New Article on Undergraduate Student Leaders & Critical Thinking

Dr. Russell Waltz (Galen College) and I have published our first of two articles addressing critical thinking in student involvement and leadership. This article is published in the Journal of College & Character and features results from a quantitative assessment of critical thinking which were administered to a sample of undergraduate male student leaders. Many critical scholars have posited a decline in critical thinking among Millennial and Generation-Z due to an emphasis on standardized testing or changes in societal parenting attitudes. Regardless of identifying casual factors, our non-experimental, descriptive study examined critical thinking development among student leaders at two land-grant universities. Study participants took the Cornell Critical Thinking Test Level Z (CCTT-Z) and the Wason Rule Discovery Task (WRDT). Results from the study suggested there was a relationship between the incidence of implicit bias and poorly demonstrated critical thinking skills, and when controlling for academic level. We also found that student leaders are less likely than non-leaders to hold confirmation bias and that lower critical thinking ability is correlated with a greater the tendency they to hold confirmation bias. Dr. Waltz and I provide implications for practice to include a reasoned account for why such implicit attitudes hinder students’ critical thinking development and why efforts should be made to lessen such biases’ influence.

The article can be downloaded from the Journal of College and Character.