Chapter II

REVIEW OF RELATED LITERATURE AND STUDIES

The chapter presents related literature obtained by the researcher from

Internet. The related studies give finding of the studies made which have

bearing on the present study.

Review of Related Literature

The phrase analytical thinking is used by a lot of educational

organizations as well as businesses. The phrase is used in direct relationship

with recruitment, training and promotion. It often connotes the general

aptitude of a person and his abilities to reason and find logical conclusions or

solutions to given problems (Sternberg,1985). It is often also suggestive of

cognitive abilities of a person. It comes from the ability of an individual to

analyze a situation, think in a step by step method to evaluate the

alternatives, eliminating the ones that don’t fit the case, and finding a solution

that best matches the problem at hand. A person gifted in analytical thinking

skill would be able to look through the problem, break it down to smaller

problems and think in a multi-dimensional way. Another fundamental

component of analytical thinking is the ability to break down information at

hand and find a pattern or trait in such information.

Analytical thinking capabilities of an individual are considered for the

purpose of job interviews to select the right candidate for a position, in

admission tests to educational programs and as well as for testing the general

aptitude of a person in a wide variety of situations. There is a misconception

that analytical thinking is something that one is born with. It is incorrect.

Analytical thinking can be taught and it needs to be practiced on a continuing

basis for one to get better at it (Facione,1990).It is best practiced outside the

classroom in real life situations but classroom tests revolving around set

problems can give an individual a theoretical inception.(Rajib Mukherjee,

2014).

In Criminology and Social Ecology a scientific study of crime, criminal

behavior, criminals, and corrections. It studies the prevention of crimes as well

as society’s response to violent crimes. It traverses the examination of

evidence, psychological causes of crime, conviction and efficacy of

punishment, correction, and rehabilitation.Thus as a criminology student, the

main skills that will be required to pursue a career in Criminology is great

observation skills. The student will be required to study the nature and

behavior of criminals critically. Analytical skills and sharp observational skills

will help the student in getting all facts out (Jenness,2016).Furthermore,most

social science academics doubtless consider analytical thinking to be an

integral and inherently embedded aspect of their pedagogical practices.Yet in

2014 conducted workshop by Higher Education Academy in Social Science

and hosted by Middlesex University’s School of Law identified that while

educators may believe they are teaching students analytical thinking skills,

articulating how this is done and ensuring it is done effectively is not so

straightforward. The lecture/seminar paradigm continues to dominate law and

criminology teaching as do essays and exams as forms of assessment. Yet in

one sense these risk being seen as outmoded forms of teaching frequently

unsuited to the learning styles of contemporary students.  Today’s students are

the first generation to have grown up surrounded by and using  computers,

video games, digital music players, video cams, cell phones and other digital
media, consequentially they have a different thinking and learning style and

different brain structures to previous generations (Prensky 2001).Discussions

with staff and students early in the research identified a clear gap between the

skills that staff believe students are being taught and developing, and the

student perspective on how (and whether) they are developing critical thinking

and analytical skills.   This view has consistently been reinforced during the

research. The workshop examined the issues; seeking the views of staff and

recent students on the teaching of critical thinking and use of experiential

learning both inside and outside of the classroom as tools to develop analytical

ability in undergraduate students.The context of the research was Middlesex

School of Law’s reflection on teaching and learning within its Criminology and

Sociology Department, and its examination of experiential learning as a tool to

enhance the student experience.If used effectively, analytical thinking teaching

and experiential learning can address the needs of vulnerable and failing

students who require assistance to develop problem solving and analytical

thinking skills.Prior research by Middlesex staff  has identified that law and

criminology students are often not learning the skills intended by staff.  This

raises questions about both the teaching approach and the needs of today’s

technology-savvy students whose digital knowledge & awareness means they

have a different thinking and learning style to previous generations and may

well learn in a way not catered for by ‘standard’ teaching (Carr,2014).

