Critical thinking assessment tool: eight questions

The assignment supplies its own vocabulary and you are expected to use it rather than substitute a general account of critical thinking. Rubenfeld and Scheffer's framework names specific habits of the mind, including confidence, contextual perspective, creativity, flexibility, inquisitiveness, intellectual integrity, intuition, open-mindedness, perseverance and reflection, alongside cognitive skills such as analysing, applying standards, discriminating, information seeking, logical reasoning, predicting and transforming knowledge. Eight questions means eight of these, named individually, one per question. The worked example the assignment gives makes the pattern explicit: a question about how parents feel about their family's health is tied to contextual perspective and the rationale explains the link. Copy that structure exactly, because the rationale is what is being assessed and the question alone carries little. Take the habit names from the text itself rather than from memory, since the framework has its own list. The vocabulary is part of what is being assessed.

Choosing the population is the decision that determines whether the tool can be written at all. The examples offered range from a novice nurse entering the profession to a patient newly diagnosed with a chronic condition, and they demand very different instruments. A tool for clinicians can use professional language and can ask about practice situations; a tool for patients or families cannot, and must ask about ordinary decisions in ordinary words. Pick a population narrow enough that every question can be concrete: not older adults but older adults newly discharged on a complex medication regimen, not students but nursing students entering their first clinical placement. Then write every question so that only that population could sensibly be asked it, which is the clearest sign the tool was designed rather than adapted. Write one question first and check whether it could be asked of anyone else, which is the quickest test.

The questions themselves need care because the obvious form does not work. Asking do you think critically measures nothing, since the respondent must first know what you mean and then be willing to report on themselves accurately. Asking about a specific past situation is better, because it elicits behaviour rather than self-image: what did you do the last time an instruction did not match what you were seeing, or who did you check with when you were unsure. Open questions produce richer material than yes-or-no ones, and questions that invite a story allow the assessor to hear the habit in operation. Note also that a habit of mind and a cognitive skill are different things and are assessed differently, since a skill can be observed in performance while a habit shows up as a disposition across situations. Say in the paper which of the two each of your eight items is targeting.

The rationales carry the paper and each should do three things rather than one: name the habit or skill, explain what about that habit the question is designed to surface, and say what a strong and a weak answer would look like. That third element is the one most often missing and it is what makes the tool usable by someone other than you. Without it a rationale asserts a link between a question and a habit; with it, the link is demonstrated. Keep each rationale tight, since eight of them across three to four pages leaves little room, and use the example rationale in the assignment as your model for depth: it names the habit, explains the reasoning, and cites the source text. Model your rationales on the worked example the assignment supplies, since it shows the expected depth. Depth in the rationale is where the marks are.

On execution, the introduction should discuss why cognitive habits and behaviours matter for critical thinking rather than defining critical thinking in general, and the conclusion should pull the activity together, which means saying what the tool would and would not tell you and how it might be used. Present the tool as a table with question and rationale columns, as the assignment's own layout suggests, since that is easier to read and easier to mark. Complete the Critical Thinking Inventory in Appendix A yourself as directed, because the assignment intends your own reflection to inform the design. Use at least two scholarly resources beyond the textbook, include title and reference pages, and follow APA with attention to grammar and punctuation, which the instructions list as separate criteria. Present the eight as a table, which is what the assignment layout implies and what a marker can read fastest.