Students’ Perceptions on Thinking Skills Infusion in a Tertiary Classroom

Preparing students to be able to think critically and analytically is a goal of higher education and also a quality sought by employers of university graduates. Nurturing thinking skill is considered as an important variable in the process of student learning. To nurture thinking skills, effective infusion of critical thinking skills could be the first step to activate and prompt students’ thinking skills in classroom. This exploratory study seeks to investigate student perceptions of university instructors’ infusion of critical thinking skills through an evaluation questionnaire. A sample of 132 undergraduate students completed this survey. The results showed that students positively confirmed the efforts of university instructors in infusing thinking skills in their courses. However, the question arises as to the issue of balancing the infusion between LOTS and HOTS categories optimally so that university students are able to benefit from critical skill training. This could lead to a rethink on defining more refined learning outcomes according to the skill categories in accordance to Bloom’s taxonomy.

Keywords:

Tertiary students’ perception , Critical thinking skills infusion , Lower order thinking skills (LOTS) , Higher order thinking skills (HOTS)