Test Tool Creation and Examination of Selected Cognitive Skills of Students at the Slovak University of Technology

Mária Bednáriková^1, and Karol Kováč¹

¹Department of Human Sciences, Faculty of Materials Science and Technology, Slovak University of Technology, Trnava, Slovakia

Cite this paper:
Mária Bednáriková and Karol Kováč. Test Tool Creation and Examination of Selected Cognitive Skills of Students at the Slovak University of Technology. American Journal of Educational Research. 2014; 2(12):1182-1189. doi: 10.12691/education-2-12-8

Abstract

In the article we analyze the possibility of testing critical thinking using a self-compiled questionnaire: "A test of selected critical thinking skills." There are four main dimensions of critical thinking studied in the test. In the first dimension, we tested the ability to identify relations between two terms. In the second dimension, we tested the ability of the formal - logical analysis combined with logical operations such as implication, conjunction, negation, and equivalence. In the third dimension we tested the ability of determining relations or contradictions in more extensive text units. The importance lies in the ability to differentiate own interpretation of statements from statements that have been shown and proven in the text. The fourth dimension focuses on the ability to interpret the text in order to identify causality and formulate logically consistent arguments. It was very important to understand the text and identify the tacit explicit information (such as the main idea of the text). The research questions and hypotheses were drawn to validate the parameters of a specific instrument. Results of the analyses showed the existence of statistically significant links between the first and second dimensions of the test.

Keywords:
critical thinking cognitive operations dimensions of critical thinking a tool to measure critical thinking correlation research

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