Analytical thinking as one of the area of higher order thinking skill based

on Benjamin Bloom Taxonomy.The four cognitive processes of analysis,

comparison(Identifying similarities and differences), inference and evaluation

are collectively called higher order thinking skills (HOTS). Analysis include
understanding relationships between the whole and its component parts and

between cause and effect; sorting and categorizing, understanding how things

work and how the parts of something fit together; understanding causal

relationships; getting information from charts, graphs,diagrams and

maps.Comparison involves explaining how things are similar and how are

they different. Comparisons may either be simple or complex. Simple

comparisons are based on a small number of very obvious attributes.

Complex comparisons require examination of a more extensive set of

attributes of two or more things; start with the whole/part relationships in the

analysis category and carry them a step further.Inferential thinking involves

reasoning inductively or deductively.Evaluation, on the other hand, means

expressing and defending an opinion. Evaluation tasks require students to

judge quality, credibility, worth or practicality using an established criteria and

explain how the criteria are met or not met.

Although different theoreticians and researchers use different

frameworks to describe analytical thinking skills and how they are acquired, all

frameworks are in general agreement concerning the conditions under which

they prosper.The current research utilized Facione’s four indicators of

Analytical thinking skill since it collects all of the elements common to many

other taxonomic structures of thinking skills (Stiggins & Conklin, 1992) namely

Interpretation, Comparison (Identifying similarities and

differences),Generating Hypothesis and Inference.First,Inference as one of

the indicators of analytical thinking skills defined as to identify and secure

elements needed to draw reasonable conclusions (Facione,1990). In addition

it was also defined as a "foundational skill" — a prerequisite for higher-order

thinking and 21st century skills (Marzano, 2010).According to Corpuz and

Salandanan (2003) as cited in Saingan (2008), “inferential thinking is an ability

to form an idea, opinion or a conclusion after a series of reasoning and

speculating outcomes of a situation. Students who are able to formulate

conjectures, possibilities and surmise consequences based on sufficient

proofs are considered capable of this higher ‐order thinking

skill”. Further,thinking and reasoning processes such as problem solving,

decision making, and the like have been identified as legitimate and even

necessary 21st century skills. Although they are not new skills, what is new in

the last 20 years is that we've become aware that some cognitive processes

are foundational to higher-order thinking. Inference is one of those

foundational processes(Marzano,2010). Marzano posits that inference can be

taught and he even suggested four questions to be used by teachers to

facilitate students discussion about inference .These questions are what is my

inference?What information did I use to make this inference?How good was

my thinking? and Do I need to change my thinking?The importance of

inference making ability for successful reading comprehension increases

across the grade levels, so students need to be offered many opportunities to

practice and transfer their skills to a variety of text types and topics. Research

findings (Reed & Lynn, 2016) indicate that with adequate support, all

students, including those with disabilities and those at significant risk for

academic failure, can successfully learn to make inferences and improve their

reading comprehension.The quasi-experimental study examined the effects of

a strategy for making text-dependent inferences—with and without embedded

self-regulation skills—on the reading comprehension of 24 middle-grade

students with disabilities. Classes were randomly assigned to receive the

inference intervention only (IO), inference + individual goal setting (IIG), or

inference + group goal setting (IGG). The Kruskal–Wallis one-way analysis of

variance revealed no significant differences between groups on overall

reading comprehension performance, but students in the IGG group

significantly outperformed the IO and IIG groups on evaluation items,

χ2(2, N = 24) = 13.18, p = .001. Paired samples t tests indicated all groups

significantly improved their comprehension performance from pre- to posttest,

IO: t(8) = 2.76, p < .05; IIG: t(6) = 3.97, p < .01; IGG: t(7) = 4.35, p < .01. The

IGG group wrote significantly more valid inferences in Lessons 3 to 7 than the

IO or IIG groups; χ2(2) ranged from 7.26, p < .05, to 16.16, p < .001.

