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Dr. Searing is Assistant Professor, and Dr. Kooken is Assistant Professor, Illinois Wesleyan University, School of Nursing, Bloomington, Illinois.
The authors have disclosed no potential conflicts of interest, financial or otherwise.
The American Association of Colleges of Nursing ( 2008 ) emphasizes critical thinking as a skill that must develop over the course of nursing education because it "underlies independent and interdependent decision-making" (p. 36). Critical thinking is important in undergraduate education due to the complexity of nursing practice, and the American Association of Colleges of Nursing ( 2008 ) has recognized that clinical judgment is derived from critical thinking.
For decades, a small private school of nursing in the Midwest has used the California Critical Thinking Disposition Inventory (CCDTI; Insight Assessment, 2013 ) as a pre- and postprogram measure of critical thinking dispositions. The CCDTI was developed in 1992 and measures seven traits that contribute to an individual's overall disposition toward critical thinking: truth seeking, analyticity, open mindedness, systematicity, confidence in reasoning, inquisitiveness, and maturity in judgment. Administering the CCTDI uses time and resources, and a measure of critical thinking is no longer required for the accreditation process in schools of nursing. In an effort to determine whether the CCTDI would be retained as an assessment measure, analysis of CCTDI data was undertaken to explore relationships with the following variables: first-year science course grades, cumulative grade point average (GPA), Health Education Systems Incorporated (HESI) Pharmacology and HESI RN Exit examinations, and NCLEX-RN® success on the first attempt. If CCTDI scores predicted or correlated with learning outcomes, the school of nursing would have a reason to retain the measure.
Literature Review
A search of multiple databases identified few reports of research including nursing students and the CCTDI. The authors searched CINAHL®, MEDLINE®, PsycARTICLES®, and ScienceDirect® using the terms CCTDI , nursing students , baccalaureate , and critical thinking . Articles were retained if they were published between 1997 and 2015 and reported on research evaluating the CCTDI. Ten articles met these criteria, addressing a wide variety of variables. Studies reporting CCTDI results fell into four categories: CCTDI scores over time, CCTDI and NCLEX-RN pass rates, CCTDI scores in new graduates, and CCTDI scores and teaching methodologies.
Three studies found improvement in CCTDI scores over time....