critical thinking assessments

Critical thinking definition

Critical thinking, as described by Oxford Languages, is the objective analysis and evaluation of an issue in order to form a judgement.

Active and skillful approach, evaluation, assessment, synthesis, and/or evaluation of information obtained from, or made by, observation, knowledge, reflection, acumen or conversation, as a guide to belief and action, requires the critical thinking process, which is why it's often used in education and academics.

Some even may view it as a backbone of modern thought.

However, it's a skill, and skills must be trained and encouraged to be used at its full potential.

People turn up to various approaches in improving their critical thinking, like:

• Developing technical and problem-solving skills
• Engaging in more active listening
• Actively questioning their assumptions and beliefs
• Seeking out more diversity of thought
• Opening up their curiosity in an intellectual way etc.

Is critical thinking useful in writing?

Critical thinking can help in planning your paper and making it more concise, but it's not obvious at first. We carefully pinpointed some the questions you should ask yourself when boosting critical thinking in writing:

• What information should be included?
• Which information resources should the author look to?
• What degree of technical knowledge should the report assume its audience has?
• What is the most effective way to show information?
• How should the report be organized?
• How should it be designed?
• What tone and level of language difficulty should the document have?

Usage of critical thinking comes down not only to the outline of your paper, it also begs the question: How can we use critical thinking solving problems in our writing's topic?

Let's say, you have a Powerpoint on how critical thinking can reduce poverty in the United States. You'll primarily have to define critical thinking for the viewers, as well as use a lot of critical thinking questions and synonyms to get them to be familiar with your methods and start the thinking process behind it.

Are there any services that can help me use more critical thinking?

We understand that it's difficult to learn how to use critical thinking more effectively in just one article, but our service is here to help.

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Critical Thinking test

By 123test team . Updated May 12, 2023

Critical Thinking test reviews

This Critical Thinking test measures your ability to think critically and draw logical conclusions based on written information. Critical Thinking tests are often used in job assessments in the legal sector to assess a candidate's  analytical critical  thinking skills. A well known example of a critical thinking test is the Watson-Glaser Critical Thinking Appraisal .

Need more practice?

Score higher on your critical thinking test.

The test comprises of the following five sections with a total of 10 questions:

• Analysing Arguments
• Assumptions
• Interpreting Information

Instructions Critical Thinking test

Each question presents one or more paragraphs of text and a question about the information in the text. It's your job to figure out which of the options is the correct answer.

Below is a statement that is followed by an argument. You should consider this argument to be true. It is then up to you to determine whether the argument is strong or weak. Do not let your personal opinion about the statement play a role in your evaluation of the argument.

Statement: It would be good if people would eat vegetarian more often. Argument: No, because dairy also requires animals to be kept that will have to be eaten again later.

Is this a strong or weak argument?

Strong argument Weak argument

Statement: Germany should no longer use the euro as its currency Argument: No, because that means that the 10 billion Deutschmark that the introduction of the euro has cost is money thrown away.

Overfishing is the phenomenon that too much fish is caught in a certain area, which leads to the disappearance of the fish species in that area. This trend can only be reversed by means of catch reduction measures. These must therefore be introduced and enforced.

Assumption: The disappearance of fish species in areas of the oceans is undesirable.

Is the assumption made from the text?

Assumption is made Assumption is not made

As a company, we strive for satisfied customers. That's why from now on we're going to keep track of how quickly our help desk employees pick up the phone. Our goal is for that phone to ring for a maximum of 20 seconds.

Assumption: The company has tools or ways to measure how quickly help desk employees pick up the phone.

• All reptiles lay eggs
• All reptiles are vertebrates
• All snakes are reptiles
• All vertebrates have brains
• Some reptiles hatch their eggs themselves
• Most reptiles have two lungs
• Many snakes only have one lung
• Cobras are poisonous snakes
• All reptiles are animals

Conclusion: Some snakes hatch their eggs themselves.

Does the conclusion follow the statements?

Conclusion follows Conclusion does not follow

(Continue with the statements from question 5.)

Conclusion: Some animals that lay eggs only have one lung.

In the famous 1971 Stanford experiment, 24 normal, healthy male students were randomly assigned as 'guards' (12) or 'prisoners' (12). The guards were given a uniform and instructed to keep order, but not to use force. The prisoners were given prison uniforms. Soon after the start of the experiment, the guards made up all kinds of sentences for the prisoners. Insurgents were shot down with a fire extinguisher and public undressing or solitary confinement was also a punishment. The aggression of the guards became stronger as the experiment progressed. At one point, the abuses took place at night, because the guards thought that the researchers were not watching. It turned out that some guards also had fun treating the prisoners very cruelly. For example, prisoners got a bag over their heads and were chained to their ankles. Originally, the experiment would last 14 days. However, after six days the experiment was stopped.

The students who took part in the research did not expect to react the way they did in such a situation.

To what extent is this conclusion true, based on the given text?

True Probably true More information required Probably false False

(Continue with the text from 'Stanford experiment' in question 7.)

The results of the experiment support the claim that every young man (or at least some young men) is capable of turning into a sadist fairly quickly.

• A flag is a tribute to the nation and should therefore not be hung outside at night. Hoisting the flag therefore happens at sunrise, bringing it down at sunset. Only when a country flag is illuminated by spotlights on both sides, it may remain hanging after sunset. There is a simple rule of thumb for the time of bringing down the flag. This is the moment when there is no longer any visible difference between the individual colors of the flag.
• A flag may not touch the ground.
• On the Dutch flag, unless entitled to do so, no decorations or other additions should be made. Also the use of a flag purely for decoration should be avoided. However, flag cloth may be used for decoration - for example in the form of drapes.
• The orange pennant is only used on birthdays of members of the Royal House and on King's Day. The orange pennant should be as long or slightly longer than the diagonal of the flag.

Conclusion: One can assume that no Dutch flag will fly at government buildings at night, unless it is illuminated by spotlights on both sides.

Does the conclusion follow, based on the given text?

(Continue with the text from 'Dutch flag protocol' in question 9.)

Conclusion: If the protocol is followed, the orange pennant will always be longer than the horizontal bands/stripes of the flag.

Please answer the questions below. Not all questions are required but it will help us improve this test.

My educational level is

-- please select -- primary school high school college university PhD other

What is the Critical Thinking Test?

Critical thinking practice test, take a free practice critical thinking test, practice critical thinking test.

Updated November 16, 2023

The Critical Thinking Test is a comprehensive evaluation designed to assess individuals' cognitive capacities and analytical prowess.

This formal examination, often referred to as the critical thinking assessment, is a benchmark for those aiming to demonstrate their proficiency in discernment and problem-solving.

In addition, this evaluative tool meticulously gauges a range of skills, including logical reasoning, analytical thinking, and the ability to evaluate and synthesize information.

This article will embark on an exploration of the Critical Thinking Test, elucidating its intricacies and elucidating its paramount importance. We will dissect the essential skills it measures and clarify its significance in gauging one's intellectual aptitude.

We will examine examples of critical thinking questions, illuminating the challenging scenarios that candidates encounter prompting them to navigate the complexities of thought with finesse.

Before going ahead to take the critical thinking test, let's delve into the realm of preparation. This segment serves as a crucible for honing the skills assessed in the actual examination, offering candidates a chance to refine their analytical blades before facing the real challenge. Here are some skills that will help you with the critical thinking assessment: Logical Reasoning: The practice test meticulously evaluates your ability to deduce conclusions from given information, assess the validity of arguments, and recognize patterns in logic. Analytical Thinking: Prepare to dissect complex scenarios, identify key components, and synthesize information to draw insightful conclusions—a fundamental aspect of the critical thinking assessment. Problem-Solving Proficiency: Navigate through intricate problems that mirror real-world challenges, honing your capacity to approach issues systematically and derive effective solutions. What to Expect: The Critical Thinking Practice Test is crafted to mirror the format and complexity of the actual examination. Expect a series of scenarios, each accompanied by a set of questions that demand thoughtful analysis and logical deduction. These scenarios span diverse fields, from business and science to everyday scenarios, ensuring a comprehensive evaluation of your critical thinking skills. Examples of Critical Thinking Questions Scenario: In a business context, analyze the potential impacts of a proposed strategy on both short-term profitability and long-term sustainability. Question: What factors would you consider in determining the viability of the proposed strategy, and how might it affect the company's overall success? Scenario: Evaluate conflicting scientific studies on a pressing environmental issue.

Question: Identify the key methodologies and data points in each study. How would you reconcile the disparities to form an informed, unbiased conclusion?

Why Practice Matters

Engaging in the Critical Thinking Practice Test familiarizes you with the test format and cultivates a mindset geared towards agile and astute reasoning. This preparatory phase allows you to refine your cognitive toolkit, ensuring you approach the assessment with confidence and finesse.

We'll navigate through specific examples as we proceed, offering insights into effective strategies for tackling critical thinking questions. Prepare to embark on a journey of intellectual sharpening, where each practice question refines your analytical prowess for the challenges ahead.

This is a practice critical thinking test.

The test consists of three questions . 

After you have answered all the questions, you will be shown the correct answers and given full explanations.

Make sure you read and fully understand each question before answering. Work quickly, but don't rush. You cannot afford to make mistakes on a real test .

If you get a question wrong, make sure you find out why and learn how to answer this type of question in the future. 

Six friends are seated in a restaurant across a rectangular table. There are three chairs on each side. Adam and Dorky do not have anyone sitting to their right and Clyde and Benjamin do not have anyone sitting to their left. Adam and Benjamin are not sitting on the same side of the table.

If Ethan is not sitting next to Dorky, who is seated immediately to the left of Felix?

You might also be interested in these other PRT articles:

What Is the Watson Glaser Test?

Who uses the watson glaser test and why, why is it so important to be a critical thinker, what is the watson glaser red model, how to pass a watson glaser test in 2024, how to prepare for a watson glaser critical appraisal in 2024, frequently asked questions, the watson glaser critical thinking appraisal.

Updated May 10, 2024

Modern employers have changed the way that they recruit new candidates. They are no longer looking for people who have the technical skills on paper that match the job description.

Instead, they are looking for candidates who can demonstrably prove that they have a wider range of transferrable skills.

One of those key skills is the ability to think critically .

Firms (particularly those in sectors such as law, finance, HR and marketing ) need to know that their employees can look beyond the surface of the information presented to them.

They want confidence that their staff members can understand, analyze and evaluate situations or work-related tasks. There is more on the importance of critical thinking later in this article.

This is where the Watson Glaser Critical Thinking test comes into play.

The Watson Glaser critical thinking test is a unique assessment that provides a detailed analysis of a participant’s ability to think critically.

The test lasts 30 minutes and applicants can expect to be tested on around 40 questions in five distinct areas :

Assumptions

Interpretation.

The questions are multiple-choice and may be phrased as true/false statements in a bid to see how well the participant has understood and interpreted the information provided.

Employers around the world use it during recruitment campaigns to help hiring managers effectively filter their prospective candidates .

The Watson Glaser test has been used for more than 85 years; employers trust the insights that the test can provide.

In today’s competitive jobs market where every candidate has brought the best of themselves, it can be increasingly difficult for employers to decide between applicants.

On paper, two candidates may appear identical, with a similar level of education, work experience, and even interests and skills.

But that does not necessarily mean both or either of them is right for the job.

There is much information available on creating an effective cover letter and resume, not to mention advice on making a good impression during an interview.

As a result, employers are increasingly turning to psychometric testing to look beyond the information that they have.

They want to find the right fit: someone who has the skills that they need now and in the future. And with recruitment costs rising each year, making the wrong hiring decision can be catastrophic.

This is where the Watson Glaser test can help.

It can provide hiring managers with the additional support and guidance they need to help them make an informed decision.

The Watson Glaser test is popular among firms working in professional services (such as law, banking and insurance) . It is used for recruitment for junior and senior positions and some of the world’s most recognized establishments are known for their use of the test.

The Bank of England, Deloitte, Hiscox, Linklaters and Hogan Lovells are just a few employers who enhance their recruitment processes through Watson Glaser testing.

Critical thinking is all about logic and rational thought. Finding out someone’s critical thinking skill level is about knowing whether they can assess whether they are being told the truth and how they can use inferences and assumptions to aid their decision-making.

If you are working in a high-pressure environment, having an instinctive ability to look beyond the information provided to the underlying patterns of cause-and-effect can be crucial to do your job well.

Although it is often thought of concerning law firms and finance teams, it is easy to see how critical thinking skills could be applied to a wide range of professions.

For example, HR professionals dealing with internal disputes may need to think critically. Or social workers and other health professionals may need to use critical thinking to assess whether someone is vulnerable and in need of help and support when that person does not or cannot say openly.

Practice Watson Glaser Test with TestHQ

Critical thinking is about questioning what you already know . It is about understanding how to find the facts and the truth about a situation or argument without being influenced by other people’s opinions .

It is also about looking at the bigger picture and seeing how decisions made now may have short-term benefits but long-term consequences.

For those working in senior managerial roles, this ability to think objectively can make a big difference to business success.

As part of the critical thinking assessment, the Watson Glaser Test focuses on the acronym, 'RED':

• R ecognize assumptions
• E valuate arguments
• D raw conclusions

Put simply, the RED model ensures you can understand how to move beyond subconscious bias in your thinking. It ensures that you can identify the truth and understand the differences between fact and opinion.

To recognize assumptions , you must understand yourself and others: what your thought patterns and past experiences have led you to conclude about the world.

Evaluating arguments requires you to genuinely consider the merits of all options in a situation, and not just choose the one you feel that you ‘ought’ to.

Finally, to draw an accurate and beneficial conclusion you must trust your decision-making and understanding of the situation.

Watson Glaser Practice Test Questions & Answers

As mentioned earlier, the Watson Glaser Test assesses five core elements. Here, they will be examined in more depth:

This part of the test is about your ability to draw conclusions based on facts . These facts may be directly provided or may be assumptions that you have previously made.

Within the assessment, you can expect to be provided with a selection of text. Along with the text will be a statement.

You may need to decide whether that statement is true, probably true, insufficient data (neither true nor false), probably false or false.

The test looks to see if your answer was based on a conclusion that could be inferred from the text provided or if it is based on an assumption you previously made.

Take a Watson Glaser Practice Test

Example Statement:

500 students recently attended a voluntary conference in New York. During the conference, two of the main topics discussed were issues relating to diversity and climate change. This is because these are the two issues that the students selected that are important to them.

Many people make decisions based on assumptions. But you need to be able to identify when assumptions are being made.

Within the Watson Glaser test , you will be provided with a written statement as well as an assumption.

You will be asked to declare whether that assumption was made in the text provided or not .

This is an important part of the test; it allows employers to understand if you have any expectations about whether things are true or not . For roles in law or finance, this is a vital skill.

We need to save money, so we’ll visit the local shops in the nearest town rather than the local supermarket

As a core part of critical thinking, 'deduction' is the ability to use logic and reasoning to come to an informed decision .

You will be presented with several facts, along with a variety of conclusions. You will be tasked with confirming whether those conclusions can be made from the information provided in that statement.

The answers are commonly in a ‘Yes, it follows/No, it does not follow’ form.

It is sometimes sunny on Wednesdays. All sunny days are fun. Therefore…

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Critical thinking is also about interpreting the information correctly. It is about using the information provided to come to a valuable, informed decision .

Like the deduction questions, you will be provided with a written statement, which you must assume to be true.

You will also be provided with a suggested interpretation of that written statement. You must decide if that interpretation is correct based on the information provided, using a yes/no format.

A study of toddlers shows that their speech can change significantly between the ages of 10 months and three years old. At 1 year old, a child may learn their first word whereas at three years old they may know 200 words

Evaluation of Arguments

This final part requires you to identify whether an argument is strong or weak . You will be presented with a written statement and several arguments that can be used for or against it. You need to identify which is the strongest argument and which is the weakest based on the information provided.

Should all 18-year-olds go to college to study for a degree after they have graduated from high school?

There are no confirmed pass/fail scores for Watson Glaser tests; different sectors have different interpretations of what is a good score .

Law firms, for example, will require a pass mark of at least 75–80% because the ability to think critically is an essential aspect of working as a lawyer.

As a comparative test, you need to consider what the comparative ‘norm’ is for your chosen profession. Your score will be compared to other candidates taking the test and you need to score better than them.

It is important to try and score as highly as you possibly can. Your Watson Glaser test score can set you apart from other candidates; you need to impress the recruiters as much as possible.

Your best chance of achieving a high score is to practice as much as possible in advance.

Everyone will have their own preferred study methods, and what works for one person may not necessarily work for another.

However, there are some basic techniques everyone can use, which will enhance your study preparation ahead of the test:

Step 1 . Pay Attention to Online Practice Tests

There are numerous free online training aids available; these can be beneficial as a starting point to your preparation.

However, it should be noted that they are often not as detailed as the actual exam questions.

When researching for online test questions, make sure that any questions are specific to the Watson Glaser Test , not just critical thinking.

General critical thinking questions can help you improve your skills but will not familiarize you with this test. Therefore, make sure you practice any questions which follow the ‘rules’ and structure of a Watson Glaser Test .

Step 2 . Paid-for Preparation Packs Can Be Effective

If you are looking for something that mimics the complexity of a Watson Glaser test , you may wish to look at investing in a preparation pack.

There are plenty of options available from sites such as TestHQ . These are often far more comprehensive than free practice tests.

They may also include specific drills (which take you through each of the five stages of the test) as well as study guides, practice tests and suggestions of how to improve your score.

Psychologically, if you have purchased a preparation pack, you may be more inclined to increase your pre-test practice/study when compared to using free tools, due to having invested money.

Step 3 . Apply Critical Thinking to All Aspects of Your Daily Routine

The best way to improve your critical thinking score is to practice it every day.

It is not just about using your skills to pass an exam question; it is about being able to think critically in everyday scenarios.

Therefore, when you are reading the news or online articles, try to think whether you are being given facts or you are making deductions and assumptions from the information provided.

The more you practice your critical thinking in these scenarios, the more it will become second nature to you.

You could revert to the RED model: recognize the assumptions being made, by you and the author; evaluate the arguments and decide which, if any, are strong; and draw conclusions from the information provided and perhaps see if they differ from conclusions drawn using your external knowledge.

Prepare for Watson Glaser Test with TestHQ

Nine Top Tips for Ensuring Success in Your Watson Glaser Test

If you are getting ready to participate in a Watson Glaser test, you must be clear about what you are being asked to do.

Here are a few tips that can help you to improve your Watson Glaser test score.

1. Practice, Practice, Practice

Critical thinking is a skill that should become second nature to you. You should practice as much as possible, not just so that you can pass the test, but also to feel confident in using your skills in reality.

2. The Best Success Is Based on the Long-Term Study

To succeed in your Watson Glaser test , you need to spend time preparing.

Those who begin studying in the weeks and months beforehand will be far more successful than those who leave their study to the last minute.

3. Acquaint Yourself With the Test Format

The Watson Glaser test has a different type of question to other critical thinking tests.

Make sure that you are aware of what to expect from the test questions. The last thing you want is to be surprised on test day.

4. Read the Instructions Carefully

This is one of the simplest but most effective tips. Your critical thinking skills start with understanding what you are being asked to do. Take your time over the question.

Although you may only have 30 minutes to complete the test, it is still important that you do not rush through and submit the wrong answers. You do not get a higher score if you finish early, so use your time wisely.

5. Only Use the Information Provided in the Question

Remember, the purpose of the test is to see if you can come to a decision based on the provided written statement.

This means that you must ignore anything that you think you already know and focus only on the information given in the question.

6. Widen Your Non-Fictional Reading

Reading a variety of journals, newspapers and reports, and watching examples of debates and arguments will help you to improve your skills.

You will start to understand how the same basic facts can be presented in different ways and cause people to draw different conclusions.

From there, you can start to enhance your critical thinking skills to go beyond the perspective provided in any given situation.

7. Be Self-Aware

We all have our own biases and prejudices whether we know them or not. It is important to think about how your own opinions and life experiences may impact how you perceive and understand situations.

For example, someone who has grown up with a lot of money may have a different interpretation of what it is like to go without, compared to someone who has grown up in extreme poverty.

It is important to have this self-awareness as it is important for understanding other people; this is useful if you are working in sectors such as law.

8. Read the Explanations During Your Preparation

To make the most of practice tests, make sure you read the analysis explaining the answers, regardless of if you got the question right or wrong.

This is the crux of your study; it will explain the reasoning why a certain answer is correct, and this will help you understand how to choose the correct answers.

9. Practice Your Timings

You know that you will have five sections to complete in the test. You also know that you have 30 minutes to complete the test.

Therefore, make sure that your timings are in sync within your practice, so you can work your way through the test in its entirety.

Time yourself on how long each section takes you and put in extra work on your slowest.

What score do you need to pass the Watson Glaser test?

There is no standard benchmark score to pass the Watson Glaser test . Each business sector has its own perception of what constitutes a good score and every employer will set its own requirements.

It is wise to aim for a Watson Glaser test score of at least 75%. To score 75% or higher, you will need to correctly answer at least 30 of the 40 questions.

