Recension d ouvrages / Book Review Jan Sobocan and Leo Groarke with Ralph H. Johnson and Frederick S. Ellett, Jr. (Eds.). (2009). Critical Thinking Education and Assessment: Can Higher Order Thinking be Tested? London, ON: The Althouse Press. 355 pages. ISBN: 978 0 920354 66 7 (paper) Laurie ann Hellsten, associate professor, Department of Educational Psychology and Special Education, College of Education, University of Saskatchewan Critical Thinking Education and Assessment: Can Higher Order Thinking Be Tested? is a provocative text. As Michael Scriven states in his opening line of the Foreword, Critical thinking is one of that elite group of educational values that everyone agrees should be promoted, and also agrees that they are not adequately taught at the moment (p. xiii). According to the editors, the book examines topics at the intersection of what is becoming a widespread commitment to the idea that critical thinking should be the central goal of education and international debates about testing and educational accountability (p. 4). The editors argue that if critical thinking becomes and/or remains a central goal of education, then the assessment and testing of critical thinking is especially significant. However, the authors put forth a number of challenges to teaching and assessing critical thinking including a lack of a universal definition of critical thinking, conflicting approaches to teaching critical thinking, different attempts and methodologies used to assess critical thinking, the role, if any, of standardized or large scale assessment, and how educators might more accurately assess critical thinking skills and dispositions. The book, made up of sixteen chapters from various contributors in the field, is divided into five sections: (1) Testing the Test, (2) Critical and Creative Thinking, (3) Assessing the Teachers, Courses, and Programs, CANADIAN JOURNAL OF EDUCATION 33, 3 (2010): 652 656 2010 Société canadienne pour l étude de l éducation/ Canadian Society for the Study of Education
RECENSION/BOOK REVIEW 653 (4) Critical Thinking in an Era of Accountability, and (5) Critical Thinking for the Future. The intended audience of Critical Thinking Education and Assessment is philosophers, administrators, educational theorists, teachers, students, policy makers, and others. If selected as a text for students, due to the depth and complexity of material presented, the book would be best suited for graduate students with some background in critical thinking or assessment. The first section of the volume, Testing the Test, which encompasses five chapters, examines the validity evidence for various popular standardized tests. Chapter 1 begins with an introduction to the problems standardized testing creates for teachers and students (p. 15) and the suggestion to utilize critical thinking dispositions as an alternative method of assessment. This chapter also examines the negative impact of high stakes testing on teaching critical thinking dispositions such as the observed shift toward more direct instructional techniques emphasizing basic skills. One potential solution put forward by Giancarlo Gittens is the use of authentic or performance based assessments requiring teachers to utilize inquiry based learning and problem solving activities in. In the second chapter, Roarke examines the problems inherent in the widely used California Critical Thinking Skills Test. He identifies one of the biggest issues: the test does not recognize many essential components of critical thinking. According to Messick (1995), construct underrepresentation is a major threat to the validity of test scores. Johnson, in chapter 3, emphasizes the need to consider the dialectical tier within tests of critical thinking. In chapter 4, Ennis focuses on The Cornell Critical Thinking Test which, he suggests, may be the best available measure of critical thinking. In this chapter, he also provides readers with a methodology for examining existing critical thinking instruments. In the last chapter of this section, although standardized assessment of critical thinking is criticized, the authors, Ellett and Pittman, spend the majority of the chapter defending the thesis that it is possible to construct tests for determining whether a person is a critical thinker (p. 102). However, the authors advocate for a broad notion of test and specifically the use of rubrics to assess critical thinking. The second section of the volume, Critical and Creative Thinking, encompasses three chapters that focus on one of the least understood
654 LAURIE-ANN HELLSTEN aspects of critical thinking: the relationship between critical thinking and creative thinking. In chapter 6, Hare focuses on the role of imagination to make the argument that imagination and critical thinking are intimately connected (p. 128). Furthermore, he advocates for the explicit inclusion of imagination in definitions of critical thinking to avoid mechanical and/or formulaic approaches to teaching critical thinking. In Chapter 7, Hoogland uses arts based inquiry to illustrate how critical and creative thinking informed her recent literary work. The last chapter of this section examines the relationship between critical and creative thinking and literacy through the examination of a specific large scale assessment: the Ontario Secondary School Literacy Test. In this chapter, Sobocan demonstrates the significant potential of the test ro assess higher order critical and creative thinking abilities. In the last section of the chapter, Sobocan also provides some rules of thumb for creating measures of creative critical thinking. Assessing the Teachers, Courses, and Programs is an applied section of the volume encompassing four chapters that describe various existing approaches and programs used to teach critical and creative thinking. In chapter 9, Case advocates a tools approach to critical thinking that is discipline specific. The tools to which Case refers include five types of intellectual resources including background knowledge, criteria for judgment, critical thinking vocabulary, thinking strategies, and habits of mind. In chapter 10, Noisch describes an approach to critical thinking and assessment that is intended for specific subjects and which utilizes fundamental and powerful concepts that can be transferred to teaching within any discipline (p. 196). Noisch also provides readers with a general template for assessments in terms of fundamental and powerful concepts. The Baker University critical thinking program is described in chapter 11, an example of an existing critical thinking program that has been implemented on a large scale for many years. In chapter 12, the pragma dialectical approach to critical thinking is introduced. This approach has been used successfully in many educational contexts in the Netherlands and other countries (van Eemeren & Garssen, 2009, p. 261) at both the high school and university levels. The fourth section of the book, Critical Thinking in an Era of Accountability, encompassing three chapters, examines broad questions
RECENSION/BOOK REVIEW 655 about critical thinking policy and how the policy in place supports (or does not support) critical thinking, education, and assessment. In chapter 13, Blair argues that K 12 teachers are not qualified to teach critical thinking and that, although the move to teach critical thinking in K 12 is desirable, the move will be fraught with challenges. In chapter 14, Kaser describes the politics involved in promoting critical thinking in schools in an era of accountability using her experience in helping to develop British Columbia s critical thinking policy and curriculum. In chapter 15, the problems with high stakes testing are discussed from feminist and critical theorist standpoints and six recommendations are offered. The last section, Critical Thinking for the Future, involves a chapter by Murphy which discusses the epistemic responsibility (Code, 1987) in light of the previous chapters and provides suggestions as to the future of critical thinking and critical thinking assessment. A strength of this volume is the various contributors who attempt, using their own philosophies and areas of expertise (e.g., theorists, teachers of critical thinking in K 12 education and at university level, evaluation experts, professors, program and policy developers), to find answers to some of the challenges involving critical thinking. A weakness of this text may be that the strong central thesis of how educators might more accurately assess critical thinking skills and dispositions is sometimes lost amid the various contributors, philosophies, and diverse topics examined. As a Canadian, I particularly enjoyed the Canadian content throughout the volume including the Canadian authors, examples, and perspectives. Although I was thoroughly taken by the description of the unique critical thinking program at Baker University, I would also have enjoyed reading about a Canadian critical thinking program. As a Measurement and Evaluation specialist, I was also particularly drawn to the critique of the California Critical Thinking Skills Test (Chapter 2), the methodology for examining existing critical thinking instruments (Chapter 4), the rules of thumb for developing creative critical thinking tests (Chapter 8), and the tools approach to critical thinking advocated by Case (Chapter 9).
656 LAURIE-ANN HELLSTEN REFERENCES Code, L. (1987). Epistemic responsibility. London, UK: University Press of New England. Johnson, R. (2000). Manifest rationality. Pittsburgh: Erlbaum. Messick, S. (1995). Standards of validity and the validity of standards in performance assessment. Educational Measurement, 14, 5 8.