Higher Education: Annotated Bibliography on Critical Thinking

This annotated bibliography examines two key articles related to critical thinking in higher education. The first article, "Applying cognitive science to critical thinking among higher education students," explores how cognitive science can be applied to enhance critical thinking skills, suggesting that it offers a more effective approach compared to informal logic. The second article, "Assessing Critical Thinking in Higher Education: Current State and Directions for Next‐Generation Assessment," focuses on the importance of critical thinking for students in the global market and proposes a next-generation framework for assessing critical thinking, highlighting the need for collaboration among various experts to improve current assessment methods. Both articles emphasize the need for improved strategies in higher education to foster and evaluate critical thinking abilities, with the first article advocating for a cognitive science approach and the second focusing on assessment design. The bibliography underscores the significance of critical thinking in preparing students for the workplace and highlights the limitations of existing methods, advocating for innovative approaches to enhance student learning and demonstration of critical thinking skills.

Running head; ANNOTATED BIBLIOGRAPHY
How can critical thinking be learned and demonstrated by higher education students?
Name of the Student
Name of the University
Author’s Note

1ANNOTATED BIBLIOGRAPHY
Lodge, J. M., O’Connor, E., Shaw, R., & Burton, L. (2015). Applying cognitive science to
critical thinking among higher education students. In The Palgrave Handbook of Critical
Thinking in Higher Education (pp. 391-407). Palgrave Macmillan US.
This article is based on the description of how critical thinking can be linked with
cognitive science. It provides a new and fresher perspective to the generalist specifist debate to
make progress in the structure of interventions for teaching and developing critical thinking in
the students. It describes the ways by which cognitive theories circumvent human tendencies
toward less rational and less effortful thought. The article gives an insight how the cognitive
science contribute in enhancing higher education teaching students to develop their critical
thinking skills. The article described the methods of cognitive science in developing critical
thinking in the students pursuing higher education. It suggests practices and principles to engage
students in deeper critical thinking by examining skepticism, higher-order thinking, problem
solving, metacognition and many more. This paper rejects the informal logic for critical thinking
as it is too much biased and do not follow the cognitive mechanism necessary for critical
thinking. According to this article, the students can learn and demonstrate their critical thinking
if it is taught with the help of cognitive science, though it is more difficult to implement the
methods than the informal logic. It provides an idea, why there are limitations exist in learning of
critical thinking and how it can be addressed. The paper presents an investigation under
controlled laboratory condition after breaking down the components of critical thinking among
the students.
Liu, O. L., Frankel, L., & Roohr, K. C. (2014). Assessing Critical Thinking in Higher
Education: Current State and Directions for Next‐Generation Assessment. ETS Research
Report Series, 2014(1), 1-23.

2ANNOTATED BIBLIOGRAPHY
This paper identifies the importance of critical thinking for students pursuing higher
education to make effective contribution in the global market. The first half of the article
provides insight of the existing assessments and their psychometric qualities. It uses the critical
thinking assessment to identify the challenges surrounding the current design and
implementation of those designs. The second half on the other hand, uses the data and proposes
the next generation critical thinking frame that needs to be implemented in order to help the
students in learning and demonstrating in the world workplace. The article is of critical
importance for the institutes that are planning to design or adopt an assessment of critical
thinking. The institutes which already have an critical thinking program can also use this article
to develop their current program for a better result and outcome. Contexts, structural features,
item formats, task types and accessibility are discussed in the article while designing the critical
thinking of next generation. Advantages of the proposed framework is also identified and
described in the article with assessment consideration. It clearly shows the complications of
designing a new and better critical thinking assessment and demands the collaboration between
domain experts, measurement experts, faculty members, assessment developers and institutions.
An absolute need of coordination is required in this process of assessment development which is
clearly identified in the article.
From the above discussion, it can be concluded that both the article focuses on the next
generation critical thinking approach that needs to be implemented in the higher educational
institutions in order to develop the critical thinking of the students. It is crucial, as the students
need a more critical thinking in the workplace and the present approaches has many loop holes
that needs to be avoided. The first article can be considered more effective as it focuses on using
the cognitive science to increase the efficiency of the present approaches. As the critical thinking

3ANNOTATED BIBLIOGRAPHY
is a cognitive phenomenon, use of cognitive science can have more impact in the future approach
of learning and demonstrating of the students.