Build success beyond the classroom: Critical thinking and assessment

Christina Cavage
A group of children stood at a table with their teacher watching her write something down on paper
Reading time: 4 minutes

There are some common myths related to critical thinking and assessment. Many people believe that it¡¯s impossible to assess critical thinking, especially in classes where language is limited. However, it can be done! Here, the key to success is crafting tasks and rubrics that allow you to separate language skills and cognitive skills. After all, a low language level doesn¡¯t necessarily reflect your student¡¯s ability to think critically.

So, how can we measure how a student knows rather than just what they know?

How to measure critical thinking

Well, we first have to consider two types of assessment¡ªformal and informal. Formal assessments tend to happen at the end of a task, lesson or skill-building activity and usually focus on the work the student has produced. Then, we have informal assessments. Those are the assessments that involve on-the-spot interactions. These types of assessments play a crucial role in measuring critical thinking.

Tips for teaching and assessing critical thinking
Play
Privacy and cookies

By watching, you agree ÃÛÌÒapp can share your viewership data for marketing and analytics for one year, revocable by deleting your cookies.

Formal assessment

There is a common misconception that assessment should only focus on the final work that your students produce. The final ¡®product¡¯ is undeniably important and often an ideal measure of linguistic abilities. But the process of producing the final work is where you can see your students¡¯ critical thinking skills in action.

When designing rubrics to measure both language and critical thinking, make sure that you only focus on one at a time¡ªeither language or critical thinking. Keeping these different skills in mind will help you to differentiate language skills and critical thinking skills, and evaluate them separately, when it comes to formal assessment.

When measuring language skills, use Bloom¡¯s early or foundational cognitive domains as a model:

If we measure these items, we are really measuring language skills. For example, with a reading activity, we might ask the following questions:

  • Who is the story about?
  • Where does the story take place?
  • What is the main idea of the story?

Can they understand the overall organization and the key vocabulary? These types of questions assess a student¡¯s linguistic ability.

Then, when it comes to critical thinking, the more advanced levels of Bloom¡¯s cognitive domains provide a useful guide:

These types of questions assess a student¡¯s metacognition or critical thinking:

  • Which character is most important to the story?
  • Why?
  • Do you agree or disagree with the character¡¯s actions?
  • Why or why not?

The clear separation of language and critical thinking in assessment will help you to get a measure of each student¡¯s progress in both skills.

Informal assessment

What about those informal assessments? It can be harder to delineate critical thinking and language skills clearly in an on-the-spot assessment.

For example, if you¡¯ve assigned group work, consider keeping a checklist of how students interact with one another. Some checklist items can be:

  • Who made an inference?
  • Who supplied reasoning for another student¡¯s idea?
  • Who made a comparison?
  • Who drew a conclusion?

You can also ask your students to keep a checklist and post these questions on an electronic bulletin board. Like self-assessment, these peer-to-peer assessments can get students reflecting and noticing.

Rubrics can also be useful in informal assessment. Let¡¯s say you¡¯ve asked students to prepare or write an essay. To measure critical thinking, you can look at each student¡¯s ideation process when they¡¯ve been working on their essays:

  • Is a student looking at all possible topics?
  • What are the factors that make a student select the option they did?
  • Are they demonstrating an awareness of other ideas?

The answers to these questions will tell you whether or not your students are thinking critically.

Just like with any other skills, the assessment of critical thinking needs to happen both formally and informally. We need to consider both the process and the final product. And in doing so, we need to carefully design rubrics that differentiate language skills and metacognition.

Read our post 'Success beyond class: Critical thinking skills and academic English' and 'Fostering critical thinking in the classroom'.

Learn about our English courses

More blogs from ÃÛÌÒapp

  • A class of children with tablets standing and talking

    Supporting wellbeing using AI in the classroom

    By
    Reading time: 3.5 minutes

    According to , 2012 students with higher levels of emotional, behavioral, social, and school wellbeing, on average, have higher levels of academic achievement and are more engaged in school. It¡¯s no wonder that fostering wellbeing in the classroom has become a priority for educators. The rise of technology brings up new challenges and issues, but with AI, there are now innovative ways to support student wellbeing like never before.

    In this guide, we¡¯ll explore how AI can be a powerful ally in promoting learner wellbeing. From suggesting wellbeing exercises to providing personalised support, AI offers a variety of tools that can help you create a more supportive and engaging learning environment.?

  • Business people sat at a table with papers smiling together

    Improve your strategic workforce planning with English language testing

    By Samantha Ball
    Reading time: 3 minutes

    Companies constantly seek methods to optimize workforce productivity and effectiveness. A powerful approach to achieving this goal is through strategic workforce planning bolstered by English language testing. This tactic not only identifies and addresses skills gaps but also reduces attrition and strengthens your workforce for both short-term and long-term success.

  • A teachet stood in front of a class in front of a board, smiling at his students.

    How to assess your learners using the GSE Assessment Frameworks

    By Billie Jago
    Reading time: 4 minutes

    With language learning, assessing both the quality and the quantity of language use is crucial for accurate proficiency evaluation. While evaluating quantity (for example the number of words written or the duration of spoken production) can provide insights into a learner's fluency and engagement in a task, it doesn¡¯t show a full picture of a learner¡¯s language competence. For this, they would also need to be evaluated on the quality of what they produce (such as the appropriateness, accuracy and complexity of language use). The quality also considers factors such as grammatical accuracy, lexical choice, coherence and the ability to convey meaning effectively.

    In order to measure the quality of different language skills, you can use the Global Scale of English (GSE) assessment frameworks.

    Developed in collaboration with assessment experts, the GSE Assessment Frameworks are intended to be used alongside the GSE Learning Objectives to help you assess the proficiency of your learners.

    There are two GSE Assessment Frameworks: one for adults and one for young learners.

    What are the GSE Assessment Frameworks?

    • The GSE Assessment Frameworks are intended to be used alongside the GSE Learning Objectives to help teachers assess their learners¡¯ proficiency of all four skills (speaking, listening, reading and writing).
    • The GSE Learning Objectives focus on the things a learner can do, while the GSE Assessment Frameworks focus on how well a learner can do these things.
    • It can help provide you with examples of what proficiencies your learners should be demonstrating.??
    • It can help teachers pinpoint students' specific areas of strength and weakness more accurately, facilitating targeted instruction and personalized learning plans.
    • It can also help to motivate your learners, as their progress is evidenced and they can see a clear path for improvement.

    An example of the GSE Assessment Frameworks

    This example is from the Adult Assessment Framework for speaking.

    As you can see, there are sub-skills within speaking (and?for the other three main overarching skills ¨C writing, listening and reading). Within speaking, these are?production?and?fluency, spoken interaction, language range and?accuracy.

    The GSE range (and corresponding CEFR level) is shown at the top of each column, and there are descriptors that students should ideally demonstrate at that level.

    However, it is important to note that students may sit across different ranges, depending on the sub-skill. For example, your student may show evidence of GSE 43-50 production and fluency and spoken interaction, but they may need to improve their language range and accuracy, and therefore sit in a range of GSE 36-42 for these sub-skills.