About the Research Project:
The project will inquire into academic critical thinking and the undergraduate thesis in the humanities and social sciences. The disciplines of History, Literature, Pedagogy and Psychology will serve as cases, all with long-standing and comparable thesis traditions.
The project builds on three closely linked empirical subprojects: (1) Content- and argument analysis of 40 undergraduate theses in each discipline, all drawn from the randomly sampled theses in the Swedish quality assessment exercises of 2011-2014. (2) In-depth interviews with 20 additional students in each discipline who have recently completed their thesis, about their understanding of academic critical thinking. (3) Statistical analyses of all undergraduate theses collected and externally assessed in 2011-2014 in the four disciplines (n=777).
This data will be linked to student input such as individual upper secondary grades, university grades and contextual factors on departmental and institutional levels. This way, the explanatory power of such variables can be properly quantified through statistical modelling.
By including several disciplines and using a multi-method approach including a mid-size population, the aim is to contribute significantly to the international empirical literature on academic critical thinking, a field that tends to build on either small case studies or large size populations using psychometric inventories rather than authentic learning outcomes.
Project Participants
Stefan Ekecrantz, Institutionen för pedagogik och didaktik
Max Scheja, Institutionen för pedagogik och didaktik
Elias Schwieler, Institutionen för pedagogik och didaktik
Tatjana von Rosen, Statistiska institutionen, Stockholms universitet
Maria Öhrstedt, Psykologiska institutionen, Stockholms universitet
