The Critical Thinking Abilities of College Seniors: The Case of Foreign Languages Students at Addis Ababa University
No Thumbnail Available
Date
2005-06
Authors
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
Addis Ababa University
Abstract
The study mainly explored the extent to which th e critical thinking s kill s and
dispositions of senior students of the Foreign Languages Department at Addis Ababa
University were developed. It a lso examined the inte rrela tionship be tween critical
thinking skills, c ritical thinking d is positions, and academic achievement of the
students as measured in GPA. An a ttempt was also made to see if academic
achievement had any impact on the critical thinking s kills and dispos itions of the
students.
A total of 70 seniors who h ad been trained to be English language teachers
participa ted in the study. The California Critical Thinking Skills Test (CCTST) and
Californi a Cri tical Thinking Dis pos itions Inventory (CCTDl) were used to measure the
pa rti cipants' cri tical thinking skills and dispositions respectively.
Results provided an evidence of the students' poor cri tical thinking a bilitie s, but their
pos itive endorsement toward critical thinking. Moreover, critical thinking skills were
founei to hm'e no s ignifi cant relat ionship with critical thinking di s pos itions and
academic achievemen t. However, their dis posi tions toward c rit ical thi nking showed
s ignifi cant positive relationsh ip with th ei r academic achievement (GPA) . Hi gh " n . ~ 10\\'
achievers were also found to differ s ign ificantly in their critical thinking d ispositions.
but not in their s kill s. This gave an evidence for the s ignifican t impact academic
achievement had on c ritical th in king d is pos itions . The stude nts' weak criti ca l thinking
a bil ities, the insignificHnt re lationsh ip between their c riti cal thinking skil ls '1I1e!
acad clnic ~lc hi l'\'C ln clll , ; 111<1 the negligible impact achicn:rn cnl hild 011 their criti c<il
thinking sk il ls 1l1ight all incii c<: lt c th .. 11 the college c lI rri('ul u ln h:1<1 Ilot gi v('n ;ld('qu ;.JI( ยท
r()(, lI ~ 10 tlil' core cogniti" l' skills ill\'o]vc c! ill c riti ('; 1i thinki ng.
Description
Keywords
inte rrela tionship be tween critical thinking skills, critical thinking dispositions