Promoting Creative and Critical Thinking Skills in College Biology

A model of creative and critical thinking is presented in which analogical reasoning is used to link planes of thought and generate ideas that are then tested by employing and “if/and/then” pattern of reasoning. Data are also presented suggesting that such thinking skills develop first in familiar and observable contexts before they can be used in less familiar and unobservable contexts. The principles of curricular design, based on the model and developmental sequence, are then used to construct an introductory college biology course in which students attempt to use the thinking skills as they inquire into increasingly complex and abstract phenomena. During a recent semester, a comparison of student pre-test and post-test scores on a test of reasoning skills found significant improvements suggesting meaningful gains in student thinking skills.