Transforming first-year university politics students into critical thinkers

Abstract

This paper reflects on the current emphasis placed by government and universities on graduate skills, in the face of considerable uncertainties about what these might involve and how they might be developed. One of the key areas of graduate skill development which tertiary students are meant to experience during their university degrees is their transformation into critical thinkers. In this context, the paper reports on the findings of a survey carried out earlier this year amongst students of first-year Politics courses, at the University of Adelaide. The survey is part of a larger project on the development of graduate skills in general and critical thinking in particular in the Discipline of Politics. The findings indicate that students understand the value and the meaning(s) of critical thinking, at least to the same degree that academics do. Indeed, first year Politics students at the University of Adelaide seem to understand critical thinking more than many or most academics might think. In addition, our findings suggest that the courses surveyed in this project are doing an effective job of transforming students within Politics into critical thinkers, at least in the view of the students themselves.