The employing organization will use your test results to compare your performance with other candidates within the selection pool. The higher you score in the Watson Glaser test , the better your chances of being hired.

Can you fail a Watson Glaser test?

It is not possible to fail a Watson Glaser test . However, your score may not be high enough to meet the benchmark set by the employing organization.

By aiming for a score of at least 75%, you stand a good chance of progressing to the next stage of the recruitment process.

Are Watson Glaser tests hard?

Many candidates find the Watson Glaser test hard. The test is designed to assess five different aspects of logical reasoning skills. Candidates must work under pressure, which adds another dimension of difficulty.

By practicing your critical thinking skills, you can improve your chances of achieving a high score on the Watson Glaser test .

How do I prepare for Watson Glaser?

To prepare for Watson Glaser , you will need to practice your critical thinking abilities. This can be achieved through a range of activities; for example, reading a variety of newspapers, journals and other literature.

Try applying the RED model to your reading – recognize the assumptions being made (both by you and the writer), evaluate the arguments and decide which of these (if any) are strong.

You should also practice drawing conclusions from the information available to you.

Online Watson Glaser practice assessments are a useful way to prepare for Watson Glaser. These practice tests will give you an idea of what to expect on the day, although the questions are not usually as detailed as those in the actual test.

You might also consider using a paid-for Watson Glaser preparation pack, such as the one available from TestHQ . Preparation packs provide a comprehensive test guide, including practice tests and recommendations on how to improve your test score.

How long does the Watson Glaser test take?

Candidates are allowed 30 minutes to complete the Watson Glaser test . The multiple-choice test questions are grouped into five distinct areas – assumptions, deduction, evaluation, inference and interpretation.

Which firms use the Watson Glaser test?

Companies all over the world use the Watson Glaser test as part of their recruitment campaigns.

It is a popular choice for professional service firms, including banking, law, and insurance. Firms using the Watson Glaser test include the Bank of England, Hiscox, Deloitte and Clifford Chance.

How many times can you take the Watson Glaser test?

Most employers will only allow you to take the Watson Glaser test once per application. However, you may take the Watson Glaser test more than once throughout your career.

What is the next step after passing the Watson Glaser test?

The next step after passing the Watson Glaser test will vary between employers. Some firms will ask you to attend a face-to-face interview after passing the Watson Glaser test, others will ask you to attend an assessment center. Speak to the hiring manager to find out the process for the firm you are applying for.

Start preparing in advance for the Watson Glaser test

The Watson Glaser test differs from other critical thinking tests. It has its own rules and formations, and the exam is incredibly competitive. If you are asked to participate in a Watson Glaser test it is because your prospective employer is looking for the ‘best of the best’. Your aim is not to simply pass the test; it is to achieve a higher score than anyone else taking that test .

Therefore, taking the time to prepare for the Watson Glaser test is vital for your chances of success. You need to be confident that you know what you are being asked to do, and that you can use your critical thinking skills to make informed decisions.

Your study is about more than helping you to pass a test; it is about providing you with the skills and capability to think critically about information in the ‘real world’ .

You might also be interested in these other Psychometric Success articles:

Or explore the Aptitude Tests / Test Types sections.

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Supplement to Critical Thinking

How can one assess, for purposes of instruction or research, the degree to which a person possesses the dispositions, skills and knowledge of a critical thinker?

In psychometrics, assessment instruments are judged according to their validity and reliability.

Roughly speaking, an instrument is valid if it measures accurately what it purports to measure, given standard conditions. More precisely, the degree of validity is “the degree to which evidence and theory support the interpretations of test scores for proposed uses of tests” (American Educational Research Association 2014: 11). In other words, a test is not valid or invalid in itself. Rather, validity is a property of an interpretation of a given score on a given test for a specified use. Determining the degree of validity of such an interpretation requires collection and integration of the relevant evidence, which may be based on test content, test takers’ response processes, a test’s internal structure, relationship of test scores to other variables, and consequences of the interpretation (American Educational Research Association 2014: 13–21). Criterion-related evidence consists of correlations between scores on the test and performance on another test of the same construct; its weight depends on how well supported is the assumption that the other test can be used as a criterion. Content-related evidence is evidence that the test covers the full range of abilities that it claims to test. Construct-related evidence is evidence that a correct answer reflects good performance of the kind being measured and an incorrect answer reflects poor performance.

An instrument is reliable if it consistently produces the same result, whether across different forms of the same test (parallel-forms reliability), across different items (internal consistency), across different administrations to the same person (test-retest reliability), or across ratings of the same answer by different people (inter-rater reliability). Internal consistency should be expected only if the instrument purports to measure a single undifferentiated construct, and thus should not be expected of a test that measures a suite of critical thinking dispositions or critical thinking abilities, assuming that some people are better in some of the respects measured than in others (for example, very willing to inquire but rather closed-minded). Otherwise, reliability is a necessary but not a sufficient condition of validity; a standard example of a reliable instrument that is not valid is a bathroom scale that consistently under-reports a person’s weight.

Assessing dispositions is difficult if one uses a multiple-choice format with known adverse consequences of a low score. It is pretty easy to tell what answer to the question “How open-minded are you?” will get the highest score and to give that answer, even if one knows that the answer is incorrect. If an item probes less directly for a critical thinking disposition, for example by asking how often the test taker pays close attention to views with which the test taker disagrees, the answer may differ from reality because of self-deception or simple lack of awareness of one’s personal thinking style, and its interpretation is problematic, even if factor analysis enables one to identify a distinct factor measured by a group of questions that includes this one (Ennis 1996). Nevertheless, Facione, Sánchez, and Facione (1994) used this approach to develop the California Critical Thinking Dispositions Inventory (CCTDI). They began with 225 statements expressive of a disposition towards or away from critical thinking (using the long list of dispositions in Facione 1990a), validated the statements with talk-aloud and conversational strategies in focus groups to determine whether people in the target population understood the items in the way intended, administered a pilot version of the test with 150 items, and eliminated items that failed to discriminate among test takers or were inversely correlated with overall results or added little refinement to overall scores (Facione 2000). They used item analysis and factor analysis to group the measured dispositions into seven broad constructs: open-mindedness, analyticity, cognitive maturity, truth-seeking, systematicity, inquisitiveness, and self-confidence (Facione, Sánchez, and Facione 1994). The resulting test consists of 75 agree-disagree statements and takes 20 minutes to administer. A repeated disturbing finding is that North American students taking the test tend to score low on the truth-seeking sub-scale (on which a low score results from agreeing to such statements as the following: “To get people to agree with me I would give any reason that worked”. “Everyone always argues from their own self-interest, including me”. “If there are four reasons in favor and one against, I’ll go with the four”.) Development of the CCTDI made it possible to test whether good critical thinking abilities and good critical thinking dispositions go together, in which case it might be enough to teach one without the other. Facione (2000) reports that administration of the CCTDI and the California Critical Thinking Skills Test (CCTST) to almost 8,000 post-secondary students in the United States revealed a statistically significant but weak correlation between total scores on the two tests, and also between paired sub-scores from the two tests. The implication is that both abilities and dispositions need to be taught, that one cannot expect improvement in one to bring with it improvement in the other.

A more direct way of assessing critical thinking dispositions would be to see what people do when put in a situation where the dispositions would reveal themselves. Ennis (1996) reports promising initial work with guided open-ended opportunities to give evidence of dispositions, but no standardized test seems to have emerged from this work. There are however standardized aspect-specific tests of critical thinking dispositions. The Critical Problem Solving Scale (Berman et al. 2001: 518) takes as a measure of the disposition to suspend judgment the number of distinct good aspects attributed to an option judged to be the worst among those generated by the test taker. Stanovich, West and Toplak (2011: 800–810) list tests developed by cognitive psychologists of the following dispositions: resistance to miserly information processing, resistance to myside thinking, absence of irrelevant context effects in decision-making, actively open-minded thinking, valuing reason and truth, tendency to seek information, objective reasoning style, tendency to seek consistency, sense of self-efficacy, prudent discounting of the future, self-control skills, and emotional regulation.

It is easier to measure critical thinking skills or abilities than to measure dispositions. The following eight currently available standardized tests purport to measure them: the Watson-Glaser Critical Thinking Appraisal (Watson & Glaser 1980a, 1980b, 1994), the Cornell Critical Thinking Tests Level X and Level Z (Ennis & Millman 1971; Ennis, Millman, & Tomko 1985, 2005), the Ennis-Weir Critical Thinking Essay Test (Ennis & Weir 1985), the California Critical Thinking Skills Test (Facione 1990b, 1992), the Halpern Critical Thinking Assessment (Halpern 2016), the Critical Thinking Assessment Test (Center for Assessment & Improvement of Learning 2017), the Collegiate Learning Assessment (Council for Aid to Education 2017), the HEIghten Critical Thinking Assessment (https://territorium.com/heighten/), and a suite of critical thinking assessments for different groups and purposes offered by Insight Assessment (https://www.insightassessment.com/products). The Critical Thinking Assessment Test (CAT) is unique among them in being designed for use by college faculty to help them improve their development of students’ critical thinking skills (Haynes et al. 2015; Haynes & Stein 2021). Also, for some years the United Kingdom body OCR (Oxford Cambridge and RSA Examinations) awarded AS and A Level certificates in critical thinking on the basis of an examination (OCR 2011). Many of these standardized tests have received scholarly evaluations at the hands of, among others, Ennis (1958), McPeck (1981), Norris and Ennis (1989), Fisher and Scriven (1997), Possin (2008, 2013a, 2013b, 2013c, 2014, 2020) and Hatcher and Possin (2021). Their evaluations provide a useful set of criteria that such tests ideally should meet, as does the description by Ennis (1984) of problems in testing for competence in critical thinking: the soundness of multiple-choice items, the clarity and soundness of instructions to test takers, the information and mental processing used in selecting an answer to a multiple-choice item, the role of background beliefs and ideological commitments in selecting an answer to a multiple-choice item, the tenability of a test’s underlying conception of critical thinking and its component abilities, the set of abilities that the test manual claims are covered by the test, the extent to which the test actually covers these abilities, the appropriateness of the weighting given to various abilities in the scoring system, the accuracy and intellectual honesty of the test manual, the interest of the test to the target population of test takers, the scope for guessing, the scope for choosing a keyed answer by being test-wise, precautions against cheating in the administration of the test, clarity and soundness of materials for training essay graders, inter-rater reliability in grading essays, and clarity and soundness of advance guidance to test takers on what is required in an essay. Rear (2019) has challenged the use of standardized tests of critical thinking as a way to measure educational outcomes, on the grounds that  they (1) fail to take into account disputes about conceptions of critical thinking, (2) are not completely valid or reliable, and (3) fail to evaluate skills used in real academic tasks. He proposes instead assessments based on discipline-specific content.

There are also aspect-specific standardized tests of critical thinking abilities. Stanovich, West and Toplak (2011: 800–810) list tests of probabilistic reasoning, insights into qualitative decision theory, knowledge of scientific reasoning, knowledge of rules of logical consistency and validity, and economic thinking. They also list instruments that probe for irrational thinking, such as superstitious thinking, belief in the superiority of intuition, over-reliance on folk wisdom and folk psychology, belief in “special” expertise, financial misconceptions, overestimation of one’s introspective powers, dysfunctional beliefs, and a notion of self that encourages egocentric processing. They regard these tests along with the previously mentioned tests of critical thinking dispositions as the building blocks for a comprehensive test of rationality, whose development (they write) may be logistically difficult and would require millions of dollars.

A superb example of assessment of an aspect of critical thinking ability is the Test on Appraising Observations (Norris & King 1983, 1985, 1990a, 1990b), which was designed for classroom administration to senior high school students. The test focuses entirely on the ability to appraise observation statements and in particular on the ability to determine in a specified context which of two statements there is more reason to believe. According to the test manual (Norris & King 1985, 1990b), a person’s score on the multiple-choice version of the test, which is the number of items that are answered correctly, can justifiably be given either a criterion-referenced or a norm-referenced interpretation.

On a criterion-referenced interpretation, those who do well on the test have a firm grasp of the principles for appraising observation statements, and those who do poorly have a weak grasp of them. This interpretation can be justified by the content of the test and the way it was developed, which incorporated a method of controlling for background beliefs articulated and defended by Norris (1985). Norris and King synthesized from judicial practice, psychological research and common-sense psychology 31 principles for appraising observation statements, in the form of empirical generalizations about tendencies, such as the principle that observation statements tend to be more believable than inferences based on them (Norris & King 1984). They constructed items in which exactly one of the 31 principles determined which of two statements was more believable. Using a carefully constructed protocol, they interviewed about 100 students who responded to these items in order to determine the thinking that led them to choose the answers they did (Norris & King 1984). In several iterations of the test, they adjusted items so that selection of the correct answer generally reflected good thinking and selection of an incorrect answer reflected poor thinking. Thus they have good evidence that good performance on the test is due to good thinking about observation statements and that poor performance is due to poor thinking about observation statements. Collectively, the 50 items on the final version of the test require application of 29 of the 31 principles for appraising observation statements, with 13 principles tested by one item, 12 by two items, three by three items, and one by four items. Thus there is comprehensive coverage of the principles for appraising observation statements. Fisher and Scriven (1997: 135–136) judge the items to be well worked and sound, with one exception. The test is clearly written at a grade 6 reading level, meaning that poor performance cannot be attributed to difficulties in reading comprehension by the intended adolescent test takers. The stories that frame the items are realistic, and are engaging enough to stimulate test takers’ interest. Thus the most plausible explanation of a given score on the test is that it reflects roughly the degree to which the test taker can apply principles for appraising observations in real situations. In other words, there is good justification of the proposed interpretation that those who do well on the test have a firm grasp of the principles for appraising observation statements and those who do poorly have a weak grasp of them.

To get norms for performance on the test, Norris and King arranged for seven groups of high school students in different types of communities and with different levels of academic ability to take the test. The test manual includes percentiles, means, and standard deviations for each of these seven groups. These norms allow teachers to compare the performance of their class on the test to that of a similar group of students.

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Critical Thinking Tests

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Critical thinking tests, sometimes known as critical reasoning tests, are often used by employers. They evaluate how a candidate makes logical deductions after scrutinising the evidence provided, while avoiding fallacies or non-factual opinions. Critical thinking tests can form part of an assessment day, or be used as a screening test before an interview.

What is a critical thinking test?

A critical thinking test assesses your ability to use a range of logical skills to evaluate given information and make a judgement. The test is presented in such a way that candidates are expected to quickly scrutinise the evidence presented and decide on the strength of the arguments.

Critical thinking tests show potential employers that you do not just accept data and can avoid subconscious bias and opinions – instead, you can find logical connections between ideas and find alternative interpretations.

This test is usually timed, so quick, clear, logical thinking will help candidates get the best marks. Critical thinking tests are designed to be challenging, and often used as part of the application process for upper-management-level roles.

What does critical thinking mean?

Critical thinking is the intellectual skill set that ensures you can process and consider information, challenge and analyse data, and then reach a conclusion that can be defended and justified.

In the most simple terms, critical reasoning skills will make sure that you are not simply accepting information at face value with little or no supporting evidence.

It also means that you are less likely to be swayed by ‘false news’ or opinions that cannot be backed with facts – which is important in high-level jobs that require logical thinking.

For more information about logical thinking, please see our article all about logical reasoning .

Which professions use critical thinking tests, and why?

Typically, critical thinking tests are taken as part of the application process for jobs that require advanced skills in judgement, analysis and decision making. The higher the position, the more likely that you will need to demonstrate reliable critical reasoning and good logic.

The legal sector is the main industry that uses critical thinking assessments – making decisions based on facts, without opinion and intuition, is vital in legal matters.

A candidate for a legal role needs to demonstrate their intellectual skills in problem-solving without pre-existing knowledge or subconscious bias – and the critical thinking test is a simple and effective way to screen candidates.

Another industry that uses critical thinking tests as part of the recruitment process is banking. In a similar way to the legal sector, those that work in banking are required to make decisions without allowing emotion, intuition or opinion to cloud coherent analysis and conclusions.

Critical thinking tests also sometimes comprise part of the recruitment assessment for graduate and management positions across numerous industries.

The format of the test: which skills are tested?

The test itself, no matter the publisher, is multiple choice.

As a rule, the questions present a paragraph of information for a scenario that may include numerical data. There will then be a statement and a number of possible answers.

The critical thinking test is timed, so decisions need to be made quickly and accurately; in most tests there is a little less than a minute for each question. Having experience of the test structure and what each question is looking for will make the experience smoother for you.

There are typically five separate sections in a critical thinking test, and each section may have multiple questions.

Inference questions assess your ability to judge whether a statement is true, false, or impossible to determine based on the given data and scenario. You usually have five possible answers: absolutely true, absolutely false, possibly true, possibly false, or not possible to determine.

Assumptions

In this section, you are being assessed on your ability to avoid taking things for granted. Each question gives a scenario including data, and you need to evaluate whether there are any assumptions present.

Here you are given a scenario and a number of deductions that may be applicable. You need to assess the given deductions to see which is the logical conclusion – does it follow?

Interpretation

In the interpretation stage, you need to read and analyse a paragraph of information, then interpret a set of possible conclusions, to see which one is correct. You are looking for the conclusion that follows beyond reasonable doubt.

Evaluation of Arguments

In this section, you are given a scenario and a set of arguments that can be for or against. You need to determine which are strong arguments and which are weak, in terms of the information that you have. This decision is made based on the way they address the scenario and how relevant they are to the content.

How best to prepare for a critical thinking test

The best way to prepare for any type of aptitude test is to practice, and critical thinking tests are no different.

Taking practice tests, as mentioned above, will give you confidence as it makes you better understand the structure, layout and timing of the real tests, so you can concentrate on the actual scenarios and questions.

Practice tests should be timed. This will help you get used to working through the scenarios and assessing the conclusions under time constraints – which is a good way to make sure that you perform quickly as well as accurately.

In some thinking skills assessments , a timer will be built in, but you might need to time yourself.

Consistent practice will also enable you to pinpoint any areas of the critical thinking test that require improvement. Our tests offer explanations for each answer, similar to the examples provided above.

Publishers of critical thinking tests

The watson glaser critical thinking test.

The Watson-Glaser Critical Thinking Appraisal (W-GCTA) is the most popular and widely used critical thinking test. This test has been in development for 85 years and is published by TalentLens .

The W-GCTA is seen as a successful tool for assessing cognitive abilities, allowing recruiting managers to predict job success, find good managers and identify future leaders. It is available in multiple languages including English, French and Spanish.

The test itself can be used as part of an assessment day or as a screening assessment before an interview. It consists of 40 questions on the 5 sections mentioned above, and is timed at 30 minutes. Click here for more information on Watson Glaser tests .

SHL critical reasoning test

SHL is a major aptitude test publisher, which offers critical thinking as part of its testing battery for pre-employment checks.

SHL tests cover all kinds of behavioural and aptitude tests, from logic to inference, verbal to numerical – and with a number of test batteries available online, they are one of the most popular choices for recruiters.

Cornell critical thinking test

The Cornell critical thinking test was made to test students and first developed in 1985. It is an American system that helps teachers, parents and administrators to confidently predict future performance for college admission, gifted and advanced placement programs, and even career success.

Prepare yourself for leading employers

5 Example critical thinking practice questions with answers

In this section, you need to deduce whether the inferred statement is true, false or impossible to deduce.

The UK Government has published data that shows 82% of people under the age of 30 are not homeowners. A charity that helps homeless people has published data that shows 48% of people that are considered homeless are under 30.

The lack of affordable housing on the sales market is the reason so many under-30s are homeless.

• Definitely True
• Probably True
• Impossible to Deduce
• Probably False
• Definitely False

The information given does not infer the conclusion given, so it is impossible to deduce if the inference is correct – there is just not enough information to judge the inference as correct.

The removal of the five-substitution rule in British football will benefit clubs with a smaller roster.

Clubs with more money would prefer the five-substitute rule to continue.

• Assumption Made

Assumption Not Made

This is an example of a fallacy that could cause confusion for a candidate – it encourages you to bring in any pre-existing knowledge of football clubs.

It would be easy to assume the assumption has been made when you consider that the more money a club has, the more players they should have on the roster. However, the statement does not make the assumption that the clubs with more money would prefer to continue with the five-substitute rule.

All boys love football. Football is a sport, therefore:

• All boys love all sports
• Girls do not love football
• Boys are more likely to choose to play football than any other sport

In this section we are looking for the conclusion that follows the logic of the statement. In this example, we cannot deduce that girls do not love football, because there is not enough information to support that.

In the same way the conclusion that all boys love all sports does not follow – we are not given enough information to make that assumption. So, the conclusion that follows is 3: boys are more likely to choose football than any other sport because all boys like football.

The British Museum has a range of artefacts on display, including the largest privately owned collection of WWII weaponry.

There is a larger privately owned collection of WWII weaponry in the USA.

• Conclusion Follows

Conclusion Does Not Follow

The fact that the collection is in the British Museum does not make a difference to the fact it is the largest private collection – so there cannot be a larger collection elsewhere.

