Samenvatting

It is essential that higher education students are trained to become critically-thinking professionals. Critical thinking (CT) is crucial for succeeding in future careers and, moreover, is an important life skill (Davies, 2013; Facione, 1990; Halpern, 2014; Van Gelder, 2005). More specifically, students should be able to avoid biases in their reasoning and decision-making, even in situations that have not been encountered before, because especially in (professional) situations, reasoning biases can have serious consequences. However, it would be unfeasible to train students on each and every type of reasoning bias they will ever encounter. The challenge for educational practitioners, therefore, is to design instruction/practice so that students acquire the necessary resources to enhance CT in such a way that it would also transfer across tasks and contexts.
The overarching purpose of the research presented in this dissertation was to acquire more knowledge on how higher education students’ learning and transfer of CT-skills can be fostered, focusing specifically on one important aspect of CT: the ability to avoid bias in reasoning.