Can first year students' critical thinking skills develop in a space of three months?

Many first year students enter higher education without the ability to use higher order thinking skills. These students prefer to follow authority, do not question, are not curious and rely on others to think for them. This article reports an action-based study on the implementation and assessment of a structured method to develop critical thinking skills and enabling student-teachers to use different methods when qualified, in the space of seven months. The study group of first year student-teachers (n=360) of Tshwane University of Technology, in South Africa, completed a descriptive questionnaire (pre-test) to determine their critical thinking abilities. They then completed five assignments using critical thinking methods consisting of: solving an identified problem in education, critical review of an article, solving a case study, drawing a holistic concept map and constructing debatable questions on lecture material. Assignments were assessed with rubrics using a 1(lowest score) to 5 (highest score) point scale based on the following criteria: interpretation of information, reason, apply, analyse, evaluate and create. The assessments showed clear progress in the development of student's critical thinking skills. Discussions provide a fast track solution for lecturers to improve students' critical thinking skills by using a new design of activities and criteria of assessment.