Critical thinking in engineering and humanities students and faculty

This dissertation examines the meaning and perceived enactment of critical thinking for engineering and humanities students and faculty. While departments seek to graduate students with the ability to think critically, critical thinking research in engineering is limited mostly to measuring critical thinking in the classroom without a clear or empirically based definition. Thus, an initial exploration of critical thinking in post-secondary education was attempted by addressing the following research questions: How do undergraduate engineering and humanities students and faculty (the four cohorts that the study examined) perceive critical thinking and their enactment of it? How do students and faculty members compare in their perceptions and enactment? How do the two disciplines compare in their perceptions and enactment?;In order to gain a deeper insight into critical thought, the study emphasized qualitative methodologies. Semi-structured interviews were conducted that focused on how students or faculty perceived the meaning of critical thinking or the use of critical thinking in their classes. Interviews were analyzed using thematic analysis with a constructivist grounded theory framework. Once transcribed, interviews were coded with descriptive labels; these codes were compared to develop focused codes, themes, and categories. This was done for each cohort, and then each individual cohort was compared against the others using a planning Venn diagram. To expand on these findings, a quantitative survey on critical thinking's meaning, necessary traits, and use was created and sent to various departments within the humanities and engineering. One hundred and eighty seven participants self-selected and self-administered the electronic survey. The counts for demographics and survey questions were calculated, and an analysis between cohorts was performed using Wilcoxon rank sum rank and Mann-Whitney tests.;Overall findings show that broad similarities exist in how participants use and perform critical thinking and the resources needed to think critically. However, the specific disciplinary principles used to conceptualize critical thinking differed between cohorts. Their views on dispositions, why critical thinking is important, and the influence of background and time differed. The survey showed that most students shared a similar definition, but certain traits significantly differed between different academic levels or disciplines.