Thinking more wisely: using the Socratic method to develop critical thinking skills amongst healthcare students

• Published in: BMC medical education 2023-03, Vol.23 (1), p.173-173, Article 173
• Main Authors: Ho, Yueh-Ren, Chen, Bao-Yu, Li, Chien-Ming
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: Aged; Biochemistry experiment; Critical thinking; Curricula; Delivery of Health Care; Education, Nursing, Baccalaureate - methods; Evaluation; Humans; Information technology; Innovations; Learning; Learning Processes; Medical education; Medical students; Metacognition; Problem Solving; Social aspects; Socratic method; Students; Students, Medical; Teaching; Teaching Methods; Thinking; Thinking Skills
• ISSN: 1472-6920; 1472-6920
• DOI: 10.1186/s12909-023-04134-2

In medicine, critical thinking is required for managing and tolerating medical uncertainty, as well as solving professional problems and treating diseases. However, the core of Confucianism, teacher-centered and exam-oriented settings in middle and high school education may pose challenges to developing critical thinking in Han Chinese or Taiwanese students. Students may be adversely affected by these pedagogies since student-centered settings were more effective in stimulating their critical and reflective thinking, as well as a sense of responsibility, in the ever-changing world. Therefore, guiding students with less stable foundations of critical thinking might require a different approach. A review article highlighted the potential utility of the Socratic method as a tool for teaching critical thinking in the healthcare field. The method involves posing a series of questions to students. More importantly, medical students and residents in clinical teaching are familiar with the method. Almost all healthcare students must complete a biochemistry laboratory course as part of their basic science training. Thus, we aimed to train students to develop critical thinking in the biochemistry laboratory course by using learning sheets and teacher guidance based on the Socratic method and questioning. We recruited second-year students from a medical school, of whom 32 had medical science and biotechnology majors (MSB), 27 had pharmaceutical science majors (PS), and 85 were medical undergraduate (MU) students. An exercise in critical thinking was conducted during a biochemistry laboratory course, which consisted of five different biochemical experiments, along with learning sheets that contained three or four critical thinking questions. Then, the teacher evaluated the students' ability to think critically based on nine intellectual dimensions (clarity, accuracy, precision, relevance, depth, breadth, logic, fairness, and significance) based on the universal intellectual standards developed by Prof. Linda Elder and Richard Paul. In the following analysis, regression models and multivariate analysis were used to determine how students improved over time, and trajectory analysis were carried out in order to observe the trends in students' critical thinking skills construction. Clarity and logic dimensions were identified as the key elements to facilitate the development of critical thinking skills through learning sheets and teacher guidance in students across all th