2018 Volume 66 Issue 1 Pages 28-41
The value of a student's major is the value that students demand from or assign to that subject. The purpose of the present study was to examine relations between the value of students' major subject and the critical thinking ability that they acquired as a result of their university education. Ability to ask questions, attitude toward asking questions, and orientation toward critical thinking were investigated. Canonical correlation was used to analyze the first set of variables on 4 sub-scales measuring the value of major subjects and the second set of variables on all the subscales measuring critical thinking. The results showed that all of the sub-scales that measured the value of the major subject correlated with high scores on measures of attitude toward asking questions, orientation toward critical thinking, and questions asking for facts. Moreover, although high scores on public attainment value and low scores in interest value were correlated with scores on the measure of questions asking for facts, they were negatively correlated with scores on orientation toward critical thinking and several higher-order questions. These results suggest that valuing their major subjects might help students acquire critical thinking ability, and that examining the interactive effect of multiple values is meaningful.
