Critical Thinking Assessment: Introducing Traditional and Modern Methods

In the recent decade, critical thinking as an educational goal has found a special position in many higher education systems. Therefore, recognizing the methods of measuring this skill in order to train it properly requires attention among learners. The present article was conducted to introduce the existing approaches in the process of measuring critical thinking in a documentary method. After searching for related documents in the foreign scientific databases of Science Direct, Wiley, Jstore, ERIC, ProQuest, Web of Science, Taylor and Francis and the domestic databases of SID and Noormags and critical thinking sites, including the Association of American Colleges and Universities, Educational Testing Service, Critical Thinking, American College Test, and Council for Aid to Education, 32 documents were retrieved between 1980 and 2017, and finally, 20 documents were selected based on the criterion of being expert of authors in the field of critical thinking, being up-to-date, and relevance. The analysis of documents was conducted using qualitative content analysis. The findings led to the identification of critical thinking instruments in two traditional and modern approaches. Overall, according to the existing challenges in the tests of the traditional approach, it is expected open-ended instruments in the modern approach with a qualitative method to be considered by experts in this field for creating a desirable status in assessing this skill.