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Teaching Critical Thinking Skills: Ability, Motivation, Intervention, and the Pygmalion Effect

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Abstract

Using a Solomon four-group design, we investigate the effect of a case-based critical thinking intervention on students’ critical thinking skills (CTA). We randomly assign 31 sessions of business classes (N = 659 students) to four groups and collect data from three sources: in-class performance (CTA), university records (ACT, GPA, and demographic variables), and Internet surveys (learning and motivational goals). Our 2 × 2 ANOVA results showed no significant between-subjects differences. Contrary to our expectations, students improve their critical thinking skills, with or without the intervention. Female and Caucasian students improve their critical thinking skills, but males and non-Caucasian do not. Positive performance goals and negative mastery goals enhance and decrease improvements of their CTA scores, respectively. ACT and age are related to pre- and post-test. Gender (male) is related to pre-test. GPA is related to post-test. Results shed light on the Pygmalion effect, the Galatea effect, ability, motivation, and opportunity as signals for human capital, and business ethics.

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Notes

  1. Parents set a visible SMART goal: “Look at the Harvard sweatshirt (your goal) on the wall. You can wear it when you are qualified to wear it at Harvard” (the Pygmalion effect). It takes time to internalize the vision, obtain good test scores, and get accepted into Harvard (the Galatea effect).

  2. Only about 48 % of students graduated from the university within 5 years.

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Acknowledgments

The authors would like to thank the Tennessee Board of Regents (TBR) Faculty Diversity Research Grant for the financial support of this research project. We would like to thank Laura Buckner, Kimball Bullington, David Foote, Amy Hennington, Daniel Morrell, Richard Mpoyi, Donald Roy, Earl Thomas, Joe G. Thomas, Cliff Welborn, Rachel Wilson, and Yu Amy Xia for their participation in this project, Toto Sutarso, Jo Ann Nolan Batson, Rachel Clark, Whitney Sewell, Ashleigh Raby, Caitlin Lee, and Ivy Strohm for their assistance, Thomas Brinthaupt for his encouragement, and Ruth Howard for her support. This paper is dedicated to Larry W. Howard, the principal investigator (PI) of this TBR project, who passed away on March 12, 2009. This content represents the research efforts of the authors and does not represent the views of the Tennessee Board of Regents.

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  1. Department of Management and Marketing, Jennings A. Jones College of Business, Middle Tennessee State University, Murfreesboro, TN, 37132, USA

    Larry W. Howard, Thomas Li-Ping Tang & M. Jill Austin

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  1. Larry W. Howard
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  2. Thomas Li-Ping Tang
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Correspondence to Thomas Li-Ping Tang.

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We presented portions of this paper at the 27th International Congress of Applied Psychology, July 11–16, 2010, Melbourne, Australia.

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Howard, L.W., Tang, T.LP. & Jill Austin, M. Teaching Critical Thinking Skills: Ability, Motivation, Intervention, and the Pygmalion Effect. J Bus Ethics 128, 133–147 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10551-014-2084-0

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