Integrating Philosophical Strategies in Introductory Quantum Physics: Design and Validation of an Instrument for Assessing Higher-Order Critical Thinking
Academic Article in Scopus
Critical thinking is one of the fundamental competencies for 21st-century education; however, its promotion and assessment remain limited in scientific and technical degree programmes. This study forms part of a broader project aimed at qualitatively examining the development of higher-order critical thinking skills¿Analysis, Synthesis, and Evaluation¿through philosophical strategies applied to the learning of introductory quantum physics content in engineering students. The present paper reports the design and preliminary validation of an assessment instrument consisting of open-ended questions distributed across the ten sessions of the instructional sequence. Two validity criteria consistent with qualitative research approaches were applied to examine the instrument: credibility, established through expert judgement by seven specialists; and dependability, assessed through a stability test across two independent cohorts. Regarding credibility, a global Aiken¿s V coefficient of .93 (95% CI [.75, .98]) was obtained, leading to a final version composed of 21 open-ended questions, seven for each skill. For dependability, the applied coefficients (Pearson¿s r, Spearman¿s ¿, Kendall¿s tb, and Lin¿s concordance correlation coefficient) indicated moderate-to-high stability when the instrument was considered as a global construct. When examined by skill, these results were confirmed for Analysis and Synthesis; however, some inter-cohort instabilities were observed in the Evaluation skill. Further psychometric confirmation will allow for a deeper understanding of the specific characteristics of this skill and guide future research.
