A systematic review on critical thinking intervention studies in higher education across professional fields

Abstract

This study provides a systematic review on the Critical Thinking (CT) intervention studies reported in the national literature of the countries involved in the CRITHINKEDU project. The aim of this paper is to characterise critical thinking intervention studies in higher education institutions across different fields. The review process has been carried out by applying content analysis and it is comprised of five stages. A rubric was built in conjunction with a literature review on CT interventions and data analysis. Slight differences were identified among the examined fields. The main results show that immersion is the most frequent approach in all of the fields, followed by infusion, which is only implemented in STEM and social sciences. All of the interventions are short-term and address either CT skills exclusively, or deal with skills and dispositions together. Further research is needed in order to explore which aspects of the CT interventions are successful in the promotion of CT in higher education (HE), as well as the CT components, which are targeted during instruction.