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 DOI: 10.1177/003368829602700204

1996 27: 56RELC JournalJoost J J Pikkert and Leslie Foster

Critical Thinking Skills Among Third Year Indonesian English Students  

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CRITICAL THINKING SKILLS AMONG THIRD YEARINDONESIAN ENGLISH STUDENTS

JOOST J J PIKKERT AND LESLIE FOSTER

Satya Wachana Christian UniversityIndonesia

Abstract

Critical thinking is not a subject that needs to be taught separately,but is a skill that can easily be included in any educational activity.As a skill it may be more important than the subject matter beingtaught because it is a skill that never goes out of date. Englisheducation, like any other form of education, should equip studentswith thinking skills that will enable them to evaluate and analyzeconstantly changing issues. As Indonesia prepares a cadre of

English—speaking students whose role will be to interface with theinflux of English information before it is translated into Indonesian,these students need analytical and critical thinking skills to evaluatewhat is important and what is not. The question this research attemptedto analyze is as follows: are critical thinking skills presently part ofthe tool chest of third year Indonesian English language students.By using the Cornell Critical Thinking Test Level Z, students wereanalyzed in a series of subscales in order to provide data for improvingeducational instruction. Research showed that critical thinking skillsamong third year university English students in Indonesia lag farbehind American secondary and university students.

Introduction

It is generally accepted that producing students who are capable of criticalthinking and problem solving is an important objective of the educationalsystem. According to Ruggiero (1988), teaching students to think requiresmore than the mere possession of knowledge. He indicated that instructionat the university level should apply knowledge to problem situations withinthe academic discipline.

Statements are often made that students need to understand a certainamount of factual material before they can begin to consider the formulationof putting together models or theories in their subject field. While this istrue, it should not be presumed that critical thinking skills and the teachingof factual material cannot go hand-in-hand.

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Studying the relationships between language, culture and ways of criticalthinking are important. Clifford Geertz suggests that:

If verb forms, camp layouts or chicken-poisoning rituals yieldsomehow specific modes of mental functioning, it becomes

profoundly unclear how individuals enclosed in one cultureare able to penetrate the thought of individuals enclosed inanother (Clifford Geertz, 1983).

Yet, this is exactly what many students are expected to do in countriesthat do not use English as a mother tongue, and do not stand in a historical-cultural continuum that is founded upon western modes of thought. Yet thesesame students are expected to critically reflect on a multitude of issuespublished in English, often written by those rooted in a western culture muchdifferent than their own. A. Forge (1970) has pointed out that systems ofmental organization are different among linguistic and cultural groups. Yet,critical thinking in a university system often mandates that students compareand evaluate material that is not native to their cultural worldview. This maymandate that methods of helping students think critically about westernpublished material, whether in science, art or social science needs to be aspecifically taught skill in non-English, non-western countries.

If students in non-western countries are to graduate and be competitivein a world in which technology and globalization is changing more and morerapidly, lecturers and professors need to provide their students with theanalytical skills that will enable them to solve problems, make decisions,and integrate new technology and theories outside of the classroom. Oneof these analytical skills is critical thinking. To be able to evaluate andcompare new theories, technologies, and arguments in terms of usefulnessof their application to differing circumstances should be a mandated criterionthat is included in every course taught in today’s institutions of highereducation. English departments should not lag behind in promoting higherlevel thinking skills among their students. If students are expected to thinkat higher levels during their freshman and sophomore years in college, theywill more easily synthesize and evaluate new material as well as be ableto integrate thinking skills into other courses they take (Ruggiero, 1988).

The English department at Satya Wachana Christian University (SWCU)has begun a study to evaluate the critical thinking skills among their students.The challenges facing students in the English department at SWCU are larger

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than those in America or other countries that use English as their mothertongue. Much time is spent developing a larger vocabulary and increasingthe fluency in speaking and reading among the students. It is as students

get into senior level courses that time can be spent on English literature,linguistic analysis, and the production of English drama. Also, many of theteachers confront students who are averse to certain forms of critical thinkingbecause they have not been exposed to them. Traditional forms of teachingin Indonesia promote rote memory with the teacher lecturing and the studentsmemorizing what is taught. The role of critical evaluation of ideas or articlesis usually done by the teacher and not the students. The students traditionallyjust memorize the critical reflections of the teacher.

