Development of a Rubric to Improve Critical Thinking

Context: Health care professionals, including athletic trainers are confronted daily with multiple complex problems that require critical thinking.

Objective: This research attempts to develop a reliable process to assess students' critical thinking in a variety of athletic training and kinesiology courses.

Design: Our first step was to create a panel of professionals, faculty, students, and critical thinking specialists to create a list of desirable traits and skill sets. Next, the panel specifically examined the language used by a university's existing critical thinking rubric and considered possible modifications for the kinesiology and athletic training education programs. This process involved the creation of a team of raters who participated in a norming process.

Setting: University undergraduate classroom.

Participants: Students enrolled in a lower level anatomy class and a higher level motor learning class within the kinesiology program and a group of stakeholders.

Outcome Measures: To develop consistency using a norming process to examine the validity and reliability of a critical thinking rubric.

Results: The panel norming process for the human anatomy course resulted in an overall interrater reliability score of 94% for a low (poor) paper, 90.5% for a medium (average) paper, and 89% for a high (excellent) paper. This high reliability coefficient provided confidence that evaluations of critical thinking would be reliable. In terms of validity, the results indicated that the group assessment of critical thinking can distinguish between various papers.

Conclusion: Using the rubric allowed an established set of skills to be intentionally linked to critical thinking.