Critical thinking test for elementary and secondary students

Abstract

The importance of critical thinking in education is supported by numerous researches for decades. In the absence of a critical thinking test (CTT) designed to be used in Portugal, the focus of this paper is the presentation of a critical thinking test for Portuguese adolescents. We present the exploratory validation study of this instrument, administered to 128 students, aged 12 to 19, attending elementary and secondary schools of low and high socioeconomic status. The construct validity of the nine-item instrument was estimated using an Exploratory Factorial Analysis (AFE), to evaluate the multidimensionality of the CTT. There were three factors: creation, argumentation and explanation, explaining 70.07% of the total variance .We found significant differences between grades and schools. The results suggest that the development of critical thinking skills is related to the grade and students’ socioeconomic status.

Keywords

• pensamento crítico
• ensinos básico e secundário
• avaliação
• validação