A European collection of the Critical Thinking skills and dispositions needed in different professional fields for the 21st century

Within the scope of the project CRITHINKEDU, this report provides an overall analysis of the understanding of Critical Thinking (CT) by employers and establishessimilarities and differences in its expression, need and practical application at the workplace. Adopting a qualitative research methodology, 32 focus groups wereconducted enrolling 189 professionals from 9 European countries. The focus groups comprised graduates from 4 different professional fields, namely BiomedicalSciences, STEM (Sciences, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics), Social Sciences and the Humanities.Based on the Facione’ theoretical framework (Facione, 1990), key findings are in line with previous studies (Jones, 2009; Jones, 2010; Grace & Orrock, 2015; Sin, Jones & Wang, 2015), suggesting that CT is widely understood and interpreted as a set of interdependent skills and dispositions that are unquestionably needed in recent graduates. This is due to today’s labour market and societal demands, although withslight differences in their practical application which vary across professional fields.For professionals, ideal Critical Thinker employees hold a well-educated way of thinking, fed by the motivation and willingness to learn and improve, anchored on a set of interdependent cognitive and propensive aspects allowing them not only to anticipate and be ready for any situation, but also to regulate and monitor their own thinking and behaviour during the process. These findings suggest thatCT seeks for strong propensity elements (e.g., dispositions and attitudes) and arises from experience, lifelong learning, effort and persistence, dealing with long-term goals and development. Additionally, CT is frequently associated with problem-solving and decision-making purposes, and its application depends not only on a stand-alone ability, but also in the convergence and inter-connectedness of several other skills and dispositions out of the applied framework, such as proactivity, adaptability, creativity, emotional maturity, communication and teamwork. In Biomedical Sciences, for Health professionals, CT requires clinical reasoning that understands the thinking over different aspects of healthcare and wellbeing, in order to obtain a plausible decision regarding prevention, diagnosis or treatment of a specific patient, taking into account different ethical concerns. In STEM, for Engineering and ICT professionals, CT requires thinking about problems and different approaches to achieve the best solutions attending to the needs, goals and expectations of a specific customer. In Social Sciences, for Education, Administration and Tourism professionals, CT is seen as a desirable set of skills and dispositions for professional improvement and brings an added responsibility especially to teachers and educators, affecting directly the development and learning of future citizens, assuming themselves as the key agentsof this modeling process. In the Humanities, for professionals from Arts and Culture, CT is expressed by the thinking about reality, about what is around the actor and the audience, and through this observation and thought modify that reality transforming it into an artistic object/expression.CRITHINKEDU - Critical Thinking Across the European Higher Education CurriculaviA European collection of the Critical Thinking skills and dispositionsneeded in different professional fields for the 21st centuryFinally, and resulting in the main outcome and novelty of the current report, we presenta proposal for a “European Inventory of Critical Thinking skills and dispositionsfor the 21st century". This inventory is constituted not only by a list of different CTskills and dispositions categorized upon the applied framework according to its overallinterpretation by professionals, but also attending to their specific understanding in thedifferent professional fields, linking them to the tendencies, differences and context-based scenarios which better illustrate their practical application and needs within thefields. Rather than guiding teachers and higher education institutions on how to teachor promote CT, this inventory aims to provide them with a consistent basis of neededskills and dispositions in main professions that can be useful to define newlearning objectives, goals and outcomes, leading to adaptations that can beincorporated into the existing European university curricula. Additionally, we alsoexpect to support organizations and human resources in the design of internal trainingprograms to attend existing needs, as well as to identify future graduates forrecruitment.Some issues were encountered when conducting this study. They relate to design ofthe research methodology (the use of a qualitative research approach can’t lead togeneralized results), the research sample (e.g., background or the experience of therepresentatives from the diverse professional fields), or even the data analysisprocedures (e.g., language barriers in the process of data translation, difficulties toassign and categorize some quotes per certain skills and/or dispositions). However,having worked across multiple disciplines in 9 countries, it was felt that theserepresented minor constraints. In overcoming these, the team established reportobjectives and obtained valid information on the labour market needs towards CT skillsand dispositions in newer graduates.

Jaar van publicatie:2018