Browsing by Subject "teoriaohjaava sisällönanalyysi"

Background. Critical thinking skills, which are an aspect of generic skills, are related to the success students have in their university studies and working life after graduation. When it is considered whether the current degree programs and education systems support sufficiently the development of the skillset needed in the future working life of a university student, one can focus on examining the development of critical thinking skills of a student. Due to the lack of scientific studies on critical thinking, research should be done on the field of pharmacy to gather information on the critical thinking skills of master of pharmacy students and to determine, if the master’s degree program in pharmacy is generating the kind of professionals needed in the working life. Aim. The main goal is to study the level of critical thinking skills possessed by students in the beginning of their Master of Pharmacy studies. Combining the theoretical background and empirical study is considered in choosing a suitable method for the study. The method chosen for the study has to be applicable to determining a student’s ability to interpret, analyse and evaluate information, based on which a student consciously arrives on a conclusion while taking into consideration the context and different point of views of students. In addition to studying critical thinking skills, the aim is to analyse the students’ quality of argumentation and the use of references in comprising quality arguments. Methods. The studied set of students comprised of 17 students on their first year in the Master of Pharmacy program in University of Helsinki. The study was performed using a constructed-response task which was based on a real-life problem and was composed of three statements the students had to address utilizing the provided materials. When answering an open question, a student has to be able to analyse, evaluate and synthesize information from different sources. Based on this process, the student must demonstrate in their own words the relevance of the processed information and to construct a coherent essay that also utilizes the provided sources appropriately. The critical thinking skills of the students were evaluated from three aspects: the relevance of the content, processing of information and augmentation. A table for evaluation and classification of the data was created based on the literature study on critical thinking. According to the table, the studied material was divided into three categories. Category 1 entailed students with essays showing the lowest level of critical thinking skills while category 3 entailed students with essays showing the highest level of critical thinking skills. Results and conclusions. A deficiency in the level of critical thinking and argumentation skills possessed by the students was found, which has been encountered in previous studies, as well. All in all, only three out of the studied 17 students, showed impressive critical thinking skills. Most of the student (82%) showed defective argumentation, and more than half (65%) had problems with referencing. In addition, all but one student struggled in utilizing the information gathered from the reference materials. Based on the results, it is important to focus on developing the critical thinking skills of the students in the master’s program in pharmacy. To further study the matter, the same study should be performed on students at the end of their master’s studies to determine if the teaching and evaluation methods in the master’s program in pharmacy are sufficient in developing adequate critical thinking skills