How to Assess Logical Reasoning in STEM Courses

Before we discuss how one might assess CT and LR, it is imperative to point out several challenges inherent within the process of assessment.

What do we mean by assessment?

First, we recognize that productive assessment of students’ LR skills may be laborious and require specialized knowledge. Our assessment practices aim to avoid unnecessary additional work for faculty (in terms of the time or specialized knowledge required to design and complete the assessment).

Second, we reaffirm the view that assessment can be formative or summative. Most CT and LR assessments currently in use are summative assessments that rate students against a predetermined standard of performance. However, administering a summative assessment at an early stage of a student’s STEM education might erroneously communicate that they lack mastery of CT or LR skills, or that these skill-levels are static. In contrast, formative assessments provide scaffolded practice and low-stakes feedback to the learner that support their development of CT and LR skills, and cultivate the attitude that we are all engaged in a continual process of learning to be better logical reasoners or critical thinkers. Therefore, we advocate for utilizing formative assessment as a complement to any summative assessments administered. Formative assessments would provide low-stakes feedback to the learner about their development of CT and LR skills, complementing the static snapshots of their mastery of those skills provided by the summative assessments. In addition, the formative assessments used could be designed to provide mechanisms to engage in the type of thinking needed to develop logical reasoning.

With this in mind, we have developed both formative and summative assessments that can be used as students develop their critical thinking and logical reasoning skills. We suggest starting with the formative assessment to communicate to the students that the instructor is using the assessment to evaluate and improve their learning, in addition to explicitly communicating with students the distinction between formative and summative assessments and how they will be used in conjunction to assess their CT and LR skill development.

What do we mean by assessment of logical reasoning in STEM?

This project does not attempt to teach or assess LR for the sake of LR nor to focus on the rules of formal logic in a decontextualized way. Logical reasoning is practiced and learned in STEM courses as part of exploring questions, claims, and arguments, and the rules of logic are taught in such courses to the extent that they support STEM learning goals.

Given the caveats above, we define LR assessment in STEM as a formative process of evaluating students’ proficiency with applying LR skills to STEM content and discipline-specific modes of thought.