The Department for Education should lower standards in examinations to make it fairer for less able students.

• Yes – top grades are too hard for lower-income students
• No – less fortunate students are not capable of higher standards
• Yes – making the standards lower will benefit all students
• No – private school students will suffer if grade standards are lower
• The strongest argument is the right answer, not the one that you might personally believe.

In this case, we need to assess which argument is most relevant to the statement. Both 1 and 4 refer to students in particular situations, which isn’t relevant to the statement. The same can be said about 2, so the strongest argument is 3, since it is relevant and addresses the statement given.

Sample Critical Thinking Tests question Test your knowledge!

What implication can be drawn from the information in the passage?

A company’s internal audit revealed that departments with access to advanced analytics tools reported higher levels of strategic decision-making. These departments also showed a higher rate of reaching their quarterly objectives.

• Strategic decision-making has no link to the achievement of quarterly objectives.
• Access to advanced analytics does not influence a department's ability to make strategic decisions.
• Advanced analytics tools are the sole reason for departments reaching their quarterly objectives.
• Departments without access to advanced analytics tools are unable to make strategic decisions.
• Advanced analytics tools may facilitate better strategic decision-making, which can lead to the achievement of objectives.

After reading the passage below, what conclusion is best supported by the information provided?

• Job satisfaction increases when employees start their day earlier.
• Starting early may lead to more efficient task completion and less job-related stress.
• Workers who start their day later are more efficient at completing tasks.
• There is a direct correlation between job satisfaction and starting work early.
• The study concludes that job-related stress is unaffected by the start time of the workday.

Based on the passage below, which of the following assumptions is implicit?

• Inter-departmental cooperation is the sole factor influencing project completion rates.
• The increase in project completion rates is due entirely to the specialized team-building module.
• Team-building exercises have no effect on inter-departmental cooperation.
• The specialized team-building module may contribute to improvements in inter-departmental cooperation.
• Departments that have not undergone the training will experience a decrease in project completion rates.

What is the flaw in the argument presented in the passage below?

• The assumption that a casual dress code is suitable for all company types.
• High-tech companies have a casual dress code to increase employee productivity specifically.
• The argument correctly suggests that a casual dress code will increase employee morale in every company.
• Morale and productivity cannot be affected by a company's dress code.
• A casual dress code is more important than other factors in determining a company's success.

Which statement is an inference that can be drawn from the passage below?

• Telecommuting employees are less productive than on-site workers.
• The reduction in operational costs is directly caused by the increase in telecommuting employees.
• Telecommuting may have contributed to the decrease in operational costs.
• Operational costs are unaffected by employee work locations.
• The number of telecommuting employees has no impact on operational costs.

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Critical Thinking Tests Tips

The most important factor in your success will be practice. If you have taken some practice tests, not only will you start to recognise the way questions are worded and become familiar with what each question is looking for, you will also be able to find out whether there are any parts that you need extra practice with.

It is important to find out which test you will be taking, as some generic critical thinking practice tests might not help if you are taking specific publisher tests (see the section below).

2 Fact vs fallacy

Practice questions can also help you recognise the difference between fact and fallacy in the test. A fallacy is simply an error or something misleading in the scenario paragraph that encourages you to choose an invalid argument. This might be a presumption or a misconception, but if it isn’t spotted it can make finding the right answer impossible.

3 Ignore what you already know

There is no need for pre-existing knowledge to be brought into the test, so no research is needed. In fact, it is important that you ignore any subconscious bias when you are considering the questions – you need logic and facts to get the correct answer, not intuition or instinct.

4 Read everything carefully

Read all the given information thoroughly. This might sound straightforward, but knowing that the test is timed can encourage candidates to skip content and risk misunderstanding the content or miss crucial details.

During the test itself, you will receive instructions that will help you to understand what is being asked of you on each section. There is likely to be an example question and answer, so ensure you take the time to read them fully.

5 Stay aware of the time you've taken

This test is usually timed, so don’t spend too long on a question. If you feel it is going to take too much time, leave it and come back to it at the end (if you have time). Critical thinking tests are complex by design, so they do have quite generous time limits.

For further advice, check out our full set of tips for critical thinking tests .

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Critical Thinking Tests FAQs

What are the basics of critical thinking.

In essence, critical thinking is the intellectual process of considering information on its merits, and reaching an analysis or conclusion from that information that can be defended and rationalised with evidence.

How do you know if you have good critical thinking skills?

You are likely to be someone with good critical thinking skills if you can build winning arguments; pick holes in someone’s theory if it’s inconsistent with known facts; reflect on the biases inherent in your own experiences and assumptions; and look at problems using a systematic methodology.

Reviews of our Watson Glaser tests

What our customers say about our Watson Glaser tests

Jozef Bailey

United Kingdom

April 05, 2022

Doesn't cover all aspects of Watson-Glaser tests but useful

The WGCTA uses more categories to assess critical thinking, but this was useful for the inference section.

April 01, 2022

Just practicing for an interview

Good information and liked that it had a countdown clock, to give you that real feel in the test situation.

Jerico Kadhir

March 31, 2022

Aptitude test

It was OK, I didn't understand personally whether or not the "cannot say" option was acceptable or not in a lot of the questions, as it may have been a trick option.

Salvarina Viknesuari

March 15, 2022

I like the test because the platform is simple and engaging while the test itself is different than most of the Watson Glaser tests I've taken.

Alexis Sheridan

March 02, 2022

Some of the ratios were harder than I thought!

I like how clear the design and layout is - makes things very easy (even if the content itself is not!)

Cyril Lekgetho

February 17, 2022

Mental arithmetic

I enjoyed the fact that there were multiple questions pertaining to one passage of information, rather than multiple passages. However I would've appreciated a more varied question type.

Madupoju Manish

February 16, 2022

Analytics are the best questions

I like the test because of its time schedule. The way the questions are prepared makes it easy to crack the original test.

Chelsea Franklin

February 02, 2022

Interesting

I haven't done something like this for ages. Very good for the brain - although I certainly experienced some fog whilst doing it.

[email protected]

January 04, 2022

Population/exchange rates were the hardest

Great test as it felt a bit time pressured. Very different types of questions in terms of difficulty.

faezeh tavakoli

January 02, 2022

More attention to detail + be more time conscious

It was asking about daily stuff we all deal with, but as an assessment it's scrutinising how we approach these problems.

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The Analysis & Assessment of Thinking

Paul, R., and Elder, L. February, 2008. Foundation For Critical Thinking, Online at website: www.criticalthinking.org

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Critical Thinking Assessment for Academic and Career Success

Critical thinking assessments — a critical component of preparing students for success in college and the workplace.

A growing trend among employers is their need for candidates to have strong higher-order skills, including critical thinking, problem solving, and written communication. This means that K–12 schools and higher education institutions should be helping students develop these skills while they attend school so they are prepared for the future .

Critical thinking assessments are one component in helping students develop these higher-order skills. Critical thinking assessments identify students’ strengths and areas for improvement. This information helps educators provide tailored instruction to help students grow and become proficient with future-ready skills.

Why Should Educational Institutions Use Critical Thinking Skills Assessments?

A global survey conducted by McKinsey in 2020 found that 90% of executives and managers either already saw skills gaps in their organizations or expected those gaps to develop soon. A six-year international research study conducted by the Council for Aid to Education (CAE) and the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) found that 60% of students entering colleges and universities are not proficient in higher-order skills and 44% of exiting students are still not proficient. Yet, these skills are predictive of positive future outcomes in terms of employment for graduates. This worrying trend is becoming a severe issue in many countries, compromising productivity, growth, and even the success of businesses. In that same McKinsey study, nine out of ten executives and managers said that workforce skills gaps are, or will soon be, a risk to the success of their organization.

Which skills are students lacking?

Literacy and critical thinking skills that include problem solving, analytic reasoning, and communication topped the list of skills college graduates haven’t developed — which means high school graduates haven’t built these essential skills either. Companies prioritize these skills, along with decision making, leadership, adaptability, and continuous learning.

Why are these skills so important?

Content knowledge alone is not sufficient for job candidates in today’s workforce. The job market is constantly evolving and, as a result, new careers are emerging that require a different set of skills than traditional jobs. A 2021 study by Gartner estimated that 33% of the skills listed in a typical job description in 2017 were almost obsolete by 2021.  

Careers of the future are likely to require a combination of technical and higher-order skills including creativity, critical thinking, communication, and adaptability.

Research shows that students who have developed higher-order skills are more likely to have: 

• Higher cumulative GPAs at the end of their senior year when compared with traditional higher education entrance assessments ( Zahner et al., 2016 ).
• Positive post-higher education outcomes as measured by employment, salary, and graduate school enrollment ( Zahner, James, & Lehrfeld, 2022 ).
• Higher evaluations from their managers and advisors ( Zahner, James, & Lehrfeld, 2022 ).

Can schools measure and teach critical thinking skills?

The good news is that higher-order skills can be measured and taught. “Assessing and Developing Critical-Thinking Skills in Higher Education” , published in the European Journal of Education Study, shared key findings of the international study conducted by CAE and OECD including that it is feasible to reliably and validly measure higher-order skills in a cross-cultural context and that assessment of these skills is necessary for colleges and universities to ensure that their programs are graduating students with the skills needed for career success after graduation. 

120,000 students from higher education institutions in six different countries — Chile, Finland, Italy, Mexico, the UK, and the US — were administered CAE’s Collegiate Learning Assessment (CLA+)  between 2015 and 2020. This performance-based assessment is designed to measure proficiency with critical thinking, problem solving, and written communication. Analysis of the data show that students entering a higher education program on average performed at the Developing mastery level of the test while exiting students on average performed at the Proficient mastery level. The amount of growth is relatively small (d = 0.10), but significant. 

How Our Critical Thinking Assessment Works

Student scores reflect a range of plausible and effective response strategies — a process that, by design, mimics real-world, decision environments.

Assessment types

CAE’s suite of performance-based assessments include the College and Career Readiness Assessment (CCRA+) for secondary education and the Collegiate Learning Assessment (CLA+) for higher education. These assessments measure student proficiency in critical thinking, problem solving, and written communication — skills that are predictive of positive academic and career success. 

How schools, educators, and students can use the data

Detailed student and institution-level reports can be used to:

• Identify individual student and institution-wide mastery of essential skills.
• Evaluate how your students compare to peers in your institution and across CAE’s extensive data set.
• Measure the effectiveness of specific curriculum, interventions, and programs. 
• Provide evidence-based microcredentials that showcase to colleges and employers proficiency with higher-order skills, including critical thinking

Additional materials and support

In addition to performance-based critical thinking skills assessments, CAE offers instructional materials, practice models, and professional development that give educators the tools and data needed to develop courses, programs, and supports to improve their students’ higher-order skills and prepare them for success after graduation.

Evidence-based tools

Our critical thinking assessment tools are based on over 20 years of research and use and are aligned to current assessment models, peer-reviewed research, and educational best practices. Read more about the research behind our critical thinking assessment here .

Texas A&M University’s Mays Business School Works to Develop Students’ Essential Learning Skills with Support from CAE

Mays Business School (MBS) realized they weren’t teaching students the skills most in-demand by employers so in the fall of 2021 launched a program to strengthen these essential skills.

Students’ skills are assessed using CLA+ and CAE has worked with MBS faculty to provide critical thinking instruction to students.

Critical Thinking Assessment Samples

Multiple choice assessments can gauge students’ content knowledge but aren’t able to identify proficiency with the foundational skills that are essential to students’ college and career success — critical thinking, problem solving, and written communication. The performance-based CCRA+ and CLA+ critical thinking assessments provide insightful, nuanced evidence of students’ competencies in these areas so they can work to develop essential higher-order skills.

Take a look at these sample performance-based assessments to see how they place students in real-world scenarios and ask them to use these skills to recommend a solution.

CCRA+ — For Grades 6–12

Sample middle school assessment.

Sample High School Assessment

CLA+ — For Higher Education

Sample higher education assessment.

Actionable Data and Reports

CAE critical thinking assessment data and reports provide actionable insights into students’ areas of strength and opportunities for growth so instruction, programs, and supports can be implemented accordingly to help students develop these essential skills.

Educators can use the data-rich reports to:

• Provide instruction to build students’ critical thinking skills using CAE’s or a similar curricula
• Advise and provide guidance on attaining career goals
• Demonstrate student outcomes and success to hiring organizations through micro-credentials

Our student reports show each individual student’s strengths and opportunities for development and growth with essential skills. This data can be used as a roadmap to guide students in which skills they need to prioritize developing so they are able to achieve their future pursuits and goals.

Our institution reports provide an overview of a school or district’s scores and how they compare to CAE’s US normed sample. Educators can use this data to evaluate the specific skills and subskills that would benefit from additional development and better prepare your students for their futures. 

Sample CCRA+ Student and Institution Reports—For Secondary Schools

Sample CLA+ Student and Institution Reports —For Higher Education

Benefits of Our Critical Thinking Assessment

Effective solution to build students’ higher-order skills.

CAE provides all the tools needed to help students build the higher-order skills they need in the workplace and in life. Our critical thinking assessments identify student strengths and opportunities for improvement in critical thinking, problem solving, and written communication. Detailed reports provide clear guidance and actionable next steps to help students develop the essential skills they will need during their academic journeys and career paths. We also provide professional development for educators to ensure they have the knowledge and support they need to teach students effectively.

Higher-order skills proficiency

CAE’s critical thinking skills assessments help students become proficient in the skills they need to succeed in college and their careers. They help students learn how to analyze problems systematically and logically, understand the connection between ideas, re-evaluate their beliefs based on facts, and be curious about the world. Our assessments also help students build confidence and resilience, articulate their thoughts, ideas, and opinions, and effectively communicate with diverse audiences.

Increased employability

Your students’ success doesn’t end at graduation — it’s only the beginning. Students who are proficient in higher-order skills are more employable and they are prepared for their careers and lifelong learning. These skills also help students be more productive and efficient in their work — characteristics that are in high demand by employers.

Learn more about our Secondary and Higher Education critical thinking assessments. Then, schedule a time to chat with us about how CAE can help you equitably prepare students for postsecondary success.

How to Prepare for a Critical Thinking Test: Effective Strategies and Tips

Preparing for a critical thinking test can be challenging, as it requires you to use your intellectual skills to critically analyze evidence and reach logical conclusions. Critical thinking tests, sometimes known as critical reasoning tests, are often used by employers to evaluate how a candidate makes logical deductions after scrutinizing the evidence provided, while avoiding fallacies or non-factual opinions.

Key Takeaways

Understanding critical thinking, critical thinking skills.

Critical thinking is the ability to scrutinize evidence using intellectual skills and reflective abilities to reach clear, coherent, and logical conclusions, rather than just accepting information as it is provided 1 . It involves a range of logical skills that are essential for effective decision-making and problem-solving. Some of the key critical thinking skills include:

Strategies to Enhance Critical Thinking Ability

Fundamentals of critical thinking test, evaluation of arguments, types of critical thinking tests.

There are different types of critical thinking tests available online, covering a range of question formats and testing methods. Some tests focus on analyzing written passages, while others present the information in diagrams or charts. Most tests evaluate an individual’s ability to:

Importance of Critical Thinking Tests for Employers

For employers, critical thinking tests play a vital role in the application process. Employers use these tests to assess a candidate’s ability to scrutinize evidence, make logical deductions, and avoid fallacies or non-factual opinions. This evaluation is essential in deciding whether an individual is suitable for a role that requires complex decision-making, troubleshooting, or problem-solving skills.

Guidelines to Prepare for the Test

Assessing and recognizing assumptions, drawing logical conclusions.

A critical component of critical thinking is drawing logical conclusions based on the information provided. To master this skill, begin with analyzing different scenarios and identifying the relevant details. This process involves making inferences and connecting multiple pieces of information to arrive at a sound conclusion. Engage in activities that challenge your interpretation and decision-making abilities, as these skills will be beneficial on assessment day.

Implementing Problem Solving Techniques

Sharpening deduction skills.

In conclusion, enhancing your critical thinking skills requires diligent practice and an understanding of key principles. By following the guidelines above, you can confidently prepare for the test and emerge with a strong foundation in critical thinking.

Critical Thinking Tests in Different Sectors

Critical thinking in the legal sector, critical thinking in the banking sector.

The banking sector similarly places great importance on critical thinking abilities. SHL Critical Reasoning Battery is commonly utilized in the banking industry to assess candidates’ logical reasoning and decision-making skills. You can practice critical thinking tests here .

Banks need employees who can make well-founded decisions and effectively handle intricate financial scenarios. Assessing critical thinking skills during recruitment ensures that companies hire professionals with the ability to make rational choices and excel in their roles.

Relevant Psychometric Assessments

When preparing for a critical thinking test, it is important to familiarize yourself with relevant psychometric assessments that employers might use to evaluate your cognitive abilities. Two widely known assessments are the Watson Glaser Critical Thinking Appraisal and the SHL Critical Reasoning Battery .

Watson Glaser Critical Thinking Appraisal

Shl critical reasoning battery.

Another important test to be aware of is the SHL Critical Reasoning Battery . This assessment evaluates a candidate’s aptitude for logical reasoning and analysis, focusing on their ability to identify alternative interpretations and make well-informed decisions.

Each type of assessment measures different cognitive abilities, making it necessary for candidates to practice and develop their skills in all three areas to perform well during the test.

In conclusion, preparing for a critical thinking test requires understanding the relevant psychometric assessments, such as the Watson Glaser Critical Thinking Appraisal and the SHL Critical Reasoning Battery. By focusing on the specific categories and cognitive abilities assessed in these tests, you can improve your critical thinking skills and increase your chances of success in the recruitment process.

Approach to Sample Questions

Interpreting information, evaluating arguments, recognizing assumptions.

Recognizing assumptions is a crucial aspect of critical thinking, as it involves identifying biases, values, and beliefs underlying the presented information. Make a habit of questioning assumptions and considering alternative viewpoints. As you practice recognizing assumptions, challenge yourself to consider counterarguments and explore different perspectives. Developing this skill will enable you to approach sample questions with a more open mind and balanced judgment.

Practice Tests

Preparing for a critical thinking test involves a combination of honing your intellectual and reflective skills. One key aspect is to practice regularly with different test assessments to familiarize yourself with the format and question types.

Lastly, persistence and dedication are crucial in refining your critical thinking skills. Be prepared to invest time and effort into this process, and do not become disheartened if you face difficulties along the way. Remember to learn from your mistakes, adapt your strategies, and you will undoubtedly see progress in your critical thinking capabilities.

Frequently Asked Questions

What are the key elements to focus on while practicing, how can one improve problem-solving skills, what are the best sources for critical thinking test samples.

The best sources for critical thinking test samples are reputable websites and platforms that offer practice tests and resources tailored to the specific critical thinking test format. Some examples include Psychometric Success , Practice Aptitude Tests , and Practice4Me . These platforms offer sample questions, tips, and techniques to help candidates familiarize themselves with the test format and content.

How essential is time management in critical thinking tests?

What strategies can be employed to enhance logical reasoning, how can one effectively analyze arguments during the test.

Analyzing arguments effectively during a critical thinking test involves evaluating the evidence presented, understanding the structure of the argument, determining the validity of the argument, and identifying potential fallacies or biased reasoning. To achieve this, test-takers should practice critically analyzing various types of arguments, focusing on the logical and evidentiary components, and maintaining a neutral and objective viewpoint throughout the process.

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Why Schools Need to Change Yes, We Can Define, Teach, and Assess Critical Thinking Skills

Jeff Heyck-Williams (He, His, Him) Director of the Two Rivers Learning Institute in Washington, DC

Today’s learners face an uncertain present and a rapidly changing future that demand far different skills and knowledge than were needed in the 20th century. We also know so much more about enabling deep, powerful learning than we ever did before. Our collective future depends on how well young people prepare for the challenges and opportunities of 21st-century life.

Critical thinking is a thing. We can define it; we can teach it; and we can assess it.

While the idea of teaching critical thinking has been bandied around in education circles since at least the time of John Dewey, it has taken greater prominence in the education debates with the advent of the term “21st century skills” and discussions of deeper learning. There is increasing agreement among education reformers that critical thinking is an essential ingredient for long-term success for all of our students.

However, there are still those in the education establishment and in the media who argue that critical thinking isn’t really a thing, or that these skills aren’t well defined and, even if they could be defined, they can’t be taught or assessed.

To those naysayers, I have to disagree. Critical thinking is a thing. We can define it; we can teach it; and we can assess it. In fact, as part of a multi-year Assessment for Learning Project , Two Rivers Public Charter School in Washington, D.C., has done just that.

Before I dive into what we have done, I want to acknowledge that some of the criticism has merit.

First, there are those that argue that critical thinking can only exist when students have a vast fund of knowledge. Meaning that a student cannot think critically if they don’t have something substantive about which to think. I agree. Students do need a robust foundation of core content knowledge to effectively think critically. Schools still have a responsibility for building students’ content knowledge.