However, Professor Daniel Willingham, an American cognitive

psychologist, explains that inference is not really a skill that we can practise

and get better at in the way that we can practise decoding. He suggests that

learning how to infer is more of a trick than it is a skill. The ‘trick’ of knowing

how to infer requires the ability to do or possess three things:To be aware of

whether or not you are understanding what you read,to connect ideas

together and to have a wide vocabulary and general knowledge.Moreover,

Clare Sealy (2019) talks further about the importance of background

knowledge in the making of inferences. According to Sealy, once a person

know these tricks, the only things that will get in the way of understanding

texts are gaps in your life experience, general knowledge and vocabulary.A

significant study was conducted in Indonesia(2019) participated by 74

students revealed that among the four indicators of analytical thinking

skills,inference had the least percentage which was only 18.24% thus it was

the poorest skill that need to develop.

Second indicator of Analytical Thinking Skill is Generating Hypothesis

which is form by using inference(Facione,1990) .A hypothesis is a specific

prediction about a new phenomenon that should be observed if a particular

theory is accurate. It is an explanation that relies on just a few key concepts.

Hypotheses are often specific predictions about what will happen in a

particular study. They are developed by considering existing evidence and

using reasoning to infer what will happen in the specific context of interest

(Price et. al.,2017).

Moreover, deductive reasoning is used to generate a more specific

hypothesis while inductive reasoning is used to form more general hypothesis

which involves specific observations(Price et. al.,2017). This claims was also

supported by some philosophers (Mill ,1843;Ennis, 1985; Facione, 1990;

Paul, 1992 ;Willingham, 2007) we use deduction to arrive at a hypothesis for

how laws might work together. Finally, we verify hypotheses through

induction (more experimentation and examination of empirical evidence).

In addition,according to Fredericks (2005) generating hypothesis

involves two types of thinking. The first, deductive thinking a process of using

a general rule to make a prediction about a future event or

occurrence.Inductive thinking, on the other hand, is the process of drawing

new conclusions based on information we already know and are taught. He

also claimed that making hypotheses is something we do quite

naturally.Similarly,in the field of criminal investigations in evaluation of

evidence in a case, the criminal investigator draws conclusions through a

process of reasoning. This process is typically achieved through inductive or

deductive reasoning.In 2002, Jon J. Nordby questioned the processes of

inductive and deductive reasoning in his book Dead Reckoning: The Art of

Forensic Detection. Nordby suggested that it’s not enough to just collect and

analyze evidence to develop hypothesis; investigators also need a guiding

theory that’s flexible enough to accommodate new information and sufficiently

logical to show a clear pattern of cause and effect. 3 For example, Nordby

states that a homicide investigation could show that the killer did not need to

break in to a residence because he or she had a key. This theory would

significantly narrow the possibilities. It is important for investigators to not only

have a theory that guides the investigation, but also important is that any

theory that is contradicted be discarded. In other words, it is important for

investigators to understand how logic and science work together.

In 1974 the GRE Board approved a plan to restructure the GRE

Aptitude Test in order to allow examinees to demonstrate a broader range of

academic skills (Altman, Carlson, & Donlon, 1975). A survey of constituents

revealed that, of several possible new areas of measurement (e.g., abstract

reasoning, scientific thinking, and study skills), graduate faculty,

administrators, and students were most receptive to assessing analytical

skills (Miller & wild, 1979). Developmental activities then followed and, after

careful psychometric study of several alternative analytical item types, four

distinct kinds of items were selected for the new analytical section of the GRE

Aptitude Test, which was introduced operationally in the 1977-78 testing year.

Graduate institutions were cautioned against using the scores from the

new analytical section until further evidence could be generated on the validity
of the new measure. Subsequently, the administration of the new measure to

large numbers of examinees under operational conditions enabled the further

collection of information about the new measure. Some research strongly

suggested the promise of the analytical section: it appeared to measure an

ability that was distinguishable from the verbal and quantitative abilities

measured by the test (Powers & Swinton, 1981), and the score derived from it

was related to successful performance in graduate school (Wilson, 1982).

Unfortunately, however, further research suggested serious problems with the

two item types (analysis of explanations and logical diagrams) that comprised

the bulk of the analytical section.

Performance on these item types was shown to be extremely

susceptible to special test preparation (Swinton & Powers, 1983; Powers &

Swinton, 1984) and to within-test practice (Swinton, wild, & Wallmark, 1983).

