Motivation for Critical Thinking: A Comparison of Students from Engineering and other Majors in Chile

Motivation for critical thinking (MCT) is a crucial factor to be developed during the university stage. However, the employed teaching methods do not necessarily promote this development. Although some university mission statements promote knowledge through, for example, critical thinking courses for all majors, it may not confirm if this mission must be improved or has been reached. In this research, the Critical Thinking Motivation Scale was applied to 474 undergraduate students from engineering and other three faculties at a Chilean university campus to evaluate the expectancy and value components (attainment, cost, interest, and utility) that are employed to measure MCT, and to perform a comparison of these components between engineering and other faculty students. The results of the statistical analyses reveal that similarities exist in MCT when comparing engineering with the other faculty students. Additionally, low values were assigned to the expectancy and cost components by all surveyed students, which implies that the university policy that promotes this motivation should be generalized transversally for all students from the four faculties with a particular strengthening of these scale components.