However, I would argue that students don’t need to wait to think critically until after they have mastered some arbitrary amount of knowledge. They can start building critical thinking skills when they walk in the door. All students come to school with experience and knowledge which they can immediately think critically about. In fact, some of the thinking that they learn to do helps augment and solidify the discipline-specific academic knowledge that they are learning.

The second criticism is that critical thinking skills are always highly contextual. In this argument, the critics make the point that the types of thinking that students do in history is categorically different from the types of thinking students do in science or math. Thus, the idea of teaching broadly defined, content-neutral critical thinking skills is impossible. I agree that there are domain-specific thinking skills that students should learn in each discipline. However, I also believe that there are several generalizable skills that elementary school students can learn that have broad applicability to their academic and social lives. That is what we have done at Two Rivers.

Defining Critical Thinking Skills

We began this work by first defining what we mean by critical thinking. After a review of the literature and looking at the practice at other schools, we identified five constructs that encompass a set of broadly applicable skills: schema development and activation; effective reasoning; creativity and innovation; problem solving; and decision making.

We then created rubrics to provide a concrete vision of what each of these constructs look like in practice. Working with the Stanford Center for Assessment, Learning and Equity (SCALE) , we refined these rubrics to capture clear and discrete skills.

For example, we defined effective reasoning as the skill of creating an evidence-based claim: students need to construct a claim, identify relevant support, link their support to their claim, and identify possible questions or counter claims. Rubrics provide an explicit vision of the skill of effective reasoning for students and teachers. By breaking the rubrics down for different grade bands, we have been able not only to describe what reasoning is but also to delineate how the skills develop in students from preschool through 8th grade.

Before moving on, I want to freely acknowledge that in narrowly defining reasoning as the construction of evidence-based claims we have disregarded some elements of reasoning that students can and should learn. For example, the difference between constructing claims through deductive versus inductive means is not highlighted in our definition. However, by privileging a definition that has broad applicability across disciplines, we are able to gain traction in developing the roots of critical thinking. In this case, to formulate well-supported claims or arguments.

Teaching Critical Thinking Skills

The definitions of critical thinking constructs were only useful to us in as much as they translated into practical skills that teachers could teach and students could learn and use. Consequently, we have found that to teach a set of cognitive skills, we needed thinking routines that defined the regular application of these critical thinking and problem-solving skills across domains. Building on Harvard’s Project Zero Visible Thinking work, we have named routines aligned with each of our constructs.

For example, with the construct of effective reasoning, we aligned the Claim-Support-Question thinking routine to our rubric. Teachers then were able to teach students that whenever they were making an argument, the norm in the class was to use the routine in constructing their claim and support. The flexibility of the routine has allowed us to apply it from preschool through 8th grade and across disciplines from science to economics and from math to literacy.

Kathryn Mancino, a 5th grade teacher at Two Rivers, has deliberately taught three of our thinking routines to students using the anchor charts above. Her charts name the components of each routine and has a place for students to record when they’ve used it and what they have figured out about the routine. By using this structure with a chart that can be added to throughout the year, students see the routines as broadly applicable across disciplines and are able to refine their application over time.

Assessing Critical Thinking Skills

By defining specific constructs of critical thinking and building thinking routines that support their implementation in classrooms, we have operated under the assumption that students are developing skills that they will be able to transfer to other settings. However, we recognized both the importance and the challenge of gathering reliable data to confirm this.

With this in mind, we have developed a series of short performance tasks around novel discipline-neutral contexts in which students can apply the constructs of thinking. Through these tasks, we have been able to provide an opportunity for students to demonstrate their ability to transfer the types of thinking beyond the original classroom setting. Once again, we have worked with SCALE to define tasks where students easily access the content but where the cognitive lift requires them to demonstrate their thinking abilities.

These assessments demonstrate that it is possible to capture meaningful data on students’ critical thinking abilities. They are not intended to be high stakes accountability measures. Instead, they are designed to give students, teachers, and school leaders discrete formative data on hard to measure skills.

While it is clearly difficult, and we have not solved all of the challenges to scaling assessments of critical thinking, we can define, teach, and assess these skills . In fact, knowing how important they are for the economy of the future and our democracy, it is essential that we do.

Jeff Heyck-Williams (He, His, Him)

Director of the two rivers learning institute.

Jeff Heyck-Williams is the director of the Two Rivers Learning Institute and a founder of Two Rivers Public Charter School. He has led work around creating school-wide cultures of mathematics, developing assessments of critical thinking and problem-solving, and supporting project-based learning.

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• What Is Critical Thinking? | Definition & Examples

What Is Critical Thinking? | Definition & Examples

Published on May 30, 2022 by Eoghan Ryan . Revised on May 31, 2023.

Critical thinking is the ability to effectively analyze information and form a judgment .

To think critically, you must be aware of your own biases and assumptions when encountering information, and apply consistent standards when evaluating sources .

Critical thinking skills help you to:

• Identify credible sources
• Evaluate and respond to arguments
• Assess alternative viewpoints
• Test hypotheses against relevant criteria

Table of contents

Why is critical thinking important, critical thinking examples, how to think critically, other interesting articles, frequently asked questions about critical thinking.

Critical thinking is important for making judgments about sources of information and forming your own arguments. It emphasizes a rational, objective, and self-aware approach that can help you to identify credible sources and strengthen your conclusions.

Critical thinking is important in all disciplines and throughout all stages of the research process . The types of evidence used in the sciences and in the humanities may differ, but critical thinking skills are relevant to both.

In academic writing , critical thinking can help you to determine whether a source:

• Is free from research bias
• Provides evidence to support its research findings
• Considers alternative viewpoints

Outside of academia, critical thinking goes hand in hand with information literacy to help you form opinions rationally and engage independently and critically with popular media.

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Critical thinking can help you to identify reliable sources of information that you can cite in your research paper . It can also guide your own research methods and inform your own arguments.

Outside of academia, critical thinking can help you to be aware of both your own and others’ biases and assumptions.

Academic examples

However, when you compare the findings of the study with other current research, you determine that the results seem improbable. You analyze the paper again, consulting the sources it cites.

You notice that the research was funded by the pharmaceutical company that created the treatment. Because of this, you view its results skeptically and determine that more independent research is necessary to confirm or refute them. Example: Poor critical thinking in an academic context You’re researching a paper on the impact wireless technology has had on developing countries that previously did not have large-scale communications infrastructure. You read an article that seems to confirm your hypothesis: the impact is mainly positive. Rather than evaluating the research methodology, you accept the findings uncritically.

Nonacademic examples

However, you decide to compare this review article with consumer reviews on a different site. You find that these reviews are not as positive. Some customers have had problems installing the alarm, and some have noted that it activates for no apparent reason.

You revisit the original review article. You notice that the words “sponsored content” appear in small print under the article title. Based on this, you conclude that the review is advertising and is therefore not an unbiased source. Example: Poor critical thinking in a nonacademic context You support a candidate in an upcoming election. You visit an online news site affiliated with their political party and read an article that criticizes their opponent. The article claims that the opponent is inexperienced in politics. You accept this without evidence, because it fits your preconceptions about the opponent.

There is no single way to think critically. How you engage with information will depend on the type of source you’re using and the information you need.

However, you can engage with sources in a systematic and critical way by asking certain questions when you encounter information. Like the CRAAP test , these questions focus on the currency , relevance , authority , accuracy , and purpose of a source of information.

When encountering information, ask:

• Who is the author? Are they an expert in their field?
• What do they say? Is their argument clear? Can you summarize it?
• When did they say this? Is the source current?
• Where is the information published? Is it an academic article? Is it peer-reviewed ?
• Why did the author publish it? What is their motivation?
• How do they make their argument? Is it backed up by evidence? Does it rely on opinion, speculation, or appeals to emotion ? Do they address alternative arguments?

Critical thinking also involves being aware of your own biases, not only those of others. When you make an argument or draw your own conclusions, you can ask similar questions about your own writing:

• Am I only considering evidence that supports my preconceptions?
• Is my argument expressed clearly and backed up with credible sources?
• Would I be convinced by this argument coming from someone else?

If you want to know more about ChatGPT, AI tools , citation , and plagiarism , make sure to check out some of our other articles with explanations and examples.

• ChatGPT vs human editor
• ChatGPT citations
• Is ChatGPT trustworthy?
• Using ChatGPT for your studies
• What is ChatGPT?
• Chicago style
• Paraphrasing

 Plagiarism

• Types of plagiarism
• Self-plagiarism
• Avoiding plagiarism
• Academic integrity
• Consequences of plagiarism
• Common knowledge

Critical thinking refers to the ability to evaluate information and to be aware of biases or assumptions, including your own.

Like information literacy , it involves evaluating arguments, identifying and solving problems in an objective and systematic way, and clearly communicating your ideas.

Critical thinking skills include the ability to:

You can assess information and arguments critically by asking certain questions about the source. You can use the CRAAP test , focusing on the currency , relevance , authority , accuracy , and purpose of a source of information.

Ask questions such as:

• Who is the author? Are they an expert?
• How do they make their argument? Is it backed up by evidence?

A credible source should pass the CRAAP test  and follow these guidelines:

• The information should be up to date and current.
• The author and publication should be a trusted authority on the subject you are researching.
• The sources the author cited should be easy to find, clear, and unbiased.
• For a web source, the URL and layout should signify that it is trustworthy.

Information literacy refers to a broad range of skills, including the ability to find, evaluate, and use sources of information effectively.

Being information literate means that you:

• Know how to find credible sources
• Use relevant sources to inform your research
• Understand what constitutes plagiarism
• Know how to cite your sources correctly

Confirmation bias is the tendency to search, interpret, and recall information in a way that aligns with our pre-existing values, opinions, or beliefs. It refers to the ability to recollect information best when it amplifies what we already believe. Relatedly, we tend to forget information that contradicts our opinions.

Although selective recall is a component of confirmation bias, it should not be confused with recall bias.

On the other hand, recall bias refers to the differences in the ability between study participants to recall past events when self-reporting is used. This difference in accuracy or completeness of recollection is not related to beliefs or opinions. Rather, recall bias relates to other factors, such as the length of the recall period, age, and the characteristics of the disease under investigation.

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Critical Thinking About Measuring Critical Thinking

A list of critical thinking measures..

Posted May 18, 2018

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In my last post , I discussed the nature of engaging the critical thinking (CT) process and made mention of individuals who draw a conclusion and wind up being correct. But, just because they’re right, it doesn’t mean they used CT to get there. I exemplified this through an observation made in recent years regarding extant measures of CT, many of which assess CT via multiple-choice questions. In the case of CT MCQs, you can guess the "right" answer 20-25% of the time, without any need for CT. So, the question is, are these CT measures really measuring CT?

As my previous articles explain, CT is a metacognitive process consisting of a number of sub-skills and dispositions, that, when applied through purposeful, self-regulatory, reflective judgment, increase the chances of producing a logical solution to a problem or a valid conclusion to an argument (Dwyer, 2017; Dwyer, Hogan & Stewart, 2014). Most definitions, though worded differently, tend to agree with this perspective – it consists of certain dispositions, specific skills and a reflective sensibility that governs application of these skills. That’s how it’s defined; however, it’s not necessarily how it’s been operationally defined.

Operationally defining something refers to defining the terms of the process or measure required to determine the nature and properties of a phenomenon. Simply, it is defining the concept with respect to how it can be done, assessed or measured. If the manner in which you measure something does not match, or assess the parameters set out in the way in which you define it, then you have not been successful in operationally defining it.

Though most theoretical definitions of CT are similar, the manner in which they vary often impedes the construction of an integrated theoretical account of how best to measure CT skills. As a result, researchers and educators must consider the wide array of CT measures available, in order to identify the best and the most appropriate measures, based on the CT conceptualisation used for training. There are various extant CT measures – the most popular amongst them include the Watson-Glaser Critical Thinking Assessment (WGCTA; Watson & Glaser, 1980), the Cornell Critical Thinking Test (CCTT; Ennis, Millman & Tomko, 1985), the California Critical Thinking Skills Test (CCTST; Facione, 1990a), the Ennis-Weir Critical Thinking Essay Test (EWCTET; Ennis & Weir, 1985) and the Halpern Critical Thinking Assessment (Halpern, 2010).

It has been noted by some commentators that these different measures of CT ability may not be directly comparable (Abrami et al., 2008). For example, the WGCTA consists of 80 MCQs that measure the ability to draw inferences; recognise assumptions; evaluate arguments; and use logical interpretation and deductive reasoning (Watson & Glaser, 1980). The CCTT consists of 52 MCQs which measure skills of critical thinking associated with induction; deduction; observation and credibility; definition and assumption identification; and meaning and fallacies. Finally, the CCTST consists of 34 multiple-choice questions (MCQs) and measures CT according to the core skills of analysis, evaluation and inference, as well as inductive and deductive reasoning.

As addressed above, the MCQ-format of these three assessments is less than ideal – problematic even, because it allows test-takers to simply guess when they do not know the correct answer, instead of demonstrating their ability to critically analyse and evaluate problems and infer solutions to those problems (Ku, 2009). Furthermore, as argued by Halpern (2003), the MCQ format makes the assessment a test of verbal and quantitative knowledge rather than CT (i.e. because one selects from a list of possible answers rather than determining one’s own criteria for developing an answer). The measurement of CT through MCQs is also problematic given the potential incompatibility between the conceptualisation of CT that shapes test construction and its assessment using MCQs. That is, MCQ tests assess cognitive capacities associated with identifying single right-or-wrong answers and as a result, this approach to testing is unable to provide a direct measure of test-takers’ use of metacognitive processes such as CT, reflective judgment, and disposition towards CT.

Instead of using MCQ items, a better measure of CT might ask open-ended questions, which would allow test-takers to demonstrate whether or not they spontaneously use a specific CT skill. One commonly used CT assessment, mentioned above, that employs an open-ended format is the Ennis-Weir Critical Thinking Essay Test (EWCTET; Ennis & Weir, 1985). The EWCTET is an essay-based assessment of the test-taker’s ability to analyse, evaluate, and respond to arguments and debates in real-world situations (Ennis & Weir, 1985; see Ku, 2009 for a discussion). The authors of the EWCTET provide what they call a “rough, somewhat overlapping list of areas of critical thinking competence”, measured by their test (Ennis & Weir, 1985, p. 1). However, this test, too, has been criticised – for its domain-specific nature (Taube, 1997), the subjectivity of its scoring protocol and its bias in favour of those proficient in writing (Adams, Whitlow, Stover & Johnson, 1996).

Another, more recent CT assessment that utilises an open-ended format is the Halpern Critical Thinking Assessment (HCTA; Halpern, 2010). The HCTA consists of 25 open-ended questions based on believable, everyday situations, followed by 25 specific questions that probe for the reasoning behind each answer. The multi-part nature of the questions makes it possible to assess the ability to use specific CT skills when the prompt is provided (Ku, 2009). The HCTA’s scoring protocol also provides comprehensible, unambiguous instructions for how to evaluate responses by breaking them down into clear, measurable components. Questions on the HCTA represent five categories of CT application: hypothesis testing (e.g. understanding the limits of correlational reasoning and how to know when causal claims cannot be made), verbal reasoning (e.g. recognising the use of pervasive or misleading language), argumentation (e.g. recognising the structure of arguments, how to examine the credibility of a source and how to judge one’s own arguments), judging likelihood and uncertainty (e.g. applying relevant principles of probability, how to avoid overconfidence in certain situations) and problem-solving (e.g. identifying the problem goal, generating and selecting solutions among alternatives).

Up until the development of the HCTA, I would have recommended the CCTST for measuring CT, despite its limitations. What’s nice about the CCTST is that it assesses the three core skills of CT: analysis, evaluation, and inference, which other scales do not (explicitly). So, if you were interested in assessing students’ sub-skill ability, this would be helpful. However, as we know, though CT skill performance is a sequence, it is also a collation of these skills – meaning that for any given problem or topic, each skill is necessary. By administrating an analysis problem, an evaluation problem and an inference problem, in which the student scores top marks for all three, it doesn’t guarantee that the student will apply these three to a broader problem that requires all three. That is, these questions don’t measure CT skill ability per se, rather analysis skill, evaluation skill and inference skill in isolation. Simply, scores may predict CT skill performance, but they don’t measure it.

What may be a better indicator of CT performance is assessment of CT application . As addressed above, there are five general applications of CT: hypothesis testing, verbal reasoning, argumentation, problem-solving and judging likelihood and uncertainty – all of which require a collation of analysis, evaluation, and inference. Though the sub-skills of analysis, evaluation, and inference are not directly measured in this case, their collation is measured through five distinct applications; and, as I see it, provides a 'truer' assessment of CT. In addition to assessing CT via an open-ended, short-answer format, the HCTA measures CT according to the five applications of CT; thus, I recommend its use for measuring CT.

However, that’s not to say that the HCTA is perfect. Though it consists of 25 open-ended questions, followed by 25 specific questions that probe for the reasoning behind each answer, when I first used it to assess a sample of students, I found that in setting up my data file, there were actually 165 opportunities for scoring across the test. Past research recommends that the assessment takes roughly between 45 and 60 minutes to complete. However, many of my participants reported it requiring closer to two hours (sometimes longer). It’s a long assessment – thorough, but long. Fortunately, adapted, shortened versions are now available, and it’s an adapted version that I currently administrate to assess CT. Another limitation is that, despite the rationale above, it would be nice to have some indication of how participants get on with the sub-skills of analysis, evaluation, and inference, as I do think there’s a potential predictive element in the relationship among the individual skills and the applications. With that, I suppose it is feasible to administer both the HCTA and CCTST to assess such hypotheses.

Though it’s obviously important to consider how assessments actually measure CT and the nature in which each is limited, the broader, macro-problem still requires thought. Just as conceptualisations of CT vary, so too does the reliability and validity of the different CT measures, which has led Abrami and colleagues (2008, p. 1104) to ask: “How will we know if one intervention is more beneficial than another if we are uncertain about the validity and reliability of the outcome measures?” Abrami and colleagues add that, even when researchers explicitly declare that they are assessing CT, there still remains the major challenge of ensuring that measured outcomes are related, in some meaningful way, to the conceptualisation and operational definition of CT that informed the teaching practice in cases of interventional research. Often, the relationship between the concepts of CT that are taught and those that are assessed is unclear, and a large majority of studies in this area include no theory to help elucidate these relationships.

In conclusion, solving the problem of consistency across CT conceptualisation, training, and measure is no easy task. I think recent advancements in CT scale development (e.g. the development of the HCTA and its adapted versions) have eased the problem, given that they now bridge the gap between current theory and practical assessment. However, such advances need to be made clearer to interested populations. As always, I’m very interested in hearing from any readers who may have any insight or suggestions!

Abrami, P. C., Bernard, R. M., Borokhovski, E., Wade, A., Surkes, M. A., Tamim, R., & Zhang, D. (2008). Instructional interventions affecting critical thinking skills and dispositions: A stage 1 meta-analysis. Review of Educational Research, 78(4), 1102–1134.

Adams, M.H., Whitlow, J.F., Stover, L.M., & Johnson, K.W. (1996). Critical thinking as an educational outcome: An evaluation of current tools of measurement. Nurse Educator, 21, 23–32.

Dwyer, C.P. (2017). Critical thinking: Conceptual perspectives and practical guidelines. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.

Dwyer, C.P., Hogan, M.J. & Stewart, I. (2014). An integrated critical thinking framework for the 21st century. Thinking Skills & Creativity, 12, 43-52.

Ennis, R.H., Millman, J., & Tomko, T.N. (1985). Cornell critical thinking tests. CA: Critical Thinking Co.

Ennis, R.H., & Weir, E. (1985). The Ennis-Weir critical thinking essay test. Pacific Grove, CA: Midwest Publications.

Facione, P. A. (1990a). The California critical thinking skills test (CCTST): Forms A and B;The CCTST test manual. Millbrae, CA: California Academic Press.

Facione, P.A. (1990b). The Delphi report: Committee on pre-college philosophy. Millbrae, CA: California Academic Press.

Halpern, D. F. (2003b). The “how” and “why” of critical thinking assessment. In D. Fasko (Ed.), Critical thinking and reasoning: Current research, theory and practice. Cresskill, NJ: Hampton Press.

Halpern, D.F. (2010). The Halpern critical thinking assessment: Manual. Vienna: Schuhfried.

Ku, K.Y.L. (2009). Assessing students’ critical thinking performance: Urging for measurements using multi-response format. Thinking Skills and Creativity, 4, 1, 70- 76.

Taube, K.T. (1997). Critical thinking ability and disposition as factors of performance on a written critical thinking test. Journal of General Education, 46, 129-164.

Watson, G., & Glaser, E.M. (1980). Watson-Glaser critical thinking appraisal. New York: Psychological Corporation.

Christopher Dwyer, Ph.D., is a lecturer at the Technological University of the Shannon in Athlone, Ireland.

