The Assessment, Moderated Mediating Effects, and Influencing Factors of Critical Thinking Disposition in Chinese Undergraduate Students

The complexity and importance of critical thinking (CT) are prompting scholars to continue exploring its framework and application, particularly in this smart and globalized world. Although most nations have integrated CT into their higher education curriculum and assessments, China has not explicitly done that. The CT framework with both critical thinking skills (CTS) and disposition (CTD) is consistent, but CTD research has received less attention than the research on CTS. However, CTD is regarded as the activation of CTS, and CTS cannot be acquired adequately without CTD. Besides, the previous CTD frameworks and assessments neglected the perspectives of the workforce, which has aroused a mismatch between students’ outcomes and labor market demands. Accordingly, the goals of this dissertation are to (a) establish a comprehensive CT framework including problem-solving skills with the support of the effectiveness of problem-based learning (PBL) on CT instructional intervention via a review of literature by meta-analysis, (b) develop a CTD inventory integrating workforce intelligence to eliminate the required competences gap between schools and the job market, (c) explore the connections between each CTD component and the gender role in these interactions in order to achieve balance and equality, and (d) identify the influencing factors in terms of demographic characteristics for the attention paid by parents and instructors. Six chapters will be listed in this dissertation, with the first (Chapter 1) and last (Chapter 6) being the general introduction, discussions, and conclusions of this dissertation, respectively, and the main four chapters (Chapters 2 to 5) being the independent studies within the dissertation topic. The first study in Chapter 2 aims to identify the effectiveness and moderators of CTS and CTD cultivation based on PBL by conducting a meta-analysis of 50 relevant empirical studies from 2000 to 2021 with 5,210 participants and 58 effect sizes. The results showed that PBL was beneficial in ...