Promoting critical thinking skills in the higher education setting is noted as a key skill required by students. Using a questionnaire approach, this study examined whether first-year students perceived the use of past assessments in preparation for upcoming assessments as a deductive learning tool and used them solely as a study aid and predictor at a South African university, with the focus on the deductive and conductive learnings styles, with specific reference to whether students perceive the past assessments to be used as tools to indicate specifically what will be assessed in terms of historical frequency. The findings suggest that students utilise past assessments as a deductive tool in order to predict future areas that will be assessed, as well as certain characteristics, such as the level of difficulty of question papers. The authors argue that when past assessments are used as a deductive “predictor” of future assessment, this then potentially acts as an inhibitor of developing critical thinking skills. The findings therefore, although acknowledging the value added in terms of higher education students of the revision and practising of past assessments, highlight that assessors in higher education need to be conscious that the use of past assessments as a “predictor” through the repetitive nature of the items being assessed may result in students who are able to pass assessments but who are unable to necessarily demonstrate critical thinking skills as required by module outcomes. The findings of this study therefore present various streams of areas for future research into the better understanding of how past assessments can be used in order to promote critical thinking within higher education modules.

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使用过去的评估作为演绎学习工具？南非大学对学生的看法

在高等教育环境中提高批判性思维能力被认为是学生所需的一项关键技能。这项研究采用问卷调查法，研究了一年级学生是否将过去的评估作为即将到来的评估的准备，以此作为一种演绎性学习工具，并将其仅用作南非大学的学习辅助和预测指标，重点是演绎和引导式学习方式，具体涉及学生是否将过去的评估用作工具，以明确指出将根据历史频率进行评估。研究结果表明，学生将过去的评估作为一种演绎工具，以便预测将来将要评估的领域以及某些特征，例如试卷的难度。作者认为，当过去的评估被用作未来评估的演绎“预测器”时，这有可能成为发展批判性思维技能的障碍。因此，研究结果尽管承认了高等教育学生对过去评估的修改和实践的增值作用，但强调指出，高等教育评估者需要意识到，通过重复性的评估，将过去的评估作为“预测者”使用。被评估的项目可能会导致学生能够通过评估，但不一定能够按照模块结果要求展示批判性思维能力。