Background: Higher education institutions and universities aim to provide students with a range of transferable skills that enable them to become more thoughtful and effective employees, citizens, and consumers. One of these skills is critical thinking. Objective: The aim of the present research was to examine whether taking a psychology degree is…

Multiple studies have demonstrated the efficacy of various psychological critical thinking interventions. The current study tests a novel technique for improving introductory psychology students' ability to identify and evaluate methodological concepts in real-life media by prompting them to analyze secondary source news and blog articles.…

The ability to distinguish between correlational and causal claims is core knowledge for scientific literacy. News reports of scientific research prominently feature these claims. Thus, this knowledge has significant real-world application, and distinguishing among claims is critical to making sense of the reported research. We constructed an…

Critical thinking is a valued educational outcome; however, little is known about whether psychology courses, especially ones such as research methods courses that might be expected to promote critical thinking skills, actually improve them. We compared the acquisition of critical thinking skills for analyzing psychological arguments in 3 groups…

We describe the development and evolution of an interdisciplinary introductory course in psychology and sociology. Such a course benefits students by encouraging a wider view of the social sciences and interdisciplinary critical thinking. The challenges of a combined course include reduced content for each discipline, the selection of appropriate…

Compares skill-building exercises to preparing for a quiz in a traditional manner in order to determine which activity better encourages the generalization of course material to daily life. Finds that students who participated in the skill-building exercises performed better at applying concepts than students who studied for a quiz on identical…

Describes a test used to assess the critical thinking ability of psychology majors. Asserts that the ability to engage in psychological critical thinking separates psychology majors from other students and provides evidence demonstrating that senior psychology majors scored higher on the test than students of other majors and introductory…

Presents an interview with Claudio S. Hutz, who is dean of Instituto de Psicologia at Universidade Federal do Rio Grande do Sul in Porto Alegre, Brazil, where he has been teaching psychology since 1977. Discusses topics such as teaching psychology in Brazil and developing critical thinking skills. (CMK)

How classroom debates can be used in a developmental psychology course to teach students about controversial issues and to help them improve their thinking and oral communications skills is described. Evaluations indicate that students consider debates to be a positive learning experience. (Author/RM)

The proliferation of information on the Internet introduces new challenges for educators. Although the Internet can provide quick and easy access to a wealth of information, it has virtually no quality control. Consequently, the Internet has rendered faculty more essential than ever as teachers of the analytic and evaluative skills students need…