A Pedagogical Intervention to Strengthen Critical Thinking among Future Educators

Abstract

This study aimed to develop and validate a teaching module for critical thinking. Its objectives were to design a Pedagogical Intervention for developing critical thinking skills and dispositions among prospective teachers. Furthermore, the levels of critical thinking skills and dispositions of prospective teachers were also examined and compared before and after the implementation of the developed module. The research conducted this study in three phases: a literature review, module development, and experimental validation. The module was designed based on the revised Watson and Glaser Critical Thinking Appraisal (2020) that involves skills in analyzing arguments, recognizing assumptions, making deductions, interpreting information and drawing inferences, and dispositions of engagement, cognitive maturity and innovativeness. The module consisted on eight units. To ensure a comprehensive and interactive learning experience eight interactive lesson plans were developed to facilitate skill development through discussion-based learning, problem-solving exercises, and real-world applications. The experimental phase employed a pre-test and post-test research design with 60 students from the BS Education (5th semester) program at the University of Sargodha. Participants were taken from intact groups of both Regular and Self-Support classes. These students were referred to as prospective teachers, as BS Education graduates are future educators. The intervention spanned 24 instructional hours over eight weeks, with sessions structured into introductory activities, core instruction and reflective discussions. This study used two instruments: the Critical Thinking Skills Test and the Critical Thinking Disposition Scale. Findings indicated that post-intervention results showed a significant improvement in prospective teachers’ critical thinking skills including arguments, assumptions, deductions, inferences and interpreting information with pre-test mean scores rising from 20.67 to 34.24 in the post-test. Dispositions towards critical thinking, including engagement and cognitive maturity, also improved significantly. Female prospective teachers demonstrated stronger performance than male prospective teachers in the Arguments and Assumptions subscales of critical thinking skills, whereas males reported higher engagement in critical thinking dispositions. No significant gender differences emerged in other subscales or overall scores. There were no significant differences found between Regular and Self-Support prospective teachers, emphasizing that instructional design was more influential than enrollment mode. The study highlights the necessity of structured skill-based instruction in critical thinking.