IL30.1 Review of Sobocan&Groarke TB rev


©
Jacqueline P. Leighton. Informal Logic, Vol. 30, No. 1 (2010), 
pp. 116-119.


Book Review 
 
Jan Sobocan and Leo Groarke (Eds.). 2009. Critical 
thinking education and assessment: Can higher order 
thinking be tested? London, ON: The Althouse Press. (Pp. 
xv, 1-355. Softcover ISBN: 978-0-920354-66-7; CDN$ 
42.95 + GST in Canada) 
 
The desire to possess, teach, and assess critical thinking skills is a 
focus of attention for educators and psychologists and other 
professionals who recognize the importance of challenging 
unexamined beliefs, and distinguishing between facts, opinions, 
and claims based on evidence. Why is it that something so 
essentially important has been so elusive to teach and assess? The 
book edited by Sobocan and Groarke, [Johnson, and Ellet Jr.], 
takes on this fundamental question by addressing the issue of 
assessment, and explores whether higher order thinking can be 
tested. There is little doubt that this is a timely question given the 
conceptual and psychometric strides in educational testing research 
today. Moreover, in an era where preparation for formal testing is 
increasingly dominating classroom time and the consciousness of 
students, teachers, and parents, these are the questions that need to 
be raised for discussion. What we learn from this 355-page book, 
including index, is that there is greater consensus now more than 
ever as to what higher order thinking entails and how it may be 
measured, but the real challenge rests with persuading policy 
makers and other key stakeholders that these skills ought to be 
developed in the classroom and refined in measures for student 
assessment. In the remainder of this review, I outline the five parts 
of this book, comment briefly on the content and inter-relatedness 
of some of the chapters and conclude by reiterating some of the 
important issues the authors raise.  
 The book is divided into five parts, with a total of 16 chapters. 
The first part of the book comes under the heading of Testing the 
Test and it contains five chapters. The first chapter by Giancarlo-
Gittens appropriately introduces the reader to some of the 
complexities of testing higher-order thinking in the aptly titled 
Assessing Critical Thinking Dispositions in an Era of High-Stakes 
Standardized Testing. In the second and fourth chapters, Groarke 
and Ennis, respectively, evaluate structural aspects of tests; 
Groarke evaluates the California Critical Thinking Skills Test for 
whether it meets its objective of measuring critical thinking, and 
warns us to not put excessive faith in what these tests can measure. 
Ennis considers the validity issues that should help us make 
informed decisions about the design and use of multiple-choice 



Review of
Critical Thinking Education and Assessment
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tests for the assessment of critical thinking. Chapters three and five 
by Johnson and then by Ellet Jr., and Pitman, respectively, focus on 
foundational issues associated with critical thinking. For example, 
Johnson discusses the implications of the dialectical tier for a 
definition of critical thinking. The dialectical tier is a second level 
of argument, which involves knowing how to respond to opposing 
views during debate. Ellet Jr. and Pitman conclude the first section 
of the book by emphasizing the importance of recognizing the 
complexity involved in making decisions about tests and their 
appropriateness in pluralistic environments.  
 The second part of the book, labelled Critical and Creative 
Thinking, includes chapters six, seven, and eight. The sixth chapter 
by Hare promotes the necessity of imagination for the most 
productive use of critical thinking skills. In the next chapter, 
Hoogland explores the critical thinking aspects of Arts-Based 
inquiry and provides a useful perspective on how critical thinking 
can begin to be assessed in creative inquiries. In the final chapter in 
this section, Sobocan investigates the Ontario Secondary Literacy 
Test for whether it measures creative higher order thinking, and 
concludes that while it may hold promise, there is a long way to go 
before we can confidently say that standardized tests are successful 
measures of highly complex forms of thinking.    
 The four chapters in part three are devoted to Assessing the 
Teachers, Courses, and Programs. This is an especially important 
section of the book because it takes on the issue of pedagogy as 
seriously as the challenges found to plague attempts to measure 
critical thinking with standardized tests. Chapter nine by Case 
presents the tools for critical thinking, namely, intellectual 
resources that are essential components of the critical thinker and 
useful when evaluating assessments. In the next chapter, Nosich 
introduces us to the notion of fundamental and powerful concepts 
(e.g., cell) in relation to narrower concepts (e.g., mitochondria) and 
the need to teach students to make logical distinctions about the 
level at which information is presented and understood. Hatcher in 
chapter 11 offers a fifteen year perspective of critical thinking 
assessment and urges educators to evaluate their efforts at teaching 
critical thinking with well-known measures, which as imperfect as 
they may be, afford some psychometric advantages. These 
advantages include facilitating the comparison of student 
performance at one point in time relative to other groups in similar 
educational contexts and in appraising effect size gains. The final 
chapter in this section by van Eemeren and Garssen provides 
educators with methods to foster and cultivate argumentative 
discourse, a vital component of applying critical thinking in open 
discussion. 
 Parts four and five, the final two sections of the book, Critical 
Thinking in an Era of Accountability and Critical Thinking for the 








