A Reflective Critical Thinking Workshop for Graduate Students in Pharmacy and Health Sciences: A Pilot Study

(School of Occupational Therapy, Belmont University, USA)

Abstract: The purpose of this study was to see if a reflective critical thinking workshop for graduate students would help improve the critical thinking ability of research participants. Twenty-six occupational therapy, physical therapy, and pharmacy students in their first and second year of graduate education in pharmacy, occupational therapy, and physical therapy programs participated in this study. Students were separated into two groups, student-teachers and student-learners, using controlled random assignment. The student-teachers created reflective critical thinking activities for the student-learners based upon each level of Bloom’s Taxonomy. It was hypothesized that students who helped teach would be working on a higher level of Bloom’s taxonomy than students who did not, and would perform better on the Health Science Reasoning Test (HSRT). The analysis of data did not show a statistically significant difference in HSRT scores between the two groups. However, there was a marked difference when comparing pre-post score differences between the second-year students and the first-year students (mean difference of 4 points, p = .015). This study supports the incorporation of an interactive, interdisciplinary workshop for reflective critical thinking strategies during the 2nd year of graduate school. Further research with a larger group of students and with more disciplines is recommended.

Key words: reflective critical thinking, graduate students, health sciences, pharmacy