Critical Thinking Training for Army Officers: Volume Two: A Model of Critical Thinking

Abstract

This report is the second of three volumes describing a multi-year research program to develop and evaluate web based training in critical thinking for Army officers. The first volume presents an overview of the research effort that developed and validated a theoretical model for the training, selected and validated eight high impact critical thinking skills for Army officers, and developed and evaluated the training course. This volume describes the results of a literature review on critical thinking, a model of critical thinking that forms the theoretical basis for the training, and investigations that were conducted to validate the model. Volume Three describes a web-based prototype training system that trains two critical thinking skills. Included in Volume Three are a description of the functional requirements, pedagogical principles, course content, and evaluation of the training. A fourth report (Fischer, Spiker, & Riedel, 2008) describes an expanded version of the training system that provides training for eight critical thinking skills for Army officers.

Critical Thinking Training for Army Officers. Volume Three. Development and Assessment of a Web-Based Training Program

“…Research results reported in Volume Two (Fischer, et al, 2008b) indicated that additional training was needed that could be easily and widely accessed by Army officers throughout the world. A needs analysis indicated that the training should be distancebased and a new Web-based CT training system was developed, Computerized Training in Critical Thinking (CT) 2 .…”

“…The design of (CT) 2 was guided by the results of a series of studies, reported in this document and elsewhere (e.g., Fischer, et al, 2008a;Fischer, et al, 2008b). The studies led to the identification of a set of pedagogical principles that served as the philosophical basis of (CT) 2 's design.…”

“…Volume Two of this series (Fischer, et al, 2008b) discusses the critical thinking skills that theorists have proposed are important to common cognitive tasks and contains a list of critical thinking skills appearing in the literature. For convenience sake, this list is reprinted in Appendix A of this volume.…”

“…The first step in meeting this goal was the identification of CTS to train. To address this issue, research (Fischer, et al, 2008b) identified a set of critical thinking skills as important and problematic to Army officers. In developing (CT) 2 , it was also important to employ the best-known techniques for promoting CT and distance-based training.…”

“…The first volume (Fischer, Spiker, & Riedel, 2008a) presents an overview of the research program that developed and validated a theoretical model for the training, selected and validated eight high impact critical thinking skills for Army officers, and developed and evaluated the training course. The second volume (Fischer, Spiker, & Riedel, 2008b) presents, in more detail, the model and theoretical basis for the training and the investigations that were conducted to validate the model. This volume describes the prototype training system that was developed, including the functional requirements, pedagogical principles, learning objectives, course organization and content, and evaluation of training.…”