The Relation between Critical Thinking Abilities and Student Study Strategies

This paper describes an investigation of the relationship between students' critical thinking abilities and their study strategies. The 54 students involved in the investigation were first year engineering students at a university in New South Wales who had completed their Higher School Certificate in 1991. Their critical thinking abilities were assessed with the Cornell Critical Thinking Test Level X and information about their study strategies was obtained from their responses to the General Study Processes Survey, a 21 item Likert scale questionnaire which is a component of Biggs' Study Processes Questionnaire. The survey of study processes provided information about students' study strategies on three dimensions: surface study strategy, deep study strategy and achieving study strategy. The achieving dimension was the only study strategy which correlated significantly with scores on the test of critical thinking. There was a negative correlation between this dimension and critical thinking ability. The implications of the results of this study for promoting the development of critical thinking abilities are discussed.