Enhancing students' critical thinking through problem-based learning

Problem-based learning (PBL) has been advocated as a promising strategy to promote students' critical thinking but supportive empirical evidence is lacking. The desire to ascertain the effect of PBL on students' critical thinking led to this study. Measurements of the students' critical thinking dispositions and skills were taken before the implementation of PBL. The results indicated that overall they did not have a positive disposition to critical thinking although they demonstrated promising signs in some elements of the construct. They were also weak in their critical thinking skills. These pretest results were significant as they allowed deficits in the students' critical thinking to be identified and targeted for improvement. The purpose of this paper is to report on the pretest findings, and to show how PBL may help to address deficits in critical thinking. Copyright © 1999 The Management Committee.