Involvement of critical thinking education in university studies: a qualitative research

The current research addresses interesting and still mostly neglected question of how introductory philosophical disciplines (such as “Introduction to philosophy”, “Introduction to ethics” etc.) affects students’ comprehension of the concept of critical thinking which is one of the most important descriptive and normative notions in contemporary education. Addressing this issue we formulated following tasks. First, to outline a theoretical framework of the research by introducing models of critical thinking that are relevant in contemporary education. Second, to discover and compare undergraduate students’ understanding of critical thinking before and after the completion of their philosophy classes. To complete the first task, the common methods of literature review (scoping, analysis, synthesis) were applied. The second task was completed by means of empirical (qualitative) research. Actual sample of current research consists of 15 undergraduates (first year) students from study program “Physical education and sports” in Lithuanian Sports University (LSU). The method of semi-structured interview was used in the current research. Participants were asked to give elaborated answers to 10 questions prepared in advance, as well as a range of additional questions which appeared to be relevant in the course of the interview. The participants were interviewed twice: the first time before the beginning of their philosophy classes (module “Philosophy of education”), and the second time after their completion. Our research leads to two conclusions. The first (conceptual) conclusion is that despite a great diversity of definitions and theoretical models of critical thinking the underling idea remains the same, namely, that of reflectivity, a general ability to discern different prospects of actions and to associate particular action with initial motives (needs, goals). The second (empirical) conclusion is that philosophical classes, as a kind of educational intervention, makes the idea of reflectivity more articulated in students’ conceptions of critical thinking.