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A Brief Guide for Teaching and Assessing Critical Thinking in Psychology

In my first year of college teaching, a student approached me one day after class and politely asked, “What did you mean by the word ‘evidence’?” I tried to hide my shock at what I took to be a very naive question. Upon further reflection, however, I realized that this was actually a good question, for which the usual approaches to teaching psychology provided too few answers. During the next several years, I developed lessons and techniques to help psychology students learn how to evaluate the strengths and weaknesses of scientific and nonscientific kinds of evidence and to help them draw sound conclusions. It seemed to me that learning about the quality of evidence and drawing appropriate conclusions from scientific research were central to teaching critical thinking (CT) in psychology.

In this article, I have attempted to provide guidelines to psychol­ogy instructors on how to teach CT, describing techniques I devel­oped over 20 years of teaching. More importantly, the techniques and approach described below are ones that are supported by scientific research. Classroom examples illustrate the use of the guidelines and how assessment can be integrated into CT skill instruction.

Overview of the Guidelines

Confusion about the definition of CT has been a major obstacle to teaching and assessing it (Halonen, 1995; Williams, 1999). To deal with this problem, we have defined CT as reflective think­ing involved in the evaluation of evidence relevant to a claim so that a sound or good conclusion can be drawn from the evidence (Bensley, 1998). One virtue of this definition is it can be applied to many thinking tasks in psychology. The claims and conclusions psychological scientists make include hypotheses, theoretical state­ments, interpretation of research findings, or diagnoses of mental disorders. Evidence can be the results of an experiment, case study, naturalistic observation study, or psychological test. Less formally, evidence can be anecdotes, introspective reports, commonsense beliefs, or statements of authority. Evaluating evidence and drawing appropriate conclusions along with other skills, such as distin­guishing arguments from nonarguments and finding assumptions, are collectively called argument analysis skills. Many CT experts take argument analysis skills to be fundamental CT skills (e.g., Ennis, 1987; Halpern, 1998). Psychology students need argument analysis skills to evaluate psychological claims in their work and in everyday discourse.

Some instructors expect their students will improve CT skills like argument analysis skills by simply immersing them in challenging course work. Others expect improvement because they use a textbook with special CT questions or modules, give lectures that critically review the literature, or have students complete written assignments. While these and other traditional techniques may help, a growing body of research suggests they are not sufficient to efficiently produce measurable changes in CT skills. Our research on acquisition of argument analysis skills in psychology (Bensley, Crowe, Bernhardt, Buchner, & Allman, in press) and on critical reading skills (Bensley & Haynes, 1995; Spero & Bensley, 2009) suggests that more explicit, direct instruction of CT skills is necessary. These results concur with results of an earlier review of CT programs by Chance (1986) and a recent meta-analysis by Abrami et al., (2008).

Based on these and other findings, the following guidelines describe an approach to explicit instruction in which instructors can directly infuse CT skills and assessment into their courses. With infusion, instructors can use relevant content to teach CT rules and concepts along with the subject matter. Directly infus­ing CT skills into course work involves targeting specific CT skills, making CT rules, criteria, and methods explicit, providing guided practice in the form of exercises focused on assessing skills, and giving feedback on practice and assessments. These components are similar to ones found in effective, direct instruc­tion approaches (Walberg, 2006). They also resemble approaches to teaching CT proposed by Angelo (1995), Beyer (1997), and Halpern (1998). Importantly, this approach has been successful in teaching CT skills in psychology (e.g., Bensley, et al., in press; Bensley & Haynes, 1995; Nieto & Saiz, 2008; Penningroth, Despain, & Gray, 2007). Directly infusing CT skill instruction can also enrich content instruction without sacrificing learning of subject matter (Solon, 2003). The following seven guidelines, illustrated by CT lessons and assessments, explicate this process.

Seven Guidelines for Teaching and Assessing Critical Thinking

1. Motivate your students to think critically

Critical thinking takes effort. Without proper motivation, students are less inclined to engage in it. Therefore, it is good to arouse interest right away and foster commitment to improving CT throughout a course. One motivational strategy is to explain why CT is important to effective, professional behavior. Often, telling a compelling story that illustrates the consequences of failing to think critically can mo­tivate students. For example, the tragic death of 10-year-old Candace Newmaker at the hands of her therapists practicing attachment therapy illustrates the perils of using a therapy that has not been supported by good empirical evidence (Lilienfeld, 2007).

Instructors can also pique interest by taking a class poll posing an interesting question on which students are likely to have an opinion. For example, asking students how many think that the full moon can lead to increases in abnormal behavior can be used to introduce the difference between empirical fact and opinion or common sense belief. After asking students how psychologists answer such questions, instructors might go over the meta-analysis of Rotton and Kelly (1985). Their review found that almost all of the 37 studies they reviewed showed no association between the phase of the moon and abnormal behavior with only a few, usually poorly, controlled studies supporting it. Effect size over all stud­ies was very small (.01). Instructors can use this to illustrate how psychologists draw a conclusion based on the quality and quantity of research studies as opposed to what many people commonly believe. For other interesting thinking errors and misconceptions related to psychology, see Bensley (1998; 2002; 2008), Halpern (2003), Ruscio (2006), Stanovich (2007), and Sternberg (2007).

Attitudes and dispositions can also affect motivation to think critically. If students lack certain CT dispositions such as open-mindedness, fair-mindedness, and skepticism, they will be less likely to think critically even if they have CT skills (Halpern, 1998). Instructors might point out that even great scientists noted for their powers of reasoning sometimes fail to think critically when they are not disposed to use their skills. For example, Alfred Russel Wallace who used his considerable CT skills to help develop the concept of natural selection also believed in spiritualistic contact with the dead. Despite considerable evidence that mediums claiming to contact the dead were really faking such contact, Wallace continued to believe in it (Bensley, 2006). Likewise, the great American psychologist William James, whose reasoning skills helped him develop the seeds of important contemporary theories, believed in spiritualism despite evidence to the contrary.

2. Clearly state the CT goals and objectives for your class

Once students are motivated, the instructor should focus them on what skills they will work on during the course. The APA task force on learning goals and objectives for psychology listed CT as one of 10 major goals for students (Halonen et al., 2002). Under critical thinking they have further specified outcomes such as evaluating the quality of information, identifying and evaluating the source and credibility of information, recognizing and defending against think­ing errors and fallacies. Instructors should publish goals like these in their CT course objectives in their syllabi and more specifically as assignment objectives in their assignments. Given the pragmatic penchant of students for studying what is needed to succeed in a course, this should help motivate and focus them.

To make instruction efficient, course objectives and lesson ob­jectives should explicitly target CT skills to be improved. Objectives should specify the behavior that will change in a way that can be measured. A course objective might read, “After taking this course, you will be able to analyze arguments found in psychological and everyday discussions.” When the goal of a lesson is to practice and improve specific microskills that make up argument analysis, an assignment objective might read “After successfully completing this assignment, you will be able to identify different kinds of evidence in a psychological discussion.” Or another might read “After suc­cessfully completing this assignment, you will be able to distinguish arguments from nonarguments.” Students might demonstrate they have reached these objectives by showing the behavior of correctly labeling the kinds of evidence presented in a passage or by indicating whether an argument or merely a claim has been made. By stating objectives in the form of assessable behaviors, the instructor can test these as assessment hypotheses.

Sometimes when the goal is to teach students how to decide which CT skills are appropriate in a situation, the instructor may not want to identify specific skills. Instead, a lesson objective might read, “After successfully completing this assignment, you will be able to decide which skills and knowledge are appropriate for criti­cally analyzing a discussion in psychology.”

3. Find opportunities to infuse CT that fit content and skill requirements of your course

To improve their CT skills, students must be given opportunities to practice them. Different courses present different opportunities for infusion and practice. Stand-alone CT courses usually provide the most opportunities to infuse CT. For example, the Frostburg State University Psychology Department has a senior seminar called “Thinking like a Psychologist” in which students complete lessons giving them practice in argument analysis, critical reading, critically evaluating information on the Internet, distinguishing science from pseudoscience, applying their knowledge and CT skills in simula­tions of psychological practice, and other activities.

In more typical subject-oriented courses, instructors must find specific content and types of tasks conducive to explicit CT skill instruction. For example, research methods courses present several opportunities to teach argument analysis skills. Instructors can have students critically evaluate the quality of evidence provided by studies using different research methods and designs they find in PsycINFO and Internet sources. This, in turn, could help students write better critical evaluations of research for research reports.

A cognitive psychology teacher might assign a critical evalu­ation of the evidence on an interesting question discussed in text­book literature reviews. For example, students might evaluate the evidence relevant to the question of whether people have flashbulb memories such as accurately remembering the 9-11 attack. This provides the opportunity to teach them that many of the studies, although informative, are quasi-experimental and cannot show causation. Or, students might analyze the arguments in a TV pro­gram such as the fascinating Nova program Kidnapped by Aliens on people who recall having been abducted by aliens.

4. Use guided practice, explicitly modeling and scaffolding CT.

Guided practice involves modeling and supporting the practice of target skills, and providing feedback on progress towards skill attainment. Research has shown that guided practice helps student more efficiently acquire thinking skills than unguided and discovery approaches (Meyer, 2004).

Instructors can model the use of CT rules, criteria, and proce­dures for evaluating evidence and drawing conclusions in many ways. They could provide worked examples of problems, writing samples displaying good CT, or real-world examples of good and bad thinking found in the media. They might also think out loud as they evaluate arguments in class to model the process of thinking.

To help students learn to use complex rules in thinking, instruc­tors should initially scaffold student thinking. Scaffolding involves providing product guidelines, rules, and other frameworks to support the process of thinking. Table 1 shows guidelines like those found in Bensley (1998) describing nonscientific kinds of evidence that can support student efforts to evaluate evidence in everyday psychologi­cal discussions. Likewise, Table 2 provides guidelines like those found in Bensley (1998) and Wade and Tavris (2005) describing various kinds of scientific research methods and designs that differ in the quality of evidence they provide for psychological arguments.

In the cognitive lesson on flashbulb memory described earlier, students use the framework in Table 2 to evaluate the kinds of evidence in the literature review. Table 1 can help them evaluate the kinds of evidence found in the Nova video Kidnapped by Aliens . Specifically, they could use it to contrast scientific authority with less credible authority. The video includes statements by scientific authorities like Elizabeth Loftus based on her extensive research contrasted with the nonscientific authority of Bud Hopkins, an artist turned hypnotherapist and author of popular books on alien abduction. Loftus argues that the memories of alien abduction in the children interviewed by Hopkins were reconstructed around the suggestive interview questions he posed. Therefore, his conclu­sion that the children and other people in the video were recalling actual abduction experiences was based on anecdotes, unreliable self-reports, and other weak evidence.

Modeling, scaffolding, and guided practice are especially useful in helping students first acquire CT skills. After sufficient practice, however, instructors should fade these and have students do more challenging assignments without these supports to promote transfer.

5. Align assessment with practice of specific CT skills

Test questions and other assessments of performance should be similar to practice questions and problems in the skills targeted but differ in content. For example, we have developed a series of practice and quiz questions about the kinds of evidence found in Table 1 used in everyday situations but which differ in subject matter from practice to quiz. Likewise, other questions employ research evidence examples corresponding to Table 2. Questions ask students to identify kinds of evidence, evaluate the quality of the evidence, distinguish arguments from nonarguments, and find assumptions in the examples with practice examples differing in content from assessment items.

6. Provide feedback and encourage students to reflect on it

Instructors should focus feedback on the degree of attainment of CT skill objectives in the lesson or assessment. The purpose of feedback is to help students learn how to correct faulty thinking so that in the future they monitor their thinking and avoid such problems. This should increase their metacognition or awareness and control of their thinking, an important goal of CT instruction (Halpern, 1998).

Students must use their feedback for it to improve their CT skills. In the CT exercises and critical reading assignments, students receive feedback in the form of corrected responses and written feedback on open-ended questions. They should be advised that paying attention to feedback on earlier work and assessments should improve their performance on later assessments.

7. Reflect on feedback and assessment results to improve CT instruction

Instructors should use the feedback they provide to students and the results of ongoing assessments to ‘close the loop,’ that is, use these outcomes to address deficiencies in performance and improve instruction. In actual practice, teaching and assessment strategies rarely work optimally the first time. Instructors must be willing to tinker with these to make needed improvements. Reflec­tion on reliable and valid assessment results provides a scientific means to systematically improve instruction and assessment.

Instructors may find the direct infusion approach as summarized in the seven guidelines to be efficient, especially in helping students acquire basic CT skills, as research has shown. They may especially appreciate how it allows them to take a scientific approach to the improvement of instruction. Although the direct infusion approach seems to efficiently promote acquisition of CT skills, more research is needed to find out if students transfer their skills outside of the class­room or whether this approach needs adjustment to promote transfer.

Table 1. Strengths and Weaknesses of Nonscientific Sources and Kinds of Evidence

Table 2. Strengths and Weaknesses of Scientific Research Methods/Designs Used as Sources of Evidence

Abrami, P. C., Bernard, R. M., Borokhovhovski, E., Wade, A., Surkes, M. A., Tamim, R., et al., (2008). Instructional interventions affecting critical thinking skills and dispositions: A stage 1 meta-analysis. Review of Educational Research, 4 , 1102–1134.

Angelo, T. A. (1995). Classroom assessment for critical thinking. Teaching of Psychology , 22(1), 6–7.

Bensley, D.A. (1998). Critical thinking in psychology: A unified skills approach. Pacific Grove, CA: Brooks/Cole.

Bensley, D.A. (2002). Science and pseudoscience: A critical thinking primer. In M. Shermer (Ed.), The Skeptic encyclopedia of pseudoscience. (pp. 195–203). Santa Barbara, CA: ABC–CLIO.

Bensley, D.A. (2006). Why great thinkers sometimes fail to think critically. Skeptical Inquirer, 30, 47–52.

Bensley, D.A. (2008). Can you learn to think more like a psychologist? The Psychologist, 21, 128–129.

Bensley, D.A., Crowe, D., Bernhardt, P., Buckner, C., & Allman, A. (in press). Teaching and assessing critical thinking skills for argument analysis in psychology. Teaching of Psychology .

Bensley, D.A. & Haynes, C. (1995). The acquisition of general purpose strategic knowledge for argumentation. Teaching of Psychology, 22 , 41–45.

Beyer, B.K. (1997). Improving student thinking: A comprehensive approach . Boston: Allyn & Bacon.

Chance, P. (1986) Thinking in the classroom: A review of programs . New York: Instructors College Press.

Ennis, R.H. (1987). A taxonomy of critical thinking dispositions and abilities. In J. B. Baron & R. F. Sternberg (Eds.). Teaching thinking skills: Theory and practice (pp. 9–26). New York: Freeman.

Halonen, J.S. (1995). Demystifying critical thinking. Teaching of Psychology, 22 , 75–81.

Halonen, J.S., Appleby, D.C., Brewer, C.L., Buskist, W., Gillem, A. R., Halpern, D. F., et al. (APA Task Force on Undergraduate Major Competencies). (2002) Undergraduate psychology major learning goals and outcomes: A report. Washington, DC: American Psychological Association. Retrieved August 27, 2008, from http://www.apa.org/ed/pcue/reports.html .

Halpern, D.F. (1998). Teaching critical thinking for transfer across domains: Dispositions, skills, structure training, and metacognitive monitoring. American Psychologist , 53 , 449–455.

Halpern, D.F. (2003). Thought and knowledge: An introduction to critical thinking . (3rd ed.). Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum.

Lilienfeld, S.O. (2007). Psychological treatments that cause harm. Perspectives on Psychological Science , 2 , 53–70.

Meyer, R.E. (2004). Should there be a three-strikes rule against pure discovery learning? The case for guided methods of instruction. American Psychologist , 59 , 14–19.

Nieto, A.M., & Saiz, C. (2008). Evaluation of Halpern’s “structural component” for improving critical thinking. The Spanish Journal of Psychology , 11 ( 1 ), 266–274.

Penningroth, S.L., Despain, L.H., & Gray, M.J. (2007). A course designed to improve psychological critical thinking. Teaching of Psychology , 34 , 153–157.

Rotton, J., & Kelly, I. (1985). Much ado about the full moon: A meta-analysis of lunar-lunacy research. Psychological Bulletin , 97 , 286–306.

Ruscio, J. (2006). Critical thinking in psychology: Separating sense from nonsense. Belmont, CA: Wadsworth.

Solon, T. (2007). Generic critical thinking infusion and course content learning in introductory psychology. Journal of Instructional Psychology , 34(2), 972–987.

Stanovich, K.E. (2007). How to think straight about psychology . (8th ed.). Boston: Pearson.

Sternberg, R.J. (2007). Critical thinking in psychology: It really is critical. In R. J. Sternberg, H. L. Roediger, & D. F. Halpern (Eds.), Critical thinking in psychology. (pp. 289–296) . Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.

Wade, C., & Tavris, C. (2005) Invitation to psychology. (3rd ed.). Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall.

Walberg, H.J. (2006). Improving educational productivity: A review of extant research. In R. F. Subotnik & H. J. Walberg (Eds.), The scientific basis of educational productivity (pp. 103–159). Greenwich, CT: Information Age.

Williams, R.L. (1999). Operational definitions and assessment of higher-order cognitive constructs. Educational Psychology Review , 11 , 411–427.

Excellent article.

Interesting and helpful!

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About the Author

D. Alan Bensley is Professor of Psychology at Frostburg State University. He received his Master’s and PhD degrees in cognitive psychology from Rutgers University. His main teaching and research interests concern the improvement of critical thinking and other cognitive skills. He coordinates assessment for his department and is developing a battery of instruments to assess critical thinking in psychology. He can be reached by email at [email protected] Association for Psychological Science December 2010 — Vol. 23, No. 10

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Critical Thinking Assessment: 4 Ways to Test Applicants

In the current age of information overload, critical thinking (CT) is a vital skill to sift fact from fiction. Fake news, scams, and disinformation can have a negative impact on individuals as well as businesses. Ultimately, those with finer CT skills can help to lead their team with logical thinking, evidence-based motivation, and smarter decisions.

Today, most roles require critical thinking skills. And understanding how to test and evaluate critical thinking skills can not only help to differentiate candidates but may even predict job performance .

This article will cover:

What is critical thinking?

• Critical thinking vs problem-solving
• 5 critical thinking sub-skills
• The importance of assessing critical thinking skills
• 4 ways to leverage critical thinking assessments

Critical thinking is the process of analyzing and evaluating information in a logical way. And though a valuable skill since as far back as the early philosophers’ era, it is just as vital today. For candidates to succeed in the digital economy , they need modern thinking skills that help them think critically.

Whether we realize it or not, we process tons of data and information on a daily basis. Everything from social media to online news, data from apps like Strava – and that’s on top of all the key metrics in relation to our professional role.

Without a shadow of a doubt, correctly interpreting information — and recognizing disinformation — is an essential skill in today’s workplace and everyday life. And that’s also why teaching critical thinking skills in education is so important to prepare the next generation for the challenges they will face in the modern workplace.

Critical thinking isn’t about being constantly negative or critical of everything. It’s about objectivity and having an open, inquisitive mind. To think critically is to analyze issues based on hard evidence (as opposed to personal opinions, biases, etc.) in order to build a thorough understanding of what’s really going on. And from this place of thorough understanding, you can make better decisions and solve problems more effectively. Bernard Marr | Source

Today, candidates with CT skills think and reason independently, question data, and use their findings to contribute actively to their team rather than passively taking in or accepting information as fact.

Why are critical thinking skills important?

In the workplace, those with strong CT skills no longer rely on their gut or instinct for their decisions. They’re able to problem-solve more effectively by analyzing situations systematically.

With these skills, they think objectively about information and other points of view and look for evidence to support their findings rather than simply accepting opinions or conclusions as facts.

When employees can turn critical thinking into a habit, it ultimately reduces personal bias and helps them be more open to their teammates’ suggestions — improving how teams collaborate and collectively solve problems.

Critical thinking vs. Problem solving – what’s the difference?

Let’s explore the difference between these two similar concepts in more detail.

Critical thinking is about processing and analyzing information to reach an objective, evidence-based conclusion. Let’s take a look at an example of critical thinking in action:

• A member of the team suggests using a new app they’ve heard about to automate and speed up candidate screening . Some like the idea, but others in the team share reasons why they don’t support the idea. So you visit the software website and look at the key features and benefits yourself, then you might look for reviews about it and ask your HR counterparts what they think of it. The reviews look promising, and a few of your fellow practitioners say it’s worked well for them. Next, you look into the costs compared to the solution your team is already using and calculate that the return on investment (ROI) is good. You arrive at the conclusion that it’d be worth testing the platform with the free trial version and recommend this to your team.

On the other hand, problem solving can involve many of the same skills as critical thinking, such as observing and evaluating. Still, it focuses on identifying business obstacles and coming up with solutions. So, let’s return to the example of the candidate screening software and see how it might work differently in the context of problem-solving :

• For weeks, the talent acquisition team has complained about how long it takes to screen candidates manually. One of the team members decides to look for a solution to their problem. They assess the team’s current processes and resources and how to best solve the issues. In their research, they discover the new candidate screening platform and test out its functionality for a few days. They feel it would benefit the team and suggest it at the next meeting. Great problem solving, HR leader!

