The Course

The study was conducted in a 300-level elective Politics of Europe course taught over the fall semester of 2009.  Using a comparative approach, the course provided an overview of European politics.  Among some of the topics covered were political culture, party systems, political control over economic policy making, effects of unemployment, right-wing extremism, foreign and security policy, supranational integration, immigration, race/ethnicity, gender, religion, social welfare, identity politics, and democracy. Click to see the syllabus.

Participants

Out of the 32 students enrolled in the course, 27 gave their consent to be part of the study.  The majority of students were political science majors/minors.  Out of the 27 participants, 17 were seniors, 9 juniors, and 1 sophomore.  All students had taken college level political science courses before enrolling in the Politics of Europe course, except for one student (a journalist major who had only taken an AP government course).  Considering that most students were seniors and almost all had a number of political science courses under their belt, I expected that the participants had developed their critical thinking skills.

Research Methods

Using the revised version of Bloom’s taxonomy (Anderson & Krathwohl, 2001), I examined critical thinking according to six levels of intellectual behavior.  The six levels range from fundamental learning outcomes such as remembering, understanding, and applying to more complex intellectual behavior such as analyzing, evaluating, and creating. 

The taxonomy was useful in that it helped me to categorize student learning outcomes as revealed by the data.  As I was interested in finding out how students think critically when learning about political systems, the higher-order level thinking (evaluating and creating) seemed particularly relevant.  I assessed students’ answers to questions (in the writing assignments) by the level of thinking that the questions required.  For example, while the middle-order level thinking skill of ‘analyzing’ may entail asking the students “What are the parts or features of… ?” or “How does… compare/contrast with… ?” or “What evidence can you find for… ?”, the higher-order level thinking skill of ‘evaluating’ involves a different set of questions.  Those questions may ask the students to make a judgment based on certain criteria or resolve controversies or differences of opinions (e.g., “What criteria would you use to assess… ?”).  Thus, questions that drew on the higher-order level thinking were particularly pertinent to this project.

Data Collection

I collected multiple forms of data including pre- and post-surveys, writing assignments, quizzes, journal templates, and a final exam.  All assignments, except for the surveys, were part of the regular course and were required to successfully complete it.  The surveys were added to the course as part of this study.  I also kept notes about what went on in the classroom related to critical thinking.

Surveys

The pre-surveys were conducted the second day of class and asked questions about past course experiences, critical thinking, knowledge about aspects of politics, etc.  The post-surveys were conducted the last day of class and posed similar questions (excluding questions about past course experiences).  Click here to see the pre-surveys and post-surveys.