大学会教学生批判性思考吗?

经合组织研究人员提供证据表明,学生没有获得工作世界所需的“通用技能”,这些技能可能会产生重大影响

九月 6, 2022
Tough Guy 2004 adventure event at Mr Mouse Farm for Unfortunates in Perton, South Staffordshire
Source: Getty

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专业服务巨头普华永道(PwC)最近宣布,该公司今后雇佣的新员工将不再需要至少2:1的学位,这被许多人视为最新迹象,表明全球一些大型雇主正在对高等教育失去信心,不再相信拥有一张好大学文凭可以保证候选者的特定素质。

该公司绝不是第一个寻找确定应届毕业生才能和潜力新方法的公司,因为雇主越来越直言不讳地谈论大学的失败,即便是顶尖学府也未能确保那些进入劳动力市场的学生已经获得了“工作就绪”的状态。

作为回应,世界各地的政府和政策制定者都强调需要更实用的职业学位课程,这些课程与现实世界的经验密切相关。但经济合作与发展组织(OECD)的一份新出版物认为,正是在教授更通用的批判性思维技能方面,大学才能发挥更大的作用。

这本新书的联合编辑、刚退休不久的经合组织前创新负责人德克·范达姆(Dirk Van Damme)表明:“人们能否胜任工作,这一点存在差异,他们有大学的印章证明可以从事某些职业,但后来雇主发现他们没有职场所需的技能。”

“大学所做的评估并不能保证候选人具备雇主认为重要的解决问题的能力,因此他们必须找到自己测试的方法。”

长期以来,人们一直怀疑高校在这方面缺乏的想法,研究人员认为他们可能终于想出了一种方法来证明这一点。

如果这一切听起来很耳熟,那是因为它确实广为人知。许多参与研究的人还参与了经合组织的高等教育学习成果评估(Ahelo)项目,该项目旨在建立一个全球系统,以评估学生在学位结束时的技能。

该计划被宣传为大学级别的、相当于极具影响力的国际学生评估计划(Pisa)测试,但它遭到了精英院校的强烈反对。一些院校的考虑可能是,如果该教学成果计划变得更知名,自己处于高等教育等级制度顶端的位置会受到影响。

关于这些技能是否可以跨机构和边界进行准确评估,也出现了更根本的问题,该项目在2015年分崩离析

然而,少数几个国家仍然致力于这个想法,并且自从使用由美国非营利组织教育援助委员会(CAE)开发的大学学习评估(CLA +)以来,一直在测试学生的批判性思维技能。该评估包括一个绩效任务和一组问题,旨在测试学生的认知思维,而不是他们回忆知识的能力。

CAE首席学术官、新书联合编辑多丽丝·扎纳(Doris Zahner)承认:“任何一个具体的评估都不可能衡量所有的批判性思维。”

她说:“我们真正擅长的是衡量批判性思维中一个特定的、定义明确的组成部分,即分析推理、评估和解决问题的能力。”

“这包括数据素养、理解定量信息、能够从各种来源收集信息,然后根据这一点做出决定,并制定一个支持你的论点并反驳相反的答案——这就是评估所做的。”

经合组织于8月30日在《高等教育教学生批判性思考吗》一书中发表的测试结果非常严峻:平均而言,只有45%的受训大学生精通批判性思维,而1/5学生在这方面只表现出是“新兴”人才。

更重要的是,学生在课程开始和结束之间的“学习收益”平均而言很小,而课程之间存在很大差异,那些与现实世界职业密切相关的领域如商业、农业和健康得分最差。

对于范达姆博士来说,结果反映了高等教育中批判性思维教学的转变,对参与内容的重视程度较低,并且某些部门放弃了论文写作等练习。

扎纳博士说:“批判性思维是一种技能,我认为(许多人)只是假设它是被教授的。”但她指出,大学成绩单中从未报道过这种情况,因此传统上无法知道学生是否已经掌握了这些技能,“大学,至少是我们与之交谈过的大学,都说‘这不是我们的工作,他们应该在高中就学到这些东西’...每个人都觉得教这些东西是别人的责任。”

作者认识到这项研究的局限性,特别是学生的自我选择样本,主要局限于美国的校园,只有一小部分来自其他5个国家,即智利、芬兰、意大利、墨西哥和英国,这意味着这些国家的数据不能说是代表性的。

但作者认为,他们已经证明“对高等教育的一般学习成果进行国际性、跨文化、比较评估是可行的”。

虽然经合组织似乎还没有鼓起再次发起Ahelo型项目的意愿,但该研究的影响可能是重大的。

经合组织教育和技能局局长安德烈亚斯·施莱歇尔(Andreas Schleicher)在汉堡举行的该书发布会上说:“我个人认为,这将为更加重视高等教育的教学质量奠定基础。”