What are the 5 sub-skills that make up critical thinking?

Now that we’ve established what CT is, let’s break it down into the 5 core sub-skills that make up a critical thinking mindset .

• Observation : Being observant of your environment is the first step to thinking critically. Observant employees can even identify a potential problem before it becomes a problem.
• Analysis : Once you’ve observed the issue or problem, you can begin to analyze its parts. It’s about asking questions, researching, and evaluating the findings objectively. This is an essential skill, especially for someone in a management role.
• Inference : Also known as construct validity, is about drawing a conclusion from limited information. To do this effectively may require in-depth knowledge of a field. Candidates with this skill can contribute a lot of value to a startup, for instance, where initially, there may be little data available for information processing.
• Communication : This pertains to expressing ideas and your reasoning clearly and persuasively, as well as actively listening to colleagues’ suggestions or viewpoints. When all members of a team or department can communicate and consider different perspectives, it helps tasks (and, well, everything) move along swiftly and smoothly.
• Problem solving : Once you begin implementing a chosen solution, you may still encounter teething problems. At that point, problem solving skills will help you decide on the best solution and how to overcome the obstacles to bring you closer to your goal.

What is a critical thinking assessment test?

Though there are a few different ways to assess critical thinking, such as the Collegiate Learning Assessment, one of the most well-known tests is the Watson Glaser™ Critical Thinking Appraisal .

Critical thinking tests, or critical reasoning tests, are psychometric tests used in recruitment at all levels, graduate, professional and managerial, but predominantly in the legal sector. However, it is not uncommon to find companies in other sectors using critical thinking tests as part of their selection process. This is an intense test, focusing primarily on your analytical, or critical thinking, skills. Source

These tests are usually timed and typically include multiple choice items, short answers or short scenario-based questions to assess students or prospective candidates. They test candidates’ ability to interpret data without bias, find logical links between information, and separate facts from false data .

But how do these tests measure critical thinking?

In addition to educational and psychological testing, many employers today use critical thinking tests to assess a person’s ability to question information — to ask What , Why , and How of the data. A standard critical thinking test breaks down this aptitude by examining the following 5 components:

• assumption – analyzing a scenario to determine if there are any assumptions made
• deduction – the ability to choose which deductions are logical
• evaluating evidence – in support of and against something
• inference – conclusions, drawn from observed facts
• interpretation – interpreting the accuracy of a stated conclusion (based on a scenario)

Why is it important to assess critical thinking skills during the recruitment process?

Critical thinking skills may be considered a soft skill , but it’s become a prerequisite in certain industries, like software, and for many roles. Marketing managers, project managers, accountants, and healthcare professionals, for example, all require a degree of CT skills to perform their roles.

The kinds of businesses that require critical thinking include technology , engineering , healthcare , the legal sector , scientific research, and education . These industries are typically very technical and rely on data . People working in these fields research and use data to draw logical conclusions that help them work smarter and more efficiently.

In the hiring process, test takers with good critical thinking skills stand out . Why? Because they are able to demonstrate their ability to collaborate, problem-solve, and manage pressure in a rational, logical manner. As a result, they’re more likely to make the right business decisions that boost efficiency and, ultimately, a business’s bottom line.

Examples of jobs that rely on critical thinking skills

Critical thinking is not rocket science, but it is an important skill when making decisions — especially when the correct answer is not obvious. Here are a few examples of job roles that rely on critical thinking dispositions:

• computer programmers or developers : may use critical thinking and other advanced skills in a variety of ways, from debugging code to analyzing the problem, finding potential causes, and coming up with suitable solutions. They also use CT when there is no clear roadmap to rely on, such as when building a new app or feature.
• criminologists : must have critical thinking abilities to observe criminal behavior objectively and to analyze the problem in such a way that they can be confident in the conclusions they present to the authorities.
• medical professionals : need to diagnose their patients’ condition through observation, communication, analysis and solving complex problems to decide on the best treatment.
• air traffic controllers: need a super clear, calm head to deal with their high-stress job. They observe traffic, communicate with pilots, and constantly problem-solve to avoid airplane collisions.
• legal professionals : use logic and reasoning to analyze various cases – even before deciding whether they’ll take on a case – and then use their excellent communication skills to sway people over to their reasoning in a trial setting.
• project managers : have to deal with a lot of moving parts at the same time. To successfully keep projects on time and budget, they continually observe and analyze the progress of project components, communicate continually with the team and external stakeholders and work to solve any problems that crop up.

What are the risks of not testing for critical thinking?

By not evaluating critical thinking beforehand, you may end up hiring candidates with poor CT skills. Especially when hiring business leaders and for key positions, this has the potential to wreak havoc on a business. Their inaccurate assumptions are more likely to lead to bad decisions , which could cost the company money .

Weak critical thinking can result in a number of issues for your organization and justifies the expense or added effort of asking your candidate to complete critical thinking tests in the hiring process. For example, poor CT skills may result in:

• making mistakes
• not being able to take action when needed
• working off false assumptions
• unnecessary strain on work relationships

4 ways to assess critical thinking skills in candidates

Now that we’ve seen how important it is for most candidates today to have strong critical thinking skills, let’s take a look at some of the assessment instruments the talent acquisition team can use.

#1 – A homework assignment

A homework assignment is a task that assesses whether test takers have the right skills for a role. If critical thinking is essential for a particular job, you could provide candidates with a homework assignment that specifically tests their ability to:

• accurately interpret relevant evidence
• reach logical conclusions
• judge information skeptically
• communicate their own viewpoint and others’ backed by facts

Tip : use Toggl Hire’s skills screening tests to easily filter out the good candidates first and speed up your hiring process.

#2 – Behavioral and situational interview questions

Ask the candidate to provide examples of situations when they used CT for solving problems or making a decision. This can provide insight into the candidate’s ability to analyze information and make informed decisions. For example:

Critical thinking example questions:

• Tell me about a time when you had to make a really difficult decision at work.
• What would you do in a situation where your manager made a mistake in a presentation or report?
• How would you respond if a colleague shared a new idea or solution with you?
• How do you evaluate the potential outcomes of different actions or decisions?
• Can you describe a situation where you had to think on your feet and come up with a creative solution to a problem?
• How do you ensure that your decision-making is based on relevant and accurate information?

#3 – Discuss the candidate’s critical thinking skills with their references

Additionally, the hiring manager can ask the candidate’s references about how the candidate demonstrated CT skills in the past.

• Can you recall a time when (the candidate) had to convince you to choose an alternative solution to a problem?
• Tell me about a time when (the candidate) had to solve a team disagreement regarding a project.

#4 – Critical thinking tests

Ask the candidate to complete a critical thinking test and score against critical thinking rubrics. You can then share feedback on their test scores with them and explore their willingness to improve their score, if necessary. Or compare their score to other applicants, and prioritize those with higher scores if the role truly requires a critical thinker.

Create your next critical thinking assessment with Toggl Hire

Assessing critical thinking skills is becoming a key component in the hiring process, especially for roles that require a particularly advanced skillset. Critical thinking is a sign of future performance. Candidates that clearly demonstrate these skills have a lot to offer companies, from better decision-making to more productive relationships and cost savings.

If your team needs help automating the screening process, and creating custom skills tests based on specific roles, try Toggl Hire’s skills test questions engine or the Custom Test Builder to create the exact questions you want from scratch.

Juste loves investigating through writing. A copywriter by trade, she spent the last ten years in startups, telling stories and building marketing teams. She works at Toggl Hire and writes about how businesses can recruit really great people.

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Predicting everyday critical thinking: a review of critical thinking assessments.

1. Introduction

2. how critical thinking impacts everyday life, 3. critical thinking: skills and dispositions.

“the use of those cognitive skills and abilities that increase the probability of a desirable outcome. It is used to describe thinking that is purposeful, reasoned, and goal directed—the kind of thinking involved in solving problems, formulating inferences, calculating likelihoods, and making decisions” ( Halpern 2014, p. 8 ).

4. Measuring Critical Thinking

4.1. practical challenges, 4.2. critical thinking assessments, 4.2.1. california critical thinking dispositions inventory (cctdi; insight assessment, inc. n.d. ), 4.2.2. california critical thinking skills test (cctst; insight assessment, inc. n.d. ), 4.2.3. cornell critical thinking test (cctt; the critical thinking company n.d. ), 4.2.4. california measure of mental motivation (cm3; insight assessment, inc. n.d. ), 4.2.5. ennis–weir critical thinking essay test ( ennis and weir 2005 ), 4.2.6. halpern critical thinking assessment (hcta; halpern 2012 ), 4.2.7. test of everyday reasoning (ter; insight assessment, inc. n.d. ), 4.2.8. watson–glaser tm ii critical thinking appraisal (w-gii; ncs pearson, inc. 2009 ).

“Virtual employees, or employees who work from home via a computer, are an increasing trend. In the US, the number of virtual employees has increased by 39% in the last two years and 74% in the last five years. Employing virtual workers reduces costs and makes it possible to use talented workers no matter where they are located globally. Yet, running a workplace with virtual employees might entail miscommunication and less camaraderie and can be more time-consuming than face-to-face interaction”.

5. Conclusions

Institutional review board statement, informed consent statement, data availability statement, conflicts of interest.

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Share and Cite

Butler, H.A. Predicting Everyday Critical Thinking: A Review of Critical Thinking Assessments. J. Intell. 2024 , 12 , 16. https://doi.org/10.3390/jintelligence12020016

Butler HA. Predicting Everyday Critical Thinking: A Review of Critical Thinking Assessments. Journal of Intelligence . 2024; 12(2):16. https://doi.org/10.3390/jintelligence12020016

Butler, Heather A. 2024. "Predicting Everyday Critical Thinking: A Review of Critical Thinking Assessments" Journal of Intelligence 12, no. 2: 16. https://doi.org/10.3390/jintelligence12020016

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Critical Thinking Assessment Test (CAT)

The CAT instrument is a unique tool designed to assess and promote the improvement of critical thinking and real-world problem solving skills. Most of the questions require short answer essay responses, and a detailed scoring guide helps ensure good scoring reliability. The CAT instrument is scored by the institution's own faculty using the detailed scoring guide. During the scoring process faculty are able to see their students' weaknesses and understand areas that need improvement. Faculty are encouraged to use the CAT instrument as a model for developing authentic assessments and learning activities in their own discipline that improve students' critical thinking and real-world problem solving skills. These features help close the loop in assessment and quality improvement.

Critical Thinking, Problem Solving

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Must be faculty at university or researcher to utilize. Grading training also required: Each institution must send 2-3 reps to a 2 day grading workshop:  https://www.tntech.edu/cat/training.php

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$9.95/test (50 test minimum) + $300 Annual Fee

Assistant Director of Testing Elizabeth Lisic [email protected] 931-372-3611

Grant, M., & Smith, M. (2018). Quantifying assessment of undergraduate critical thinking.  Journal of College Teaching & Learning ,  15 (1), 27-38.  https://doi.org/10.19030/tlc.v15i1.10199

Haynes, A., Lisic, E., Goltz, M., Stein, B., & Harris, K. (2016). Moving beyond assessment to improving students’ critical thinking skills: a model for implementing change. Journal of the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning, 16 (4), 44–61. https://doi.org/10.14434/josotl.v16i4.19407 .

Styers, M. L., Van Zandt, P. A., & Hayden, K. L. (2018). Active learning in flipped life science courses promotes development of critical thinking skills.  CBE—Life Sciences Education ,  17 (3), ar39.  https://doi.org/10.1187/cbe.16-11-0332

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Promoting and Assessing Critical Thinking

Critical thinking is a high priority outcome of higher education – critical thinking skills are crucial for independent thinking and problem solving in both our students’ professional and personal lives. But, what does it mean to be a critical thinker and how do we promote and assess it in our students? Critical thinking can be defined as being able to examine an issue by breaking it down, and evaluating it in a conscious manner, while providing arguments/evidence to support the evaluation. Below are some suggestions for promoting and assessing critical thinking in our students.

Thinking through inquiry

Asking questions and using the answers to understand the world around us is what drives critical thinking. In inquiry-based instruction, the teacher asks students leading questions to draw from them information, inferences, and predictions about a topic. Below are some example generic question stems that can serve as prompts to aid in generating critical thinking questions. Consider providing prompts such as these to students to facilitate their ability to also ask these questions of themselves and others. If we want students to generate good questions on their own, we need to teach them how to do so by providing them with the structure and guidance of example questions, whether in written form, or by our use of questions in the classroom.

Generic question stems

• What are the strengths and weaknesses of …?
• What is the difference between … and …?
• Explain why/how …?
• What would happen if …?
• What is the nature of …?
• Why is … happening?
• What is a new example of …?
• How could … be used to …?
• What are the implications of …?
• What is … analogous to?
• What do we already know about …?
• How does … affect …?
• How does … tie in with what we have learned before?
• What does … mean?
• Why is … important?
• How are … and … similar/different?
• How does … apply to everyday life?
• What is a counterarguement for …?
• What is the best …and why?
• What is a solution to the problem of …?
• Compare … and … with regard to …?
• What do you think causes …? Why?
• Do you agree or disagree with this statement? What evidence is there to support your answer?
• What is another way to look at …?

Critical thinking through writing

Another essential ingredient in critical thinking instruction is the use of writing. Writing converts students from passive to active learners and requires them to identify issues and formulate hypotheses and arguments. The act of writing requires students to focus and clarify their thoughts before putting them down on paper, hence taking them through the critical thinking process. Writing requires that students make important critical choices and ask themselves (Gocsik, 2002):

• What information is most important?
• What might be left out?
• What is it that I think about this subject?
• How did I arrive at what I think?
• What are my assumptions? Are they valid?
• How can I work with facts, observations, and so on, in order to convince others of what I think?
• What do I not yet understand?

Consider providing the above questions to students so that they can evaluate their own writing as well. Some suggestions for critical thinking writing activities include:

• Give students raw data and ask them to write an argument or analysis based on the data.
• Have students explore and write about unfamiliar points of view or “what if” situations.
• Think of a controversy in your field, and have the students write a dialogue between characters with different points of view.
• Select important articles in your field and ask the students to write summaries or abstracts of them. Alternately, you could ask students to write an abstract of your lecture.
• Develop a scenario that place students in realistic situations relevant to your discipline, where they must reach a decision to resolve a conflict.

See the Centre for Teaching Excellence (CTE) teaching tip “ Low-Stakes Writing Assignments ” for critical thinking writing assignments.

Critical thinking through group collaboration

Opportunities for group collaboration could include discussions, case studies, task-related group work, peer review, or debates. Group collaboration is effective for promoting critical thought because:

• An effective team has the potential to produce better results than any individual,
• Students are exposed to different perspectives while clarifying their own ideas,
• Collaborating on a project or studying with a group for an exam generally stimulates interest and increases the understanding and knowledge of the topic.

See the CTE teaching tip “ Group Work in the Classroom: Types of Small Groups ” for suggestions for forming small groups in your classroom.

Assessing critical thinking skills

You can also use the students’ responses from the activities that promote critical thinking to assess whether they are, indeed, reaching your critical thinking goals. It is important to establish clear criteria for evaluating critical thinking. Even though many of us may be able to identify critical thinking when we see it, explicitly stated criteria help both students and teachers know the goal toward which they are working. An effective criterion measures which skills are present, to what extent, and which skills require further development. The following are characteristics of work that may demonstrate effective critical thinking:

• Accurately and thoroughly interprets evidence, statements, graphics, questions, literary elements, etc.
• Asks relevant questions.
• Analyses and evaluates key information, and alternative points of view clearly and precisely.
• Fair-mindedly examines beliefs, assumptions, and opinions and weighs them against facts.
• Draws insightful, reasonable conclusions.
• Justifies inferences and opinions.
• Thoughtfully addresses and evaluates major alternative points of view.
• Thoroughly explains assumptions and reasons.

It is also important to note that assessment is a tool that can be used throughout a course, not just at the end. It is more useful to assess students throughout a course, so you can see if criteria require further clarification and students can test out their understanding of your criteria and receive feedback. Also consider distributing your criteria with your assignments so that students receive guidance about your expectations. This will help them to reflect on their own work and improve the quality of their thinking and writing.

See the CTE teaching tip sheets “ Rubrics ” and “ Responding to Writing Assignments: Managing the Paper Load ” for more information on rubrics.

If you would like support applying these tips to your own teaching, CTE staff members are here to help.  View the  CTE Support  page to find the most relevant staff member to contact. 

• Gocsik, K. (2002). Teaching Critical Thinking Skills. UTS Newsletter, 11(2):1-4
• Facione, P.A. and Facione, N.C. (1994). Holistic Critical Thinking Scoring Rubric. Millbrae, CA: California Academic Press. www.calpress.com/rubric.html (retrieved September 2003)
• King, A. (1995). Inquiring minds really do want to know: using questioning to teach critical thinking. Teaching of Psychology, 22(1): 13-17
• Wade, C. and Tavris, C. (1987). Psychology (1st ed.) New York: Harper. IN: Wade, C. (1995). Using Writing to Develop and Assess Critical Thinking. Teaching of Psychology, 22(1): 24-28.

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A Short Guide to Building Your Team’s Critical Thinking Skills

• Matt Plummer

Critical thinking isn’t an innate skill. It can be learned.

Most employers lack an effective way to objectively assess critical thinking skills and most managers don’t know how to provide specific instruction to team members in need of becoming better thinkers. Instead, most managers employ a sink-or-swim approach, ultimately creating work-arounds to keep those who can’t figure out how to “swim” from making important decisions. But it doesn’t have to be this way. To demystify what critical thinking is and how it is developed, the author’s team turned to three research-backed models: The Halpern Critical Thinking Assessment, Pearson’s RED Critical Thinking Model, and Bloom’s Taxonomy. Using these models, they developed the Critical Thinking Roadmap, a framework that breaks critical thinking down into four measurable phases: the ability to execute, synthesize, recommend, and generate.

With critical thinking ranking among the most in-demand skills for job candidates , you would think that educational institutions would prepare candidates well to be exceptional thinkers, and employers would be adept at developing such skills in existing employees. Unfortunately, both are largely untrue.

• Matt Plummer (@mtplummer) is the founder of Zarvana, which offers online programs and coaching services to help working professionals become more productive by developing time-saving habits. Before starting Zarvana, Matt spent six years at Bain & Company spin-out, The Bridgespan Group, a strategy and management consulting firm for nonprofits, foundations, and philanthropists.  

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TeachCatalystAI is a professional teaching assistant tool designed to help teachers create lesson plan, teaching materials, and many more with ease. Our AI-powered tool will help you streamline your classroom management, making it easier to keep track of students, assignments, and behavior. Our AI-powered tools and templates are great and configured to make you effective in teaching.

Lesson Objectives That Support Critical Thinking

The creation of lesson objectives that effectively promote critical thinking is crucial in education. Crafting objectives that stimulate analysis, evaluation, and synthesis enables educators to establish a learning environment that supports deeper cognitive engagement .

These objectives serve not only as a roadmap for student learning but also as tools for meaningful assessment and feedback. A thorough examination of the traits of effective objectives and their connection to critical thinking demonstrates that the strategies employed can significantly affect student outcomes.

To ensure these objectives are both impactful and measurable, educators can implement specific strategies. For instance, incorporating real-world problems into lesson plans encourages students to apply their knowledge in practical situations.

Using Bloom’s Taxonomy as a framework can help educators formulate objectives that target various levels of thinking, from basic knowledge recall to higher-order skills like analysis and creation. Additionally, setting clear criteria for success allows students to understand expectations and assess their progress effectively.

Understanding Critical Thinking

Analytical thinking involves the capacity to analyze, evaluate , and synthesize information with effectiveness. This skill set is crucial for navigating complex situations and making informed decisions . A thorough grasp of analytical thinking necessitates an understanding of its core components, such as critical analysis and cognitive skills .

Moreover, cognitive skills are vital in analytical thinking; they empower individuals to process information, establish connections, and apply knowledge in practical situations.

In summary, analytical thinking transcends mere techniques; it embodies a mindset that values inquiry and reflection. Cultivating these skills enhances an individual’s problem-solving capabilities and ability to assist others effectively.

Importance of Lesson Objectives

Establishing clear lesson objectives is crucial for directing students toward specific learning outcomes and encouraging a concentrated approach to critical thinking . These objectives should be shaped by insights into what motivates students and the obstacles they face in learning, ensuring that every student remains engaged.

For instance, if a lesson objective focuses on developing analytical writing skills , assessments should specifically evaluate students’ ability to construct coherent arguments and utilize evidence effectively. This connection between objectives and assessments helps educators identify areas where students may struggle and provide targeted support accordingly.

Clarity in Learning Goals

Clear learning goals act as a navigational guide for both educators and students, steering the educational journey and ensuring that everyone involved comprehends the intended outcomes. When educators define specific learning objectives, they enhance instructional clarity and create a direct connection between activities and desired learning results.

Integrating these components into lesson planning fosters effective feedback mechanisms and facilitates the assessment of performance metrics. Ultimately, clear learning goals not only assist educators in delivering meaningful instruction but also empower students to take charge of their own educational paths.