The term &dquo;higher level thinking&dquo; as used in this study is defined by Bloom(1956), as those mental processes involving application, analysis, synthesisand evaluation of material. Knowledge and comprehension of informationrequire no special cognitive contribution by the person engaged in the mentalprocess, while higher levels of thinking require much greater contribution(Rath, Wassermann, Jonas and Rothstein, 1986). Lower level thinkingprocesses rely on memorizing declarative knowledge, while higher levelthinking demands that information in long term memory be manipulated insome manner so as to change the form of the material to fit a stated criterion.

The promotion of higher level thinking is receiving increased attentionaround the world as countries want their university graduates to have

adaptable skills to meet an increasingly changing world. Indonesia shouldnot lag behind in training their university students with these adaptable skillsin preparing their graduates to meet the twenty-first century.

Purpose of the Study

The primary purpose of this study was to determine the critical thinkingskills of third year university students in the English department of SWCUin Central Java in comparison to those of American secondary school anduniversity students. The English department was chosen because of a desireto obtain baseline information for use in developing possible instructionalimprovement programs in the critical thinking area. The English departmentalso allowed the use of a standardized English language critical thinking test,the language of which was deemed appropriate to the level of English usedby the students.

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The following hypotheses defined the purposes of this study:

1. There is no difference in the perception of American and Indonesianstudents of comparable educational levels in regards to critical thinking.

2. The mother tongue does not make a difference in critical thinking ability.

Research Methodology

Participants: One class of 31 students was selected on the basis of

availability and language fluency. Third year English students were selectedbecause their level of English was sufficient to enable them to understandthe questions on the Cornell Critical Thinking Test. These students couldfocus on the questions and not expend mental energy on understanding theEnglish of the test. The people in the study included 10 students of Javanesedescent, 20 students of ethnic Chinese descent, 1 student from Ambon.

Cornell Critical Thinking Test Level Z

The Cornell Critical Thinking Test Level Z (Ennis, Millman & Tomko,1985) is a standardized test to measure critical thinking among secondaryschool and university students. It has 52 questions, measuring the followingfactors:

a. Deduction-In each item the proposed conclusion either followsnecessarily from the statements given, contradicts them, or neither.

b. Semantics-Semantics in this test is in the non-philosophical sense. Itis concerned with the verbal and linguistic aspects of arguments.Sometimes standard fallacious types of reasoning are represented withonly the foils being semantic.

c. Credibility-Statements are given which measure the credibility of oneanswer against another.

d. Judging conclusions-Best-explanation criteria are applied to judgingthese induction items. A hypothesis is supported by its ability to explainfacts, by the inconsistency of competitors with the facts, by not beinginconsistent with facts, and by its plausibility.

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e. Planning Experiments-The questions examine the desirability of acontrol group with random sampling assignments to generate results thatcould be in conflict with the hypothesis.

f. Definition and Assumption Identification-The basic assumption is thatone criterion fills the gap in the reasoning of the question.

More than the average 50 minutes were given to the students so that theydid not feel pressured by time should they have to read the English severaltimes to gain a clear understanding of the problem. The reliability coefficientsof the Cornell Critical Thinking Test level Z range from .5 - .77. The contentvalidity of the test was intensively discussed by members of the IllinoisCritical Thinking project. Correlations with other critical thinking test rangearound .5. The answer sheet asked several autobiographical questions togauge what kind of students were taking the test. Questions included thecultural identity of parents, what language was used in the home, numberof students in the respondent’s secondary school English class, whether thesecondary school they attended was private or public, and the occupationsof their parents.

Procedure

The Cornell Critical Thinking Test Level Z was used in the mannerindicated on the test. Students were given a brief introduction to the test,and general questions were answered. Students were given twice the timeas indicated on the test booklet to compensate for the fact that they werenot native English speakers.

Analysis of Data

In order to analyze the data, the procedures were followed as definedin the manual accompanying the Cornell Critical Thinking Test. Comparativedata was analyzed using Statview by Abacus Concepts.

Findings and Discussion

Of the 31 people involved in the test, 20 came from a Chinese background,10 from Javanese, and I from Ambonese background. Race was not provento be a statistically important variable in the ability of the students to thinkcritically.

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Twenty of the respondents spoke Indonesian in their home, while elevenspoke Javanese. Those who spoke Javanese in their home scored statisticallyhigher (p>.Ol) on the subsection of the test that measured critical thinkingin relation to planning experiments. All the rest of the subsections as wellas the overall score did not show language as a significantly statistical

variable.