Consequently, in 1981 the two problematic item types were deleted from the

test, and additional numbers of analytical reasoning and logical reasoning

items, which constituted a very small part of the original analytical measure,

were inserted.

The most recent research on the General Test (Stricker & Rock, 1985;

Wilson, 1984) has given us some reason to question both the convergent and

the discriminant validity of the two remaining item types. Specifically, the two

currently used analytical item types correlate more highly with other verbal

items or with other quantitative items than reviewing the psychology

reasoning, Du ran, Power is they do with each other. Moreover, after

calculations and educational research literature on I? and Swinton (in press)

concluded that the -2- two currently used GRE analytical item types reflect
only a limited portion of the reasoning skills that are required of graduate

students. The most notable omission is the assessment of inductive reasoning

skills, i.e., reasoning from incomplete knowledge, where the purpose is to

learn new subject matter, to develop hypotheses, or to integrate previously

learned materials into a more useful and comprehensive body of information.

Thus, it seemed, the analytical ability measure of the GPE General Test might

be improved through further effort.

In 2018 a research conducted by group of researchers (Tribiana et. al.)

in Notre Dame Of Dadiangas University reveals that students demographic

factors such as age,gender,economic status and ethnic class doesn’t have a

significant relationship towards students performance in analytical thinking.

The study was conducted to 20 participants coming from ABM senior high

schools student with that 65% of the total respondents are female and 35%

are male. The conducted study showed that majority of the total respondents

are female, however since the respondents obtained the same level in overall

performance in analytical skill which is developing. This means that there was

no significant difference in the level of developing in analytical skill between

the male and female students.A religion of the respondents also doesn’t help

them to have better performance in analytical skills. These findings also

support the early study by Professor and Chairman Terrence Reynolds of the

Department of Theology at Georgetown University, they conclude that religion

tends to focus on questions of meaning and value, which may not be available

through analytic verification processes… by definition God is a being that

transcends the senses." 

 A recent study conducted by University of Kashmir India in 2016

revealed that the high level of analytical skill is a predictive factor of academic

performance of students up to 31.5 %.The study was participated by 598 of

the age group 16-17 years. The students were selected from 18 high schools

from two districts of State J&K (India).The study also reveals that Out of the

six dimensions of reasoning ability, the maximum involvement was reflected

by deductive reasoning by 49 %.Several studies also conducted by many

researchers such as the result of Etepmar (1995) and Oloyede (2012) found

that formal reasoning ability as a strong predictor for the achievement in

chemistry. It has been also studied that reasoning can be used to predict the

performance of students‟ achievement in chemistry (Abdu, 1998). The results

of Sungur et al. (2001) also indicated that reasoning ability significantly affects

students‟ achievements. Tekkaya and Yenilmez (2006) discovered that

reasoning skill was the chief predictor of understanding, showing 31% of

variation. Kuhn and Holling (2009) showed that reasoning ability appears to

be significant for predicting academic achievement in science. The results of

Nnorom (2013) depicted that those students who had high reasoning ability

achieved better in biology than the students who had low reasoning

ability.Further studies (Ergül,2010) which states that the analytical thinking

contributes substantially to student achievement of 13.69%, which includes

analytical reasoning and analysis of

explanation.

However there was an insignificant research conducted by Canadian

Center of Science Education (Hussain et al.,2012) revealed that there was no

positive relationship between critical and analytical thinking skills among

students with high academic achievement.The study investigated the level of

critical and analytical thinking skills among the students in the Department of

Electrical, Electronics and Systems Engineering (EESE), UKM. Their study

was conducted on a group of third year students in Semester 1 2010/2011

using three instruments; the analytical component of MTest model questions

by the Malaysian Ministry of Education (MOE) in the selection of prospective

students for Teachers College throughout the country, Marbach-Ad and

Sokolove's taxonomy (MST) for student questions on a topic discussed in the

lecture and the open-ended question posed in the final examination for the

microprocessor and microcontroller course. Analysis based on these three

techniques provide a rough estimation on the level of analytical and critical

thinking skills among students and in this study, it was learned that the critical

and analytical thinking skills among these students are at a very moderate

level despite their high academic achievement.