Measurement and Meaning of Critical Thinking

This presentation and accompanying paper by Nathan Kuncel was given to the Workshop on Assessment of 21st Century Skills, held in January 2011. Kuncel discusses definitions and examples of critical thinking skills and these questions: 1) What are 21st century cognitive skills? To what extent do they differ from each other and from general cognitive ability? What are the conceptual differences that are proposed to exist between these constructs? 2) What are the existing measures of these constructs, and to what extent do these existing measures match their conceptual specifications? 3) What are the relationships between the existing measures of these constructs?