Parental schooling played no significant factor in the responses of theirchildren on the critical thinking test. Parental education patterns could bebroken down as follows:

’

Table 1: Levels of Parental Education

Twenty-one of the respondents went to public secondary schools, whileten went to private secondary schools. Whether the students went to publicor private secondary schools did not make a difference in their critical thinkingscores.

The students at SWCU scored lower than any of the norms provided bythe test manual. Of the subcategories that the test measured, the analysesrevealed the following:

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Table 2: Levels of Correctly Answered Questions by Critical ThinkingCategory

Of all the sub-scales, only deductive reasoning and the ability to judgeconclusions received a score over 50%. The semantics category scored lowest,with planning experiments and judging credibility following close behind.Identifying assumptions and definitions scored almost 50%. The third yearSWCU students also scored lower than a random sample of American

secondary school students that ranged from grades 10-12 in a suburbanAmerican secondary school. They scored nowhere near the results of

American undergraduate students.

Conclusions

The following conclusions were drawn to address the hypotheses usedto guide this study:

Hypothesis 1. There is no difference in the perception of American andIndonesian students of comparable educational levels with regards to criticalthinking.

Conclusion: Hypothesis 1 is rejected. The level of critical thinking ofSWCU third year English students is much lower than that of their Americancounterparts. Third year English students have a lower level of criticalthinking skills than secondary school students in America. Of all the sub-scales on the test, students scored less than satisfactory on any sub-scale.In the table below, the third year English students are compared to severaldifferent groups of American students.

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Table 3: Comparison of Mean Scores between Indonesian and AmericanStudents

Hypothesis 2. Mother tongue does not make a difference in criticalthinking ability.

Conclusion: Inconclusive. When overall critical thinking scores weremeasured, there appeared to be no difference between those who spokeIndonesian and those who spoke Javanese in their home. Yet, on the sub-scale measuring the ability to plan experiments, those who grew up speakingJavanese scored higher than those who spoke Indonesian in their home.Because only two languages were compared, and because of the linguisticoverlap in the languages, study needs to be done to reach a more definitiveconclusion. It is also not known whether the English language was asignificant factor in American students’ scoring significantly higher than theIndonesian students.

Recommendations

Based on the conclusion to this study, the following recommendationsare made:

a. A study should be done to measure the understanding faculty have inusing critical thinking techniques in the classroom.

b. A study should be done to examine more carefully whether the mothertongue makes a difference in critical thinking skills. A good Indonesian

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critical thinking test needs to be constructed to measure the effect oflanguage on the critical thinking skills of Indonesian students.

c. The English department should be provided assistance in structuringclasses and curriculum to integrate higher order thinking skills.

d. Instructional materials should be identified and made available to the

English department faculty which will assist them in integrating higherlevel thinking into the curriculum.

e. Faculty members should be made aware of the importance of integratingcritical thinking skills at all instructional levels and in all subjects.

f. A quality in-service education program should be made available to facultymembers to assist them in integrating creative and critical thinking content,methodology, and applications in their instructional programs.

g. Partnerships between those aware of critical thinking methodologiesshould be encouraged with the express purpose of increasing both thequality and quantity of instruction in higher order thinking skills in theclassroom.

References

Ennis, R.H., Millman, Tomko, T.N. (1985) Cornell Critical Thinking TestLevel X and Level Z Manual. 3rd ed. Pacific Grove, CA.: MidwestPublications.

Bloom, B.S., Englehart, M.S., Furst, E.F.. Hill, W.H., and Krathwohl, D.R.(1956). Taxonomy of Educational Objectives: The Classification ofEducational Goals Handbook 1: Cognitive Domain. New York: DavidMcKay Company, Inc.

Forge, A. (1970). "Learning to See in New Guinea. "

Socialization, the

Approach from Social Anthropology. Ed. P Mayer. London, 184-86.

Geertz, Clifford. (1983). Local Knowledge: Further Essays in InterpretiveAnthropology. New York: Basic Books, 149.

Rath, Wassermann, Jonas, and Rothestein (1986). Teaching For Thinking.Columbia University New York: Teachers College Press.

Rugiero, V.R. (Sept. 1988) "Teaching Thinking Across the Curriculum."The Teaching Professor. Madison, WI: Magna Publications, Inc.

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