Alignment With Assessments

This approach promotes an environment where both formative and summative assessments are intentional and interconnected. Such alignment not only adheres to educational standards but also fosters a deeper comprehension of the material, enabling students to meaningfully engage with the content.

When assessments are carefully designed to match lesson objectives, they offer valuable insights into student progress and highlight areas that require further attention. This connection empowers educators to modify their instructional strategies as needed, ensuring that all students receive adequate support to thrive.

Characteristics of Effective Objectives

Effective objectives provide a structured foundation for critical thinking instruction , ensuring that learning outcomes are both attainable and quantifiable. To nurture an environment that supports critical thinking, these objectives must be clear, specific , and aligned with the intended results of the lesson. This clarity empowers educators to design engaging activities that resonate with learners, leading to a more profound comprehension of the material.

Moreover, effective objectives should encourage higher-order thinking skills , prompting students to analyze, evaluate, and synthesize information rather than simply recalling facts. Incorporating measurable outcomes allows educators to track student progress and adjust their teaching methods to better address individual needs. These measurable outcomes also provide clarity, enabling students to recognize the standards for achieving success.

In addition, effective objectives need to be inclusive , accommodating various learning styles and backgrounds. This inclusivity not only boosts engagement but also empowers students to take charge of their educational journey.

Aligning Objectives With Critical Thinking

Engaging students through activities that promote critical thinking, such as debates and role-playing, enhances their analytical skills. Including reflective thinking in lesson plans invites students to evaluate their own learning processes, which increases their metacognitive awareness and self-assessment abilities. This level of self-awareness is vital for enhancing decision-making skills, enabling students to make choices supported by evidence and logical reasoning.

Examples of Supportive Objectives

To create an environment that encourages critical thinking, educators can establish supportive objectives that challenge students while also guiding their cognitive development. These objectives prompt students to explore real-world applications and make interdisciplinary connections, enhancing their learning experiences and equipping them for future challenges.

Assessment Techniques for Objectives

Assessment techniques are crucial for evaluating students’ attainment of critical thinking objectives . Employing a diverse range of strategies ensures that educators can effectively monitor student progress and modify their teaching approaches as necessary.

Formative assessment is particularly important for providing ongoing feedback , enabling educators to pinpoint areas needing improvement before final evaluations take place. This continuous process nurtures a growth mindset in students, allowing them to share their thoughts and disagreements constructively, which is essential for resolving conflicts in the classroom.

Observational methods are also beneficial, as they allow educators to assess students in real-time during collaborative tasks. Adaptive testing can further customize assessments to cater to individual student needs, while criterion-referenced assessments ensure that evaluations align with specific learning objectives.

Together, these assessment techniques form a comprehensive framework for evaluating critical thinking skills, creating an environment where students can flourish and make meaningful contributions to their communities.

Strategies for Implementation

Inquiry-based learning serves to ignite curiosity, prompting students to ask questions and seek answers. This process deepens their understanding of the subject matter. Metacognitive strategies play a crucial role here, as they enable students to reflect on their thought processes, improving their ability to self-regulate and evaluate their learning outcomes.

This guidance helps them become more thoughtful and informed individuals. Together, these strategies cultivate an environment that promotes the development of critical thinking skills essential for lifelong learning .

Continuous Improvement in Objectives

For instance, group discussions and project-based learning activities can motivate students to share different perspectives, fostering a deeper understanding of the material. Such active involvement not only supports objective clarity but also promotes a more dynamic and inclusive learning environment .

Objective Clarity Enhancement

Furthermore, well-defined rules and expectations create a structured environment that complements the clarity of objectives, ensuring students grasp not only what they are learning but also how they are expected to conduct themselves during the educational process.

Improving objective clarity significantly enhances the learning experience by helping students understand what is expected of them and align their efforts accordingly. When objectives are clearly communicated, learners are encouraged to engage meaningfully with the material, prompting them to ask questions and investigate concepts beyond superficial understanding. This method fosters critical thinking and empowers students to take charge of their educational journey.

For instance, a science teacher might establish a SMART objective such as “Students will be able to conduct a controlled experiment to test the effects of sunlight on plant growth within three weeks.” This objective not only provides clarity on what students are expected to achieve but also sets a timeline and measurable criteria for success.

Iterative Goal Refinement

Ongoing evaluation and adjustment of educational objectives are crucial for nurturing an environment that enhances critical thinking skills . Iterative goal refinement is a key strategy for educators committed to improving learning experiences for their students. Through continuous goal setting, educators can formulate clear and attainable objectives that adapt to the changing needs of their learners. This process highlights the significance of effective communication techniques in establishing expectations and facilitating constructive feedback.

Moreover, adopting an iterative mindset promotes a culture of continuous improvement among educators. By being flexible and open to feedback, they can cultivate a vibrant learning atmosphere where critical thinking thrives.

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Revolutionizing Personalized Health: The Frontier of Wearable Biomolecule Sensors Through 3D Printing Innovation

• Open access
• Published: 26 August 2024

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• Jerome Rajendran 1 , 2 &
• Rahim Esfandyarpour   ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0002-4528-3601 1 , 2  

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This review article delves into the innovative intersection of 3D-printed technologies and wearable chemical sensors, highlighting a forward-thinking approach to biomarker monitoring. It emphasizes the transformative role of additive manufacturing in the development of wearable devices tailored for the precise detection of chemical biomarkers, crucial for proactive disease management and health assessment. By offering a detailed exploration of how 3D printing of nanomaterials contributes to pioneering sensor designs, this review underscores the practicality of sensor wearability, ensuring comfort and efficacy for users. We address the challenges of material resilience, sensor durability, and efficient data communication, while also charting the significant trends and future directions that promise to redefine the landscape of flexible and wearable chemical sensors. Through a comprehensive analysis, this article aims to showcase the pivotal advancements and ongoing innovations in the field, emphasizing the critical impact of 3D printing on enhancing personalized healthcare and wearable diagnostics.

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Introduction

In the evolving landscape of healthcare technologies, wearable sensors have emerged as a pivotal innovation, blending the precision of point-of-care diagnostics with the ubiquity of mobile connectivity. These devices, designed to operate autonomously within self-contained units, offer a promising avenue for the non-invasive and continuous monitoring of an individual’s biometrics. This capability is crucial for the detection of minute physiological deviations from baseline metrics over time [ 1 ]. In the evolution of wearable flexible technology depicted in Fig.  1 , there's a distinct trajectory from the early 2000s, where the focus was on basic wearable devices, through enhanced functionality in the 2010s, towards advanced health monitoring spanning the late 2010s and early 2020s. The current and future phases are characterized by the advent of smart clothing and an integrated wearable ecosystem, marking a new era of personal health technology. Central to this progression is the groundbreaking integration of 3D-printing of nanomaterials in wearable biological sensing. This innovative approach has revolutionized the field by enabling the creation of highly customized and flexible devices capable of monitoring a wide array of physiological indicators, including those at a molecular level, with unprecedented precision and adaptability. These devices are designed for continuous operation, capable of collecting and transmitting critical health data 24/7 in various environmental conditions, whether the user is at home, work, or on the move [ 2 , 3 , 4 , 5 ].

Progressive timeline of wearable device innovations. Adapted with authorization from Ref. [ 6 ], Copyright 2023 by Elsevier

Transitioning from the focus on electrophysiological signals, the field has begun to pivot towards the nuanced monitoring of chemical biomarkers [ 7 ]. These biomarkers, molecular hallmarks of physiological and pathological states, serve as objective indicators for diagnosing and managing diseases [ 8 , 9 , 10 , 11 ]. Despite the longstanding recognition of wearables in monitoring physical health parameters, the sector of flexible and wearable devices for chemical molecule monitoring remains in its infancy. This gap underscores a significant opportunity for innovation, particularly in harnessing these biomarkers for real-time health surveillance [ 12 , 13 , 14 ]. 3D printing technology has revolutionized the field of wearable biosensors by enabling the precise fabrication of working electrodes and the deposition of various nanomaterial layers. This approach offers several advantages, including the ability to create highly customized and complex geometries, enhance sensor performance, and improve the integration of biosensors with flexible substrates. For instance, inkjet printing has been utilized to fabricate graphene-based electrodes with high conductivity and sensitivity, which are crucial for accurate and reliable biosensing applications [ 15 ]. Furthermore, extrusion-based printing techniques have enabled the incorporation of nanomaterials like carbon nanotubes and metal nanoparticles into biosensors, significantly enhancing their electrochemical properties and detection capabilities [ 16 ]. Further, the advent of wireless communication technologies and advancements in wearable device fabrication have catalyzed the development of sensors capable of real-time biomarker monitoring. Recently, several researchers and their research groups have been at the forefront of this exploration, developing wearable devices that monitor biomarkers such as glucose, lactate, ions, and uric acid in body fluids like sweat and interstitial fluid [ 2 , 3 , 17 , 18 , 19 , 20 , 21 , 22 , 23 ]. This progress highlights a shift from traditional microfabrication techniques, which were marred by their complexity, cost, and confinement to two-dimensional patterns, towards more versatile and accessible methods such as roll-to-roll printing [ 24 ]. Nanomaterials have garnered significant interest recently due to their enhanced catalytic activity towards specific target analytes, improving sensor performance and sensitivity [ 25 , 26 , 27 , 28 , 29 , 30 , 31 , 32 , 33 , 34 , 35 ]. Integrating these nanomaterials with 3D printing technologies enables the creation of highly customized and functional sensing platforms. The combination of 3D printing and nanomaterials allows for the precise deposition and patterning of active materials, further advancing the capabilities of wearable biosensors. However, it is the introduction of 3D printing technology that has truly revolutionized the field, offering a layer-by-layer fabrication approach that promises high customization and functionality [ 36 ].

3D printing stands out for its ability to create intricate, functional devices tailored to specific needs, facilitating the rapid fabrication of wearable biomedical devices with unprecedented precision and customization. This technology not only addresses the limitations of earlier fabrication methods but also opens up new possibilities for enhancing sensor wearability, including aspects like stretchability, adhesion to skin, and biocompatibility [ 37 , 38 , 39 , 40 ]. By weaving together, the advancements in 3D printing of nanomaterials with the burgeoning field of biomarker monitoring, this review aims to provide a comprehensive analysis of the current state and future directions of wearable chemical sensors. Through this lens, we will explore the significant contributions of 3D printing of nanomaterials in creating novel sensor designs, the practical aspects of sensor wearability, and the overarching challenges and trends shaping the future of flexible and wearable chemical sensors.

3D Printing Technologies for Wearable Sensors

The advent of 3D printing technologies has revolutionized the landscape of wearable sensor development, providing unparalleled flexibility and precision in creating devices tailored to the unique demands of personal healthcare. This section delves into the various 3D printing technologies that have become instrumental in the fabrication of wearable sensors, highlighting their distinct methodologies, advantages, and the ways they are shaping the future of wearable technology. The advent of various 3D printing techniques has significantly impacted the field of wearable sensors, facilitating the fabrication of devices with high resolution and intricate designs directly from digital models. This technological progression allows for the transformation of complex objects into simpler, layered forms, directly patterned from computer-aided design (CAD) files, thus enabling researchers to produce high-resolution images and structures crucial for wearable sensors [ 41 , 42 , 43 , 44 ]. Fused Deposition Modeling (FDM) exemplifies one such technique, characterized by the extrusion of thermoplastics to realize designs from a liquid to a solid state. Integral to FDM are the build and support materials, which, upon heating in the liquefier head, enable the filament to be deposited in successive layers based on the input data, thereby fabricating the object on a build platform. This method is noted for its simplicity and cost-effectiveness, making it suitable for creating a wide range of devices including sensors and robotics, with a variety of materials such as polylactic acid (PLA), polydimethylsiloxane (PDMS), and acrylonitrile butadiene styrene (ABS) [ 45 , 46 , 47 , 48 ]. FDM's capability to modify parameters like nozzle distance and speed enhances the quality of the 3D structures, further evidenced by the creation of portable, home-based FDM printers that utilize cost-effective materials for improved structure quality [ 49 ].

Digital Light Processing (DLP), another key 3D printing technology, utilizes vat polymerization with thermosetting resins to build parts layer by layer. DLP employs materials that offer thermal resistance and strength, such as polycarbonates and polypropylene, making it an effective method for fabricating parts with high precision and scalability [ 50 , 51 ]. The DLP process, which can be conducted in both bottom-up and top-down approaches (Fig.  2 A), involves curing the polymer resin with a light source, resulting in finely detailed parts that require minimal post-processing [ 52 , 53 ]. Direct Ink Writing (DIW) stands out for its versatility in printing a wide array of materials, including metals, ceramics, nanomaterials and polymers, by dispensing ink through a moving nozzle onto a substrate. This method is crucial for achieving the desired rheological properties and stability in the 3D printed structures, with the viscosity of the ink playing a pivotal role in the printing process [ 54 , 55 , 56 , 57 , 58 , 59 , 60 , 61 , 62 ]. Adjusting the printing parameters, such as nozzle size and deposition pressure, allows DIW to produce high-quality, resolution-specific patterns suitable for wearable sensors (Fig.  2 B). Inkjet printing (IJP), a notable technique, allows for the precise deposition of conductive inks, creating highly sensitive and reliable sensors. Recently, the 2D nanomaterials based electrodes fabricated through inkjet printing exhibit excellent electrical conductivity and sensitivity, crucial for biosensing applications [ 15 ]. Extrusion-based printing, another key method, facilitates the incorporation of nanomaterials such as carbon nanotubes and metal nanoparticles into the sensor matrix. This enhances the electrochemical properties and detection capabilities of the sensors [ 16 ]. IJP's adaptability to 3D printing showcases the potential for developing ceramic materials and achieving solidification through cooling, curing, or solvent evaporation, depending on the material (Fig.  2 C) [ 63 , 64 , 65 , 66 , 67 , 68 , 69 , 70 ]. Achieving the precise three-dimensional structures sought in 3D printing endeavors necessitates a strategic selection of materials, a decision pivotal to the technology's application and design specificity. The array of materials at one's disposal is extensive, encompassing plastics, metals, ceramics, and a variety of composites, including innovative bio-inks and photopolymers, each offering unique properties to the 3D creation process [ 36 ]. The drive towards more advanced, compatible materials has been marked, with a focus on harnessing various energy forms—light, heat—to directly sculpt these materials into the desired configurations, a feat made increasingly feasible with the latest advancements in 3D printing technologies.

A Illustrative diagram depicting the methodologies of Digital Light Processing (DLP) 3D printing, showcasing both bottom-up and top-down approaches. Adapted with authorization from Ref. [ 71 ], Copyright 2022 by Springer Nature. B Conceptual diagram detailing the process and ink flow dynamics in Direct Ink Writing (DIW) technology. This method is acclaimed for its versatility in handling a broad spectrum of materials for the creation of intricate, multi-functional 3D structures. Adapted with authorization from Ref. [ 56 ], Copyright 2022 by John Wiley and Sons. C Diagrammatic representation of inkjet 3D printing technology. Adapted with authorization from Ref. [ 67 ], Copyright 2021 by Elsevier. D Visual depiction of the stages in 3D printing, from the initial design submission to achieving the final 3D printed product. Adapted with authorization from Ref. [ 72 ], Copyright 2021 by Elsevier

The choice of material and the corresponding 3D printing technology is highly contingent on the specific design and application in mind. Thermoplastics such as nylon, ABS, PLA, polyethylene terephthalate glycol-modified (PETG), and polyetherimide (PEI), are frequently chosen for their versatility in producing functional prototypes and components integral to device assembly [ 73 ]. The field has witnessed significant improvements, notably in the realms of material functionality, printing velocity, the introduction of application-tailored printing methods, and the achievement of finer resolutions, spanning from micro to nanoscale dimensions [ 54 ]. Nanomaterials, too, have found their place in crafting more sophisticated 3D structures, offering enhanced conductive properties and mechanical strength, essential for certain sensor applications [ 74 ]. Despite their utility, the use of 3D printed nanomaterials electrodes, often necessitating electroplating with materials like iridium oxide or gold for enhanced functionality, presents challenges, including cost and biocompatibility concerns [ 73 ]. Here, carbon-based composites have emerged as a prominent alternative, being increasingly explored for their potential to create efficient, cost-effective biosensing platforms.

These composites, blending conventional thermoplastics with conductive materials such as carbon black, carbon nanotubes (CNTs), and graphene, have been pivotal in the development of a wide array of sensing applications, from electronic components to biosensors [ 73 , 75 , 76 , 77 ]. Yet, the optimization of these conductive composites remains a complex task, balancing conductivity with the base thermoplastic material. For flexible sensor applications, the rigidity and bulkiness of materials like thermoplastic polyurethane (TPU), ABS, and PLA pose significant challenges, often leading to discomfort and impracticality for long-term wear [ 40 ]. Addressing these limitations, softer, more elastic materials with lower modulus properties are preferred, ensuring compatibility with human skin and enhancing the wearability of devices. Silicone elastomers, particularly PDMS and styrene ethylene butylene styrene (SEBS), stand out for their skin-friendly properties and flexibility, facilitating the creation of customized wearable devices that adhere comfortably to the body without the need for additional adhesives [ 40 , 78 ]. The integration of stretchable conductive materials is indispensable in fabricating wearable sensors, with carbon-based nanofillers such as CNTs, graphene, and carbon black playing a crucial role in augmenting the electrical and mechanical properties of these devices [ 79 , 80 , 81 , 82 ].

This comprehensive overview underscores the integral role of material selection in the 3D printing process, highlighting the interplay between material properties, technological advancements, and the specific requirements of wearable sensor applications. As the field progresses, the continued innovation in materials and printing techniques promises to further enhance the capabilities and applications of 3D printed wearable devices. The journey of 3D printing from concept to tangible object begins with the creation of a detailed 3D design, achievable through digital design software, 3D scanning, or the amalgamation of images captured from various angles to forge a comprehensive 3D virtual model [ 36 ]. This model is subsequently transformed into a universally compatible format known as the ‘Stereolithography’ (STL) file. STL files are pivotal for their widespread acceptance across numerous computer-aided design (CAD) programs, making them a cornerstone in the 3D printing workflow. Following the creation of an STL file, the next critical step involves slicing software such as Idea Maker or Cura, which translates the STL file into a G-code file. This conversion process is intricate, entailing several sequential steps that define the slicing parameters. The G-code file is essential, as it communicates precise printing instructions to the 3D printer, detailing aspects such as the type of material to be used, extrusion rates, feed rates, and the specific pathways for material deposition [ 83 ]. The culmination of this process is the layer-by-layer deposition of material, guided by the bespoke G-code instructions, to materialize the envisioned 3D object. The workflow of 3D printing technology is methodically laid out, starting from the initial digital design phase through to the realization of the final 3D printed product (Fig.  2 D). This systematic approach underscores the importance of each phase in ensuring the accurate and efficient production of 3D printed objects, highlighting the technological marvel that is 3D printing. Table 1 presents a comprehensive overview of the scientific studies focused on 3D printing technologies for biosensor fabrication. It includes details on the types of 3D printing methods employed, the materials utilized, the specific fields of application, and the related analytical uses.

Advancements in Wearable Biosensors Through 3D Nanomaterial Printing Technologies

Wearable biochemical sensors, which complement their biophysical counterparts by monitoring a range of vital biochemical markers, are increasingly recognized for their crucial role in providing a comprehensive view of an individual's health [ 102 , 103 , 104 ]. These devices delve into the analysis of critical biomarkers at the biomolecular level, enabling early detection, diagnosis, and management of a spectrum of chronic conditions including diabetes, cardiovascular diseases, mental health disorders, and infectious diseases [ 2 , 20 , 105 , 106 , 107 ]. Leveraging various electrochemical methodologies such as potentiometry, amperometry, voltammetry, and impedance spectroscopy allows for the meticulous analysis of analytes within different biofluids—saliva, sweat, tears, and interstitial fluids—as well as the assessment of environmental gases [ 7 , 108 , 109 ]. The advent of 3D nanomaterial printing technology has significantly advanced the fabrication of biosensors that can accurately measure levels of chemical biomarkers ranging from pH and electrolytes to metabolites and proteins. The success of these sensors hinges on the precise formulation of ink matrices, involving careful selection of solvents and binders to ensure the biological or sensing elements retain their intended functionality.

