Development of critical thought in higher education students in El Salvador

The importance of improving critical thinking in the higher education process in El Salvador should be a priority. Therefore, to determine its development level and the diverse variables that have a bearing on its learning would allow proposing new pedagogies focused on this new objective. Keeping this into account, it is necessary to ask: What is the critical thinking level reached by university students? This question has motivated this investigation about critical thinking. The methodology applied was descriptive-quantitative and ex post-facto. Critical Thinking (CT) was assessed with the Californian Critical Thinking Skills Test 2000 (CCTST 2000). The participants were male and female students, with ranging ages from 21 to 45 years old, who were studying their fourth or fifth year in the university. The sampling, by conglome-rate, gathered 375 subjects, enrolled in any of the five careers in great demand of five private universities selected for this research. The findings reveal that the critical thinking level of students is low because the percentile achieved by 76.8% of the sample is below the average expected for this level of studies. These results suggest continuing these studies in order to: a) Implement more research on the topic, focusing on samples limited to each educational institution and, thereby, b) Analyze not only the causes of this low level, but also the design of strategies for their development.