Journal of Agricultural Education - Vol. 38

The American higher education system has been under close scrutiny for more than a decade. The cause is clear: a lack of correspondence between that which is believed to be requiredfor critical thinking in adulthood and that which universities are teaching. The purpose of this study, therefore, was to describe the opportunities given to students to reach higher cognitive levels through professors " classroom discourse. The researchers sought to explore relationships between classroom discourse and class size, course level, and progression across the semester. Sixteen College of Agricultural Sciences faculty were purposeJully selected. Researchers observed and recorded their teaching four times during the semester. Classroom discourse waspresentedpredominately at lower cognitive levels. No statistically significant relationship existed between frequency of opportunities given students to think at higher cognitive levels, class size, course level, nor progression across semester. Teacher educators in agricultural education must prepare and present seminars and workshops designed to assist faculty in Colleges of Agriculture in learning techniques for increasing the frequency of opportunities given to students to think at higher cognitive levels, thereby enhancing the cognitive processing skills of students. The American higher education system has been under close scrutiny for more than a decade. Reports conveying the message that undergraduate education has become incoherent and ineffective has sparked this intense surveillance (Reagan et al., 1987). Specifically, there exists a lack of correspondence between that which is believed to be required for critical thinking in adulthood and that which universities are teaching (Stemberg, 1985). Are graduates leaving universities without a necessary survival skill: the ability to think critically? Research on Critical Thinking “Recently, researchers have begun to investigate how the ability and the propensity to think well are acquired and maintained” (Resnick, 1987). Resnick reported that, when two or more cognitive abilities were tested, there was almost always a positive correlation between the measures. Thus, people who did well on one ability test were, on the average, likely to do well on the others. She also found that grades were only indirect indicators of changed cognitive abilities. Grades did not reveal the quality of thinking, and offered no indications of transfer beyond purely academic settings. Simon (1976) wrote, “When cognitive scientists do information-processing analyses of complex skills, they find the same kinds of basic problemsolving processes used in task after task. These “metacognitive skills” have been shown by Brown et. al (1983) to be characteristic of effective Journal of Agricultural Education 46 vol. 38, No. 1, 1997 learners, good readers and writers, and strong problem solvers. The researchers found these skills to be relatively absent in younger less intelligent individuals. Research on teaching critical thinking processes has shown that strategies taught could often be used after just a few lessons, but that people induced to use particular thinking strategies would do so on the immediate occasion but would fail to apply the same strategy on subsequent occasions (Belmont, Butterfield, and Ferretti, 1982). Ryan (1984b), reported that students who thought at higher levels of cognition (thought critically) scored better on SATs, wrote better research papers, gave better persuasive speeches, and had a better mastery of textbook information. For example, low-level students tended to read textbooks in order to ‘recall inforrnation in response to study guide questions,’ while higher-level students read textbooks in search of ‘conceptual relationships and meanings’ (p. 252). Other studies have found similar results. In a study conducted at Harvard by Perry (1970), the relationship between epistemological development in college students and academic skills was examined. It was found that the higher the level of cognition, the better the academic skills. Others have replicated phases of Perry’s work (BaxterMagolda, 1987; Clinchy, Lief, and Young, 1977; Goldberger, 1981; Ring, 1985; Knefelkamp, 1974; Knefelkamp and Slepitza, 1976; Ryan, 1984; Schmidt and Davison, 1983; Stephenson and Hunt, 1977; Touchton, 1977; Widick and Simpson, 1978) and each found similar results; the higher the level of cognition, the better the academic skills. Research supports the theory that thinking at higher levels of cognition (thinking critically) is an indispensable skill and must be reinforced in schools. Are professors reinforcing this life-long skill, or is the accusation valid -graduates are leaving universities void of the ability to think critically. A Theory for Cognition Research Bloom’s Taxonomv of Educational Objectives: Cognitive Domain (1956) provided the theoretical frame for this research. In his hierarchical theory, Bloom averred that there exists six levels of cognitive complexity through which it is possible to mentally operate: knowledge, comprehension, application, analysis, synthesis, and evaluation (see Figure 1). In order to reach a higher level, Bloom argued that one must first have complete mastery of the preceding level.