Cultivating Critical Thinking

Goal of this project

In this new age of artificial intelligence and misinformation everywhere, it is more important than ever for us to develop our critical thinking skills. While many higher education programs claim to teach critical thinking, it is often learned indirectly or tangentially rather than as part of the main coursework. To ensure our students develop their thinking skills, which are relevant to any career and every life decision, for my Action Learning Plan, I adopted the Foundation for Critical Thinking's philosophy and am making it a core component of my class.

Image from: https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2025/08/emoji-internet-communication/683261/

Critical thinking is evaluating one's thinking

Critical thinking (CT) is essential for navigating the complexity of reproductive science, a field shaped by ethical and regulatory constraints, rapidly evolving technologies, and a history of scientific inaccuracies. Although many graduate programs claim to teach CT, few provide explicit instruction in how to develop scientific reasoning. To better prepare Master of Science in Reproductive Science and Medicine (MS‑RSM) trainees for careers in reproductive science, I redesigned our journal‑club course to explicitly teach CT skills using primary literature in our field.

I hypothesized that intentional reflection on one’s thinking while evaluating reproductive‑science papers would strengthen students’ ability to critically assess peer‑reviewed research.

Figure 1. Cultivating CT tree. CT elements are depicted as leaves, CT standards are depicted as roots, and the intellectual traits are depicted as fruit.

Teaching Critical Thinking

Just like we teach our students the scientific method, a step-by-step iterative process to expand our knowledge, CT can be taught in a similar way. The Foundation for Critical Thinking has boiled all thoughts down into 8 different elements, shown here as leaves on a tree.

While we do a pretty good job of teaching students to identify these elements in papers, we do a poor job of teaching students how to evaluate them.

The foundation has identified 10 questions to ask of each element. These are represented by the tree’s roots, which feed into it and affect all leaves. A bountiful root system is essential for a strong and healthy tree to grow.

Only once students learn and practice this iterative system, can they develop the intellectual traits we all strive for, depicted as the fruit on the tree.

Concepts from The Foundation for Critical Thinking. Tree depiction created by Lindsey Block.

Methods

At the start of the quarter, students received a lecture introducing the components of CT, framed within the context of reproductive‑science literature (Figure 2, below). Based on the Foundation for Critical Thinking’s philosophy, students learned the eight elements of thought (purpose, information, concept, assumption, implication, consequence, question, point of view) and ten intellectual standards (logic, accuracy, precision, breadth, depth, sufficiency, significance, clarity, fairness, relevance). Each week, students read and discussed a peer‑reviewed paper in reproductive biology, covering topics such as ovarian aging, reproductive endocrinology, and bioengineered reproductive models. Students submitted one‑page reflections evaluating the authors’ backgrounds, hypotheses, study design, results, conclusions, and communication effectiveness. Reflections were scored based on the frequency of critical‑thinking terminology usage. Points were awarded if students directly used 1+ CT standard terms, if students reflected but did not directly use a CT standard term, and if students tried to incorporate a CT standard term but used it incorrectly. Seventeen students were evaluated, each submitting seven reports.

Results: Assessing CT change over time

Overall, there was a significant increase in the students’ CT scores over time (p < 0.0001, RM one-way ANOVA; Fig 3). Specifically, 59% of students showed a positive trajectory in critical‑thinking term usage (Fig 4 and 5).

Figure 3 (Top). Sum of CT scores of all 17 students by week.

Figures 4 and 5 (Right). Individual CT scores by week. Students with a slope > 0.5 and r^2 > 0.2 were marked as "improved," and those with a slope < 0.5 were marked as "not improved."

Graphs and statistics were completed with GraphPad Prism 10.

Results: Evaluating where students apply CT standards

Students most accurately applied the standards of significance when evaluating hypotheses, relevance when considering authors’ backgrounds in reproductive research, and clarity when assessing communication effectiveness (Fig 6). In addition, students most often reflected on the study design (total CT counts: 139) as opposed to the other paper components (Fig 6).

Figure 6. SankeyMATIC graph depicting when students applied the different CT standards to each component of peer-reviewed papers. These data represent all instances of when a student directly used a CT standard term or reflected, and I inferred that they were referring to a CT standard term. Figure was made on SankeyMATIC.com

CT Standard application

Results: Direct vs Inferred critical thinking

Next, we were interested in evaluating when students most often critically reflected with intention, as determined by usage of the CT standard terms. 91% of the time, students directly stated whether and why the hypothesis was significant (Fig 7, 8, and 9), whereas they usually did not directly explain (6% direct) whether the authors' background was relevant to the research conducted (Fig 7, 8, and 10). Students usually (66%) directly reflected on whether the paper's content was clearly and effectively communicated (Fig 11).

Direct CT standard term usage

Figure 7. Direct CT standard usage broken down by paper component. Figure was made on SankeyMATIC.com

Inferred CT standard usage

Figure 8. Inferred CT standard usage broken down by paper component. Figure was made on SankeyMATIC.com

Significance of the hypothesis

Relevancy of the authors' backgrounds

Clarity of the paper's communication

Figure 9 - 11. A breakdown of when students directly (intentionally) or indirectly (inferred) reflected on the significance of the hypothesis, the relevancy of the authors' backgrounds, and the clarity of the paper's communication.

Conclusion and Future Directions

Explicit instruction in CT within a reproductive‑science framework strengthens trainees’ ability to evaluate primary literature. Within one academic quarter, MS‑RSM students demonstrated measurable gains, supporting the integration of structured critical‑thinking pedagogy into reproductive‑science training programs. Although the development of intellectual traits takes far longer to develop than the time permitted in this course (10 weeks), this is an important first step in the students' CT development.

Next year, additional effort will be put towards ensuring students understand the difference between accuracy and precision, as well as the importance of assessing whether the authors' backgrounds are relevant and sufficient for the research conducted. While students thoroughly reflected on the study design, further reflection on the results and conclusions drawn from experiments is an important step toward developing intellectual autonomy and confidence in reason.

References

The Foundation for Critical Thinking. https://www.criticalthinking.org/

Thinking about thinking emoji. https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2025/08/emoji-internet-communication/683261/

Paul, Richard and Elder, Linda. The miniature guide to critical thinking concepts and tools. 2006.

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