Promoting undergraduate students' critical thinking skills in zoology vertebrate courses

The goal of science education is to develop critical thinking skills. Critical thinking skill is important in education as well as in everyday life. In this study to promote students' critical thinking skills we used a team-based learning instructional model. The purpose of this study was to evaluate the potential effects of a Team-Based Learning (TBL) instructional model on undergraduate students' critical thinking skills. A quasi-experimental pre-test/post-test with control group design was used to determine critical thinking gains in a TBL and a non-TBL group. The instrument to collect data was open-ended questions that represented by critical thinking elements. The result showed that TBL can improve undergraduate students' critical thinking skills and also showed that the TBL group had significantly quantitative differences compared to the non-team-based learning group in improving students' critical thinking skills. Through the results of this study, it is hoped that the faculties who value both research and critical thinking will consider using the TBL instructional model.