他说,雇主已经“看穿”了学位制度,学生们正在成为更加挑剔的消费者,因为他们不得不承担更多的教育成本。

因此,他继续说“将糟糕的教学隐藏在伟大的研究背后”变得越来越困难,而对最容易测试和教授的技能的需求,例如记忆和反刍知识,恰恰是快速失去价值的领域。

施莱歇尔先生说:“卓越教学需要获得与学术研究相同的地位、相同的认可,这仍然是评估学术机构的主要指标,无论你是考虑排名、研究评估框架还是基于绩效的资助。”

对于批评者来说,所有这些听起来都像是创建新排名的基础,这从来都不是Ahelo的目标,尽管许多人认为其数据最终可能会被纳入全球排名的机构分数。

范达姆博士说,虽然许多对排名的批评是有道理的,但应该认识到它们不会消失,因此,最好找到方法来确保它们准确地反映教学质量,这可以完全改变排名的面貌。

他说:“在一个理想的世界里,你对教学和学习的透明度与你对研究的透明度一样多,不仅会对排名产生深远的影响,还会对系统的层次结构和景观产生深远的影响。”

“当然,在研究方面表现优秀的大学在教学和学习方面也自动变得优秀。如果你把教学放在更大的权重上,你会得到不同的结果(在排名上)。 ”

范达姆博士表示,除了机构声誉的剧变之外,更多地关注批判性思维的教学可能会从根本上改变被视为社会和经济蓬勃发展所必需的课程类型。

他说,受政治影响的对功利主义教育方法的推动,这些方法产生了立即可以受雇于某种职业的学生——这往往有利于STEM科目——忽视了劳动力市场的波动性以及在整个生命周期中培训年轻人的必要性。

他补充说:“由于数字化,经济和劳动力市场正在转型,因此10年后的工作现实将与今天完全不同。从长远来看,应该对教授重要的通用技能更感兴趣。“

根据范达姆博士的说法,在这个世界上,真正受到诽谤的人文学科真正成为了自己的学科,而CLA+的结果表明,那些追求这些领域的学生表现出了更高水平的批判性思维。

他说,研究表明,虽然职业培训在短期内会产生更好的就业能力结果,但这些结果在5年后就会减少,“那些拥有更好通用技能的人在一生中拥有更好的就业能力和收入前景”。

扎纳博士表示,大学可能会面临来自行业和政府的压力越来越大,无论他们喜欢与否,都要解决这些问题。

“希望大学能听到这个信息。如果你能让你的学生毕业,那就太好了,但如果你让所有这些学生毕业,而他们在职业生涯中没有成功,那就不是那么好了。我们希望能够提高批判性思维技能将能够缩小这一差距。”

tom.williams@timeshighereducation.com

本文由张万琪为泰晤士高等教育翻译。

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Print headline: Universities aren’t instilling critical thinking, finds OECD

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Reader's comments (14)

