The Journal of Medical Education and Development

Introduction:Mastery of critical thinking skills is one of the aims of higher education. The aim of this study was to evaluate the relation between the richness of the cognitive structure and critical thinking.

Methods: This study was a descriptive study that was carried out  among the students of Shahid Sadoughi University of Medical Sciences. The sample size was 5700 students and 382 questionnaires were analyzed, randomly. Sampling was randomly stratified. Collecting data was done by critical thinking questionnaire and cognitive structure questionnaire in the five-item Likert scale (strongly agree to strongly disagree) and the Cronbach alpha was 0.86 and 0.81, respectively. Analysis of data was performed using descriptive statistics and Kruskal Wallis test and linear regression, SPSS V.16  was used to analyse he data.

Results: : The relationship between cognitive structure and critical thinking was meaningful and it was measured by Pearson correlation coefficient (0.513) through p-value P<0.001. Cognitive structure and critical thinking of the students improved by the inceasing level of their education.

Conclusion:  Training the proper and targeted study and also training of extensive studies of non-academic sourses in different fields should be put in the curriculum in education system.