| The intent of this study was to explore ways of improving the critical thinking skills of students in statistics. At central interest was the testing of qualitative and quantitative knowledge acquisition given exposure to writing practice exercises in three content areas: (1) essay writing exercises, (2) multiple-choice plus justification exercises, and (3) multiple-choice exercises. Following a quasi-experimental design, 48 undergraduate statistics students enrolled in one of three discussion sections were exposed to one type of writing exercise for each of five statistics topics covered in the course. Measures of qualitative and quantitative abilities were made after each of the five topics covered and consisted of one critical thinking question and one computational question.;Results from two incomplete blocks ANOVAS, in which discussiongroup affiliation was treated as a random effect, indicated that exposure to multiple-choice plus justification exercises produced significantly higher critical thinking scores than did exposure to multiple-choice exercises ( F = 3.47, p < 05). In contrast, no significant main effect was observed for computational scores, based on type of writing exercise. A significant interaction between type of writing exercise and statistics topic was observed with the topics of probability and correlation and regression (F = 5.13, p < .01). When the topic of probability was considered, exposure to multiple-choice exercises resulted in significantly lower computation scores than did exposure to the essay and multiple-choice plus justification exercises. When correlation and regression was considered, exposure to the multiple-choice plus justification exercises resulted in significantly lower computation scores than did exposure to the essay and multiple-choice exercises. Given the quasi-experimental nature of the design, conclusions were limited. Overall, however, results appeared to lend support to the use of multiple-choice plus justification exercises as a method for improving critical thinking in statistics. |