Academically Adrift all over again? https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2013/05/20/studies-challenge-findings-academically-adrift (but doesn't really undermine those findings at all.)
In ancient Greece, the great philosophers taught their students how to think first before teaching them any knowledge. Not sure since when, the modern world education, from kindergarten to university, seems to have gone the exact opposite. Being content-focus is a bigger issue beyond higher education. Indeed, the critical-thinking focus International Baccalaureate (IB) curriculum gives a breathe of fresh air to the rather stale knowledge-stuffed outdated A Level. However, the uptake of IB in secondary school is scarce in the UK. Even if students have gone through the IB education, the UK higher education might fail to continue to nurture these youngsters' critical thinking ability and creativity. In all, if we really want to get students career-ready, a reform to the entire education system is needed at all levels, and not just in higher education.
It is depressing to see education again reduced to preparation for work. Training should be the responsibility of employers but they will naturally be happy if the taxpayer picks up the tab for it. I am not sure that employers really want critical thinking since they will then get plenty of disgruntled employees frustrated by hierarchies, outraged by inefficiencies and hemmed in by conformist cultures.
Well what did they expect given the current level of grade inflation for both A level and HE students ? Teaching can only be as good as the student's ability to absorb it. Critical thinking tells me the problem needs to be addressed from both ends.
Education - at any level but particular at University - ought to be about equipping students with open and enquiring minds. If they know how to learn and can think critically, they can acquire knowledge about any subject when the need arises. Drawback is, it is not so easy to figure out how to actually teach these things, or assess them once taught. Curiosity seems innate in some people and lacking in others, but if you are not curious it can be hard to learn especially independently. As a computer science academic, we have the scope to teach problem-solving, that's really what computing is about. As for formulation of arguments to support the solution you've come up with, I try to teach it in the 'Ethics for Computing' class I teach... a class some students adore and others find dull & tedious. My first degree however is in botany. Did they teach me to have an open and enquiring mind, that was able to manage a change in discipline to the level where I am now? Or was this more innate... I am insanely curious & always ready to run and find out by nature? How can I inculcate this into my students?
This is where work experience and year placements come into play. We cannot necessarily teach students everything needed to be "work ready" (a phrase that I really dislike). Whilst in the workplace students develop skills and confidence that they would otherwise be lacking.
Since professors are regularly canned -- or face a deluge of death threats and hate-mail -- in the US for daring to teach critical thinking skills, it is hardly surprising that they largely avoid threatening the ideological bubbles of their students and their parents. These threats and attacks are overwhelmingly generated from right wing ideologues and their cult followers, while the media smiles and winks, and play "both sides" games. So until and unless the Corporate University system actually takes steps to protect those who teach critical thinking skills, you don't get to complain about their absence.
Universities have both Left and Right wing forces that are hostile to free speech. Especially on the Left there are many 'Studies' fields where the existing orthodoxy mustn't be challenged and students have to protected from opposing views via 'safe spaces'. Not to say that the Right are not problematic too, but it is not mainly them as you suggest.
Could it be argued that if you haven't "learned to think" by the time you get to 1st year of University, it is too late? And that the job of Uni is to specialise?
An interesting contribution to both, What are Universities for? and How well are Universities performing? I wonder if "critical thinking" is something that can be taught or is it more like a "gift of nature" similar to musical ability, athletic ability and an innate curiosity? Perhaps we will never know. For me it indicates the need to have an open mind and, in terms of problem solving, the need for diversity in the membership of teams created to find the best solutions to challenging and important questions like Climate Change.
The first sentence of this article says: "Professional services giant PwC’s recent announcement that new recruits will no longer require at least a 2:1 degree was seen by many as the latest sign that some of the world’s largest employers are losing faith that a good university qualification guarantees a candidate of a certain quality." Does PwC really think they'll find better candidates among people with lesser degrees? I have my doubts about critical thinking in its HR department.... I agree with comment #1 that the new OECD report is in essence a rehash of Arum and Roksa's 2011 Academically Adrift. The media liked back then, and still likes, the 45% figure (BTW, there were some statistical problems with it; see https://www.davidmlane.com/hyperstat/essays/academically_adrift.html). I think even more important is that all but the premier education media overlooked a second conclusion from Arum and Roksa's study: that students of liberal arts programs did improve significantly on the CLA-test whenever their schools featured a large number of courses that required more than 50 pages of significant text to read per week and at least 20 pages of writing in the course of a term. I think most liberal-arts professors know this intuitively, but apparently administrators do not even when it is spelled out in a report. So we know what the solution to the problem is, but there has been no rush to implement it.... Instead, we get STEM, STEMM, STEMM+, etc.
It is frustrating that we're in this position when the value of critical thinking in education and employment has been established for many years. It's also frustrating that there is considerable evidence on how the skills of critical thinking should be taught (including the value of discrete courses in the subject). It can be taught from kindergarten upwards, and can (indeed, should) be included explicitly within every subject taught in schools (and beyond in higher education). It should be no surprise that a country like Singapore (which heads the PISA tables) has, for some years, required that critical thinking is developed throughout its education system.
Critical thinking doesn't exist in a vacuum and is easiest to teach in the context of the particular material in a given course. I wrote and taught a course in Scientific Methods many years ago and found that the less I assumed about the students abilities at the start, the more effective I was in teaching the fundamentals of the scientific method. It isn't easy for young academics to make their thinking explicit to the students. Revealing how exactly we think about a problem can be intimidating for people who still lack confidence in their own abilities. Another major problem is the reticence that we have in questioning the reasoning of our students and encouraging them to question us on our assumptions. The current climate in many institutions views any sort of intellectual challenge as threatening to the mental wellbeing of our charges. I think the problem in some sectors is that "critical theory" has replaced critical thinking in a way that Michel Foucault or Jacques Derrida never intended.
I agreed with one or more readers, we need to go basic. Don't teach them but let them learn by making mistakes. Mistakes are experiences that useful knowledge accumulated in process of learning. As for lecturer or educator, don't feed them useless knowledge. A knowledge become useful when they put them into practice. So, educator, give them real life problem and ask them search the knowledge and apply it. The educator, in this case, becomes facilitator or enabler.