A notable application of this technology is in monitoring biofluid pH, which can reveal important information regarding an individual’s health status, with implications for infection detection, disease diagnosis, and tailoring of personalized medicine strategies [ 110 ]. Moving away from traditional devices characterized by bulky instrumentation and limited flexibility, 3D nanomaterial printing has facilitated the creation of integrated, wearable pH sensors [ 21 ] (Fig.  3 A). This innovative approach employs the printing of nanomaterials onto substrates that mimic the flexibility of skin, allowing for the construction of sensors via multimaterial and multilayer printing techniques. The pH detection mechanism operates potentiometrically, detecting changes in potential due to the protonation of nitrogen atoms in the polyaniline (PANI) polymer chains, enabling continuous, accurate, and real-time pH monitoring of sweat. For optimal sensor performance, it is crucial to use the PANI emeraldine base in the ink formulation, as it dissolves in organic solvents like DMSO, unlike its counterpart PANI. Additionally, for the detection of various electrolytes, it is imperative to develop stable ion-selective membranes through potentiometric sensing [ 111 ]. The formulation of printable ion-selective membranes involves a blend of a photocurable structure, a photoinitiator, ion-exchanging salts, and a plasticizer [ 112 ]. By adjusting the membrane cocktail's composition, it is possible to achieve membranes with the desired thickness and shape upon curing, resulting in ion-selective sensors that exhibit excellent sensitivity, near-Nernstian response, and high reproducibility with minimal deviation.

Advancements in 3D-printed biochemical sensors for wearable and point-of-care applications: A Illustrates a cutting-edge 3D nanomaterials-printed system for monitoring sweat pH levels in real time without the need for batteries, highlighting its wireless functionality. This innovation is presented with the approval of Wiley-VCH [ 21 ]. B Depicts the process involved in Direct Ink Writing (DIW) fabrication, including the deposition of carbon ink onto tattoo paper followed by the application of enzyme ink, culminating in a visual of the glucose sensor printed on a flexible substrate. This segment is shared with acknowledgment to Elsevier [ 114 ]. C Displays a physical image of a 4 × 4 glucose sensing array and illustrates its application in monitoring glucose levels in sweat during physical activity and dietary changes, indicating an on-body test before and after meals. This work is acknowledged by the American Chemical Society [ 122 ] © 2024. D Features a 3D-printed wearable e-ring linked to a potentiostat and smartphone, detailing its dimensions and showcasing its glucose sensing capabilities in artificial sweat, with close-up views of the response data. This content is shared with the permission of American Chemical Society [ 99 ], Copyright 2021. E Offers a schematic representation of the e 3 -skin, equipped with an array of biophysical and biochemical sensors capable of monitoring pulse waveforms, temperature, and sweat biomarkers, alongside a microfluidic iontophoretic module for sweat induction and collection, and MSCs for energy storage. This is further complemented by optical images of both the e 3 -skin and its fully assembled wireless system, including a close-up of the integrated microfluidics module and sensor responses during a selectivity test, courtesy of AAAS publications [ 124 ]. F Illustrates the concept of 3D printing nanomaterials to fabricate the LC resonator on a SEBS substrate. It demonstrates how the MIP-RF sensors’ resonant frequency shifts in response to various cortisol concentrations. The structure of the MIP-RF sensing system is detailed, alongside a photograph of the MIP-RF sensing system attached to the arm (scale bar: 1 cm). This content is shared with the permission of Springer Nature [ 130 ], Copyright 2024

The field of diabetes management has significantly benefited from glucose monitoring advancements over the past four decades, tracing back to the inaugural blood glucose monitoring system introduced by Anton Clemens in 1971, marking the inception of point-of-care glucose monitoring [ 113 ]. This pioneering system utilized enzyme-based reagent strips that change color to indicate glucose levels. Subsequent developments have explored various glucose monitoring methods, including electrochemical, optical, and impedance spectroscopy approaches. when embarking on the development of wearable sensors that employ enzymatic reactions for biomarker detection, several critical considerations come to the forefront, including the need for mechanical flexibility, miniaturization, and the ability to scale production. 3D printing technology stands out in this context, offering advantages such as high throughput, the capability for customization, and precise control over spatial details. For instance, Nesaei et al . [ 114 ] engineered an electrochemical tattoo sensor for glucose monitoring using a DIW technique with carbon nanomaterial ink, achieving a sensitivity of 17.5 nA M −1 within a detection range of 100–1000 µM (Fig.  3 B). This additive manufacturing approach yielded a sensor with superior specificity and sensitivity, utilizing less material compared to traditional screen-printing techniques.

Guan et al. [ 115 ] introduced a self-powered wearable sweat biosensor for lactate analysis in professional athletes, employing a porous carbon film. The sensor's output voltage correlated linearly with sweat lactate concentration, enabling wireless data transmission for comprehensive analysis. Similarly, Nolan et al . [ 116 ] reported on a 3D nanomaterial printed biosensor array capable of simultaneous detection of multiple analytes (e.g., lactate, glucose, neurotransmitters) in cell culture media, utilizing DIW to print a composite ink comprising poly(3,4-ethylenedioxythiophene) polystyrene sulfonate (PEDOT:PSS), platinum nanoparticles (PtNPs), activated carbon, and silicone, suitable for integration with organ-on-a-chip platforms. Nguyen et al. [ 117 ] described a DIW printed flexible electrochemical biosensor for in-vivo glutamate detection, with the bioelectrode printed on a flexible substrate using PtNPs ink and subsequently immobilized with glutamate oxidase.

Katseli et al. [ 99 ] showcased an innovative 3D-printed electrochemical ring (e-ring) designed for the enzymeless and non-invasive tracking of glucose levels on human skin. Fabricated from TPU filament using a dual extruder 3D printer, the e-ring incorporates electrodes made of conductive carbon/polylactic acid (C/PLA) within a ring-shaped casing. The design specifics and electrode integration within the e-ring are depicted in Fig.  3 C. To enhance the working electrode (WE), its surface underwent modification with a layer of gold (Au) through dipping in an Au plating solution, a process fine-tuned for optimal potential. Figure  3 C reveals the e-ring's chronoamperometric response across a glucose concentration range of 12.5 to 400 µM in artificial sweat, which aligns with the glucose concentration spectrum found in human sweat [ 118 ]. The e-ring sensor exhibited a limit of detection (LOD) at 1.2 µM, a performance benchmarked against other glucose biosensing technologies [ 119 , 120 , 121 ]. Notably, the 3DP e-ring maintained specificity by showing no significant chronoamperometric change when exposed to common electroactive substances in sweat, such as lactic acid, uric acid, and urea. Cong et al. [ 122 ] have developed a groundbreaking glucose sensor by leveraging high-concentration carbon-based inks specifically designed for precision 3D printing. This technique enabled the creation of electrodes with complex 3D geometries and enhanced specific surface areas, crucial for improving sensor performance. The sensor's design, featuring concentric circles composed of multi-walled carbon nanotubes (MWCNT), reduced graphene oxide (rGO), and graphite for the working electrodes, along with graphite and Ag/AgCl for the counter and reference electrodes respectively, demonstrates significant flexibility in sensor customization (Fig.  3 D). Furthermore, the incorporation of the GDH enzyme and FAD coenzyme on the working electrode exemplifies a sophisticated approach to creating a highly accurate third-generation enzyme sensor, adept at conforming to various body contours thanks to an integrated infrared distance measurement system. Also, Gao and coworkers introduces a novel, fully integrated wireless wearable system, adept at multiplexed sensing of molecular biomarkers relevant to chronic wound management. Leveraging the precision and flexibility of 3D nanomaterial printing, the wearable device is crafted to conform seamlessly to the wound site, ensuring consistent monitoring without causing discomfort or irritation. This innovation not only broadens the capabilities of wearable health monitors by enabling the real-time tracking of a variety of critical biomarkers, such as temperature, pH, and glucose levels, but also represents a significant scientific achievement in personalized medicine [ 123 ]. Followed by their research group also have developed an epifluidic elastic electronic skin (e 3 -skin) that showcases a novel integration of 3D nanomaterial printing technology and wearable molecular sensing [ 124 ], aimed at enhancing personalized health assessment. Utilizing a highly adaptable semisolid extrusion (SSE)-based 3D-printing technique, which encompasses direct ink writing and selective phase elimination, this e 3 -skin merges multimodal physiochemical sensing capabilities with machine learning for remote health monitoring (Fig.  3 E). The fabrication process involves the use of functional inks, made from a blend of multidimensional nanomaterials, polymers, and hydrogels, tailored to achieve optimal performance in biosensing, epifluidic modulation, and energy efficiency. These inks are designed to possess the necessary rheological properties for SSE, ensuring viscoelasticity and shear-thinning behaviour suitable for creating multidimensional wearable architectures with high precision [ 56 , 125 ]. By employing a phase elimination strategy for the selective removal of sacrificial components, the as-printed 3D structures are transformed into porous architectures, significantly enhancing their functionality [ 126 , 127 , 128 , 129 ]. This approach marks a significant scientific achievement by enabling the low-cost, customizable prototyping of sustainable, multifunctional physiochemical sensing systems, ideally suited for advancements in remote healthcare surveillance. In the recent study by Chakoma et al. [ 130 ] a molecularly imprinted polymer-radio-frequency (MIP-RF) wearable sensing system is introduced for real-time, non-invasive sweat cortisol assessment. As illustrated in Fig.  3 F, the study provides detailed insights into the 3D printing process, sensor structure, and practical application on the arm, showcasing its innovative approach to health monitoring. Utilizing 3D-printed nanomaterials, this flexible, wireless, and battery-free sensor translates cortisol concentrations into resonant frequency shifts with high sensitivity [∼ 160 kHz/(log (µM))] across a physiological range of 0.025–1 µM. The system incorporates near-field communication (NFC) and a 3D-printed microfluidic channel for in-situ sweat collection, enabling continuous daily monitoring and demonstrating stability over 28 days. This innovation paves the way for a new era in realistic, on-demand health monitoring outside the laboratory, leveraging wearable technology for molecular stress biomarker detection.

Developments in 3D Printing for Enhanced Wearable Microfluidic Systems

Recently, a groundbreaking approach has been introduced through the utilization of a commercial DLP 3D printer for the development of a novel epifluidic platform termed the "sweatainer." This innovation represents a significant advancement, marking the first instance of achieving true microfluidic dimensions through 3D printing. The sweatainer platform embodies the benefits of additive manufacturing (AM) in the creation of epifluidic systems, providing a range of features that were previously unattainable. It facilitates the fabrication of fluidic components with complex architectures and micron-scale feature sizes (< 100 μm), thereby pioneering a new domain of possibilities in microfluidic design. Furthermore, the improved optical transparency of the printed channels enhances the integration of colorimetric assays, enabling in situ biomarker analysis akin to traditional epifluidic systems (Fig.  4 A). Drawing inspiration from the vacutainer blood collection tube, the sweatainer introduces a "multidraw" method for sweat collection. This innovative approach permits the collection of multiple pristine sweat samples within a single collection period, effectively overcoming the challenges associated with single-use devices. Field studies of the sweatainer system have underscored its practical potential, highlighting the transformative role of resin-based 3D printing in the creation of biologically compliant devices with intricate fluidic structures. This method not only expands the design space for microfluidics but also streamlines the prototype development process, facilitating bespoke device customization and reducing costs for small-scale production [ 131 ].

Innovative developments in 3D-printed wearable sensors for sweat analysis: A Demonstrates the design and functionality of epidermal microfluidic devices, including schematic illustrations, optical images, and an exploded view of the sweatier system emphasizing its key components and epidermal interface. Also included is a photo showing the device on an individual's forearm prior to sweat collection, illustrating its design's effectiveness in preventing uncontrolled fluid movement under mechanical stress, supported by a series of images from human trials. Courtesy of AAAS publications [ 131 ]. B Outlines the fabrication steps for creating a stretchable LOx@CS PC sensor for lactate monitoring in sweat, accompanied by a photograph of the finished product. This innovation is recognized by the American Chemical Society © 2024 [ 132 ]. C Provides a detailed view of a wearable patch designed for sweat analysis, including a top view, optical imagery, a breakdown of its individual units, a cross-sectional perspective of the patch when applied to the skin, and an exploration of its various components, with Wiley's consent [ 18 ]. D Provides a schematic overview of theCo 1.22x Ni x O 4 /fMWCNTs/Au/PDMS wearable biosensor applied on a human hand, alongside data showing the monitored glucose concentration in sweat throughout a day. This content is under the copyright of Elsevier [133] 2024

In a pioneering study by Zeng-Qiang [ 132 ], a novel flexible sensor capable of simultaneously detecting sweat lactate and temperature was introduced, leveraging the advantages of 3D printing technology for sweat collection. Utilizing a 3D-printed PDMS layer to adhere to human skin, this sensor absorbs sweat through an absorbent layer, channeling it into a hydrogel layer where lactate is enzymatically converted, allowing for precise electrochemical measurement of lactate concentration (Fig.  4 B). The sensor, characterized by its use of a polycarbonate (PC) nanoporous membrane, demonstrates a significant sensitivity with a low detection limit for lactate, alongside a robust mechanism for temperature correction through multiple linear regression (MLR) model.

Padash et al. [ 134 ] have introduced a wearable microfluidic device, utilizing 3D-printing technology for efficient sweat analysis. This device enables the rapid and precise analysis of sweat analytes with minimal volume requirements and no risk of evaporation at the sensing site. The successful application of this device in detecting both ferricyanide and paracetamol in artificial sweat underscores its potential for monitoring endogenous ions and exogenous therapeutic compounds directly on the skin. Gowers et al . [ 135 ] developed a 3D printed microfluidic system designed to assess the glucose/lactate ratio during physical activity, identifying glucose and lactate as key biomarkers for energy metabolism. Utilizing FDA-approved clinical micro dialysis probes, the system facilitated real-time metabolite level monitoring in a cyclist mid-exercise, demonstrating significant potential for wearable athlete monitoring. In parallel, Samper et al . [ 136 ] showcased a 3D printed microfluidic device for concurrent monitoring of lactate, glucose, and glutamate. Kim et al . [ 18 ] created a novel 3D printed wearable patch (Fig.  4 C) featuring a microfluidic channel and versatile ion-selective sensors for real-time sweat electrolyte (Na + , K + , Ca 2+ ions) monitoring, utilizing polyvinyl chloride (PVC) ionophores in the 3D printed electrodes for selective ion detection. Nah et al . [ 137 ] introduced a microfluidic wearable immunosensor for sweat cortisol measurement using laser-burned graphene and titanium carbide MXene (Ti 3 C 2 T x ) electrodes, with the microfluidic mold produced through 3D printing. Lastly, Parate et al . [ 94 ] utilized graphene-nitrocellulose ink to modify a flexible polyamide substrate via Aerosol Jet Printing (AJP) technology for cytokine detection, illustrating the breadth of 3D printing applications in wearable biosensing technology. Shrestha et al . [ 133 ] a novel approach for the development of an enzyme-free glucose sensor has been introduced, showcasing the synergistic integration of Co 1.22x Ni x O 4 composite material with functionalized MWCNTs through a straightforward hydrothermal method. This sensor leverages the unique properties of its components to significantly enhance sensing capabilities, notably through the in-situ growth of a hybrid composite on a 3D-printed PDMS patterned film, further enhanced by a SP–DN hydrogel modification for improved adhesion and functionality (Fig.  4 D). The innovative design, characterized by a pearl-necklace-like heterostructure, represents a significant leap in non-invasive glucose monitoring, facilitating accurate, repeatable, and reliable sweat analysis with high sensitivity of (1190.9 and 1312.1) µA mM −1  cm −2 , wide linear range of (0.001–8.0) mM, low detection limit (20 μM) towards potential for real-time health monitoring.

Conclusion and Future Perspectives

The utilization of Direct Ink Writing (DIW) in 3D printing for the field of bioelectronics is propelling forward the creation of groundbreaking and tailor-made healthcare devices, including versatile wearable chemical sensors, compact modules for energy storage and harvesting, biocompatible devices for implantation, and innovative soft robotics. DIW's 3D printing capabilities, enabling the fabrication of complex electronic circuits, intricate shapes, multi-material integration, and personalized device designs, position it as a cornerstone technology for the future of bioelectronics. Reflecting on the studies reviewed, significant strides have been made using DIW in producing wearable and implantable bioelectronics, showcasing enhancements in functionality, adaptability, and biocompatibility. This approach has been instrumental across various bioelectronic applications, from biosensing and energy solutions to soft robotics, by introducing porous structures for improved bio-functionality, enabling high-resolution digital patterning with tailored inks, and optimizing device performance through print parameter adjustments.

Despite these advancements, transitioning 3D-printed devices from laboratory prototypes to clinical and practical applications presents numerous challenges, particularly for devices that require sequential multi-material printing. Key areas for development include ink formulation, print parameter optimization, material alignment, and post-printing treatments, all critical for bioelectronic device success. Future directions necessitate integrating low-power, miniaturized devices to boost device density and sustainability, developing scalable fabrication methods to include additional functional components, establishing efficient wireless communication for data handling, and leveraging artificial intelligence for enhanced diagnostic precision. However, it is important to acknowledge the disadvantages of different 3D printing technologies on biosensor applications. Various 3D printing methods, such as Fused Deposition Modeling (FDM), Stereolithography (SLA), and Selective Laser Sintering (SLS), present limitations in resolution, material compatibility, and mechanical properties that can affect the performance of biosensors [ 138 , 139 ]. Each 3D printing technology has specific disadvantages that impact its use in wearable sensing applications. Fused Filament Fabrication (FFF) is hindered by the need for pretreatment, weak interaction between layers, and a rough surface finish. DIW faces challenges such as nozzle clogging and the necessity for extensive post-processing. DLP printing, although offering high resolution, suffers from weak mechanical strength and high costs. Similarly, SLS is associated with rough surface textures, potential powder pollution, and elevated costs, making it less ideal for producing fine-featured wearable sensors [ 140 ]. Addressing these limitations is essential for advancing the practical application of 3D-printed biosensors in real-world settings.

As the field advances, the aim is to streamline the creation of fully compatible, integrated 3D-printed systems, enhancing the mass production potential and commercial viability [ 124 ]. In the future, advancements in 3D bioprinting techniques will enable the fabrication of multi-material, multi-layer, and cell-laden structures, addressing challenges such as tissue heterogeneity and the poor recapitulation of human physiology compared to in vivo 3D architectures, including tissue-tissue interaction, vascularization, and cell communication [ 141 , 142 , 143 , 144 , 145 , 146 , 147 ]. By combining hydrogels, cells, and signaling molecules, 3D-bioprinting offers unparalleled spatial control over the 3D architecture of biological components, paving the way for the recreation of actual tissues. This evolution will depend on innovating multi-functional inks, scalable designs, and new printing protocols that consider material compatibility both during and post-printing. Ensuring the scalability, consistency, and regulatory adherence of 3D-printed bioelectronics is paramount for their clinical adoption, underpinned by the reliability of customized inks. Additionally, the preparation and storage conditions of these inks require meticulous control to maintain print quality.

The landscape of 3D printing technology is undergoing rapid evolution, fuelled by the collaborative efforts of researchers, industry professionals, and enthusiasts. This multifaceted development spans across material innovation, process enhancement, and software advancements. Notably, the emergence of technologies such as 4D printing, 5-axis printing, and Continuous Liquid Interface Production (CLIP) promises to significantly influence the future of 3DP biosensors. 4D printing, distinguished by its capacity to produce structures that adapt their shape or functionality in response to environmental stimuli, leverages smart materials sensitive to variations in temperature, humidity, or light [ 148 ]. This adaptability introduces a new level of versatility and applicability in biomedical sensing and environmental monitoring. Meanwhile, 5-axis printing enhances the traditional fabrication process by enabling the printing object to be manipulated in relation to the nozzle. This manipulation facilitates the creation of complex structures without the need for supports, potentially enhancing mechanical properties and surface quality in specific orientations [ 149 ]. CLIP, and its derivative methods, represent a leap in stereolithography, offering reduced print times and improved part quality through a unique approach that minimizes resin sticking and accelerates resin flow during printing [ 150 ]. Collectively, these advancements herald a transformative era in sensor technology, empowering the creation of more sophisticated and responsive devices that surmount current limitations in sensor manufacturing.

Looking forward, the horizon of 3D printing in biomedical engineering is vibrant with possibilities. Innovations in ink technology, incorporating nanomaterials and conductive biocompatible substances, will further elevate device performance and introduce new capabilities. Advanced multi-material printing techniques will enable the construction of sophisticated, multi-functional systems. Wearable chemical sensors, seamlessly interfacing with the skin and capable of highly sensitive biomarker detection, will revolutionize continuous health monitoring. Coupled with energy harvesting and storage solutions, these sensors promise sustained operation. Recent studies, demonstrate the potential of integrating deep learning and wearable devices in healthcare, further emphasizing the need for advanced, reliable, and scalable 3D printing technologies in the development of bioelectronic systems [ 151 , 152 , 153 ]. Importantly, integrating the gathered data with machine learning and analytics will transform healthcare delivery, providing predictive insights into health conditions for more effective and precise interventions.

Data Availability

Not applicable.

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Acknowledgements

This work was supported by the start-up funds provided to R.E. by the Henry Samueli School of Engineering and the Department of Electrical Engineering at the University of California, Irvine.

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Rajendran, J., Esfandyarpour, R. Revolutionizing Personalized Health: The Frontier of Wearable Biomolecule Sensors Through 3D Printing Innovation. Biomedical Materials & Devices (2024). https://doi.org/10.1007/s44174-024-00226-9

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Received : 26 June 2024

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DOI : https://doi.org/10.1007/s44174-024-00226-9

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