Teaching Critical Thinking Skills: Ability, Motivation, Intervention, and the Pygmalion Effect

Using a Solomon four-group design, we investigate the effect of a case-based critical thinking intervention on students’ critical thinking skills (CTA). We randomly assign 31 sessions of business classes (N = 659 students) to four groups and collect data from three sources: in-class performance (CTA...

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Bibliographic Details
Authors: Howard, Larry W. (Author) ; Tang, Thomas Li-Ping (Author) ; Jill Austin, M. (Author)
Format: Electronic Article
Language:English
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Published: Springer Science + Business Media B. V 2015
In: Journal of business ethics
Year: 2015, Volume: 128, Issue: 1, Pages: 133-147
Further subjects:B Ability
B critical thinking skills
B Motivation
B Priming effect
B Race
B Self-fulfilling prophesy
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Summary:Using a Solomon four-group design, we investigate the effect of a case-based critical thinking intervention on students’ critical thinking skills (CTA). We randomly assign 31 sessions of business classes (N = 659 students) to four groups and collect data from three sources: in-class performance (CTA), university records (ACT, GPA, and demographic variables), and Internet surveys (learning and motivational goals). Our 2 × 2 ANOVA results showed no significant between-subjects differences. Contrary to our expectations, students improve their critical thinking skills, with or without the intervention. Female and Caucasian students improve their critical thinking skills, but males and non-Caucasian do not. Positive performance goals and negative mastery goals enhance and decrease improvements of their CTA scores, respectively. ACT and age are related to pre- and post-test. Gender (male) is related to pre-test. GPA is related to post-test. Results shed light on the Pygmalion effect, the Galatea effect, ability, motivation, and opportunity as signals for human capital, and business ethics.
ISSN:1573-0697
Contains:Enthalten in: Journal of business ethics
Persistent identifiers:DOI: 10.1007/s10551-014-2084-0