but how does that make you prepared to think critically?  And how do employers that claim they want critical thinkers to evaluate that ability in candidates?

 

There are 4 elements to Critical Thinking:

• Observation
• Evaluation
• Application
• Conclusion

 

Observation

This is perhaps the most important element of critical thinking.  It involves not only what we see but also the other senses as well.  I am going to use the evaluation of a patient as my example here.  Let's say you are a nurse or paramedic and you are tasked with evaluating a patient.  You walk into the room and see the patient looking at you with wide eyes (like they had just seen a ghost).  Is that patient critical?  Well, it depends on a lot more than that.  There are a lot of other factors to consider. 

• Are they having trouble breathing? 
• Is their skin color normal? 
• Do you see blood, vomit or other fluids around them? 
• Are they alone? 

 

The bottom line is you need more information.  Your other senses may help with some of that information.  You may see them struggling to breathe or having sweat on their skin.  They may be pale etc.  All of that information will go into making a decision.

 

Evaluation

This is where you can separate Experts from Novices.  With all of the information that is available, how do you decide which information to use?  How do you decide which treatment path to start down?  What other relevant information do you need?  Do the various data line up with a treatment plan or do they contradict each other?

 

Application

How to proceed in some situations may depend on experience.  If there are conflicting data knowing which takes precedence for the situation is important.  To get that level of understanding and see how it fits into your treatment algorithm will depend on the number of times you have been in similar situations or seen similar cases.  A person suffering from an asthma attack looks a lot like a person suffering from a panic attack.  However, the treatment of the 2 situations can be completely different.  (And when you have treated a panic attack with the asthma treatment protocol you will quickly understand the difference!)

 

Conclusion

Once you have made your decision on which path to follow the last part of critical thinking is evaluating how you did.  This can be a little tricky because you will need to look at the decisions you made, not necessarily the outcomes.  You can get lucky and have the outcome be okay while the decision-making process was flawed.  For long term success in any career, you will not want to have to rely on luck to save you from poor decision making.

 

So how do we test for Critical Thinking Skills?

One way is to put people in situations and see how they respond.  With the ubiquity of computers and videos, this has become a much easier task.  We can create several scenarios, make changes to them, and have candidates be evaluated on the success criteria in a much more objective fashion than in the past.  Candidates can provide their rationale for the decisions they made, request additional data points, and that can be compared to the outcome.  The key to making these assessments valuable is having ambiguous situations where it tests the ability of the candidate to not only review observable data but also request additional data that is relevant to the situation that is not provided.  They should also be questioned as to why they are requesting additional information.  Because as important as it is to find information that reinforces the decision to proceed with a treatment plan, there also needs to be information gathered which reinforces the decision NOT to proceed with another treatment plan.