The role of critical thinking in explaining students' academic achievement in undergraduate animal sciences programs

Critical thinking skills are an in-demand trait of many STEM professionals, including animal scientists. Many instructors note the importance of critical thinking, but few have a clear understanding of what critical thinking means, how to teach to enhance the development of critical thinking skills, and how to assess the critical thinking as a student learning outcome. Many higher education institutions utilize student success prediction models with the hope that early prediction can be used to provide additional assistance to students when needed to improve the student success rate. These predictive models use high school GPA and standardized test scores, like the ACT and SAT, to predict academic success in college, but models have mixed success in their predictive capacity. The purpose of this study was to determine to what extent differences in critical thinking skills explain a difference between predicted and earned GPAs for first-time animal sciences students. Previous animal sciences students, on average, failed to achieve predicted overall GPAs (P < 0.05) and GPAs in STEM courses (P < 0.05). Mean student critical thinking scores of first-time animal sciences students were significantly (P < 0.05) below normative data. Current animal sciences students significantly (P < 0.05) underperformed their predicted GPA after one semester, but differences between predicted and earned GPA after four semesters were not significant (P > 0.05). The current university-provided predicted GPA model using standardized tests and high school GPA was significant F = 68.13(1,103, P < 0.001) and accounted for 39% of the variance (adjusted R²  = 0.392) for rising junior students. The second model included students' critical thinking, graduating class size, and involvement in youth agriculture clubs. Model 2 was also significant F = 17.82(3,100, P < 0.001, adjusted R²  = 0.393). No added covariates in Model 2 were significant (P > 0.05) and the additional factors did not improve the predictive ability of the model (ΔF = 1.028(3,100), P > 0.05). Researchers recommend future research exploring the developmental factors of youth critical thinking, why predictive models overestimate GPA, grading policies, and interpersonal variables which can account for the unexplained variance in the prediction model.