Critical Thinking: A Pedagogical Instrument for New Engineering and Science Educators

The objective of this study is to encourage new engineering and science educators to use critical thinking as a pedagogical instrument. The scope of the paper is limited to new educators’ teaching effectiveness. Several examples of critical thinking assignments are described in the paper. Two confidential surveys were conducted. The first one was a self evaluation of new educators’ effectiveness as teachers. The surveys were administered before and after use of the pedagogical instrument. The pre-application and post-application scores showed an average rating of 79% and 92% respectively. The use of the pedagogical instrument improved the scores by 17%. The second confidential survey was a student evaluation of the new educators’ teaching effectiveness. Before implementing the strategy, the average evaluation score was 72%. The average rose to 87% after the strategy was implemented. The use of the pedagogical instrument improved the scores by 21%. Both the improvements were statistically significant at an alpha value of 0.05 with calculated t values of 2.9 and 3.1 respectively.