Assessment of Critical Thinking:

Abstract

Ensuring university students' ability to demonstrate and express critical thinking through competent writing is vital to students' future success. In this article, the authors describe one university's efforts to respond to external pressures to assess the critical-thinking skills of upper-division students, presenting the implementation of a critical-thinking assessment strategy through the lenses of three distinct stages of development, arguing that the successful assessment of critical thinking requires the acceptance of and patience with an evolutionary approach to implementation. They conclude with a discussion of what factors appear to be necessary conditions for the successful implementation of critical-thinking assessment in practice.