Chinese and United States students' critical thinking: Cross-cultural construct validation of a critical thinking assessment

Abstract

Critical thinking---its instruction, development, and assessment--- is a vital and urgent concern among educators around the globe. In this study, critical thinking skills were assessed among 295 Chinese and U.S. undergraduates with the Halpern Critical Thinking Assessment Using Everyday Situations (HCTAES; Halpern, 2005). It uses familiar and realistic scenarios with both constructed response and forced choice response formats to assess five domains of critical thinking skills. Multiple group confirmatory factor analysis indicated that critical thinking is similarly defined by the five composite subscales in the two cultures. Results also suggested that the cognitive processes used in constructing a response probably differ from those used in recognizing a correct response, for both students in China and the U.S.