Jacqueline P. Leighton 
118


Future, respectively, provide a strong finish to an equally strong 
and thoughtful preceding discussion of issues about the assessment 
of critical thinking.  In chapter 13, Blair comes back to the question 
of who teaches critical thinking in K-12 classrooms, and 
convincingly articulates that instructors need to be prepared and 
educated for critical thinking before they can teach and assess 
others.  The next chapter of the book by Kaser presents arguments, 
from a policy developer’s perspective, on what matters for critical 
thinking education and assessment. Using examples from the 
province of British Columbia’s initiatives for assessment, she 
illustrates how inquiry and critical thinking can be incorporated 
into different levels of assessment products so as to improve 
assessments for and of critical thinking, inquiry, and learning. Pinto 
and Portelli write the penultimate chapter of the book and discuss 
the challenges and possibilities for the teaching and assessment of 
critical thinking in democratic societies. They aptly indicate that 
critical thinking involves risk in thought and suggest that we may 
begin to see better assessments of critical thinking when this 
intellectual risk is extended to the way in which we conceptualize 
assessments in our current culture.  In the final chapter of the book, 
Murphy recaps the complexities involved with assessing critical 
thinking, and revisits what she labels as the architecture or 
technology of assessment. Her final comment reminds us that 
teaching and assessment involve epistemic and ethical obligations 
not only to students but also to society.  
 Critical Thinking Education and Assessment: Can Higher 
Order Thinking Be Tested? is a book for everyone involved with 
the formal teaching and assessment of students. It should read 
carefully. It is not only informative but accessible in its description 
of a complex problem with no easy solutions. The analysis and 
discussion are refreshing for many of us who welcome the 
opportunity to revisit the question of how to measure complex 
constructs from distinct perspectives. A few hard-core 
measurement specialists and psychometricians, even psychologists 
and policy-makers, might counter by saying that the discussion is 
needless because we already have good psychometrically-sound, 
standardized measures of critical thinking and accountability 
systems. This, of course, misses the point not only because good 
can always be made better but also because we have yet to fully 
define and understand complex constructs such as critical thinking; 
such constructs require constant revisiting and reconsideration to 
make sure with each pass that we have considered the newest 
research and empirical evidence, options, and alternatives. For 
example, some cognitive scientists have recently published 
accounts and recommendation to include the avoidance of specific 
cognitive biases and heuristics in definitions and measures of 
critical thinking.  



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Critical Thinking Education and Assessment
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 On an ethical front, it is imperative to question and analyze 
topics such as the teaching and assessment of critical thinking. The 
principles associated with who measures, what is measured, and 
how it is measured and interpreted shapes the labels, thoughts, and 
opportunities we offer to children and adults. The heaviness of the 
responsibility to measure accurately is great and this sentiment is a 
powerful thread that runs throughout the book, reiterated in some 
fashion, using distinct angles, by almost all chapter authors. 
Against the backdrop of scientific inquiry and analysis, the reliable 
and valid measurement of complex constructs needs to take place. 
However, as we are sensibly reminded by the theses of almost all 
the chapters this book, we cannot forget that we are not measuring 
table tops or grains of rice but rather people and their dispositions 
to think. Discussion is warranted and valuable because dispositions 
to think are complex and measures of thinking are approximations 
at best. A more demanding task would be difficult to find. The 
book teaches us that, yes, higher order thinking can be tested but 
results need to be interpreted with caution and with consultation of 
those involved and affected, and better instruments must always be 
considered and be ready for development. We need to be vigilant 
to not fall into the trap to thinking that we need not be critical of 
what we know.      
 
 
Jacqueline P. Leighton      University of Alberta