Reasoning skills, problem solving ability and academic ability: implications for study programme and career choice in the context of higher education in Thailand.

Abstract

This thesis examines reasoning skills, problem solving ability, and academic ability from a cohort of final year university students. The purpose of the study was to investigate the influences of academic ability on reasoning skills, and problem solving ability, and vice versa, and to examine whether students from different programmes displayed significant different levels of reasoning skills and problem solving skills. In order to choose which academic programmes to use for the study Holland’s theory of ‘career personality’ was used.
This research used primarily quantitative data with an additional qualitative to provide an element of a mixed methods design. The data has been collected from 333 final year students in one university in Thailand with participants following seven programmes related to Holland’s theory. The reasoning skills test was adopted from Jittachaun’s test, and the problem solving ability test was adopted from real life problems and logical problems. The content validity, construct validity, and discriminant validity were reported, and reliability, Cronbach’s Alpha, was .633. The academic ability was taken from the students’ grade point average.
The most important finding is reasoning skills, and problem solving ability have some influences on each other approximately 30 percent; however, academic ability did not show much influence on the reasoning skills, and problem solving ability. This shows that academic achievement in university students in Thailand is not a good predictor of high levels of reasoning and problem solving ability. The other findings confirm the differences in those skills between students from different programmes and strengthen the case for using admission tests in Thailand for university admission. The thesis findings also reinforce the view that teaching and assessment in the Thai education system should be more involved with increasing/testing reasoning skills, and problem solving ability. In addition, the new admission system which requires different skills for different programmes is supported by this research result that different categories of programme and career need different skills.