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Abstract
Saudi Arabian college students may face challenges in developing critical thinking skills, which are considered essential for the future workforce under Saudi Arabia's Vision 2030 initiative. The present study used a quasi-experimental design to test the effectiveness of the Devil’s Advocate approach in improving critical thinking among Saudi undergraduates. Forty-three students enrolled in two equivalent course sections were assigned to an experimental group (n = 22) employing the Devil’s Advocate method or a control group (n = 21) engaging in traditional consensus-oriented discussion across a 15-week semester. Critical thinking was assessed at pretest and posttest using the California Critical Thinking Skills Test Form 2000 (CCTST; Insight Assessment, 2013), yielding scores on five reasoning domains (Analysis, Inference, Evaluation, Induction, and Deduction) and an Overall composite score. Independent-samples t-tests confirmed baseline equivalence (all p > .65). Within the experimental group, paired-samples t-tests revealed statistically significant and very large gains on every domain (Cohen's d = 1.64-2.15, all p < .001), whereas the control group showed only small, non-significant changes. ANCOVA controlling for pretest scores confirmed that the experimental group significantly outperformed the control group on every outcome, with large effect sizes (partial η² = .324-.445). The intervention shifted the median experimental participant from the Moderate to the Strong CCTST proficiency tier, χ²(3, N = 43) = 15.69, p = .001, Cramér's V = .604. Non-parametric tests corroborated every parametric inference. These findings support cognitive conflict, social constructivist, and metacognitive accounts of how structured dissent advances reasoning, and demonstrate that the Devil’s Advocate approach is a low-cost, theoretically grounded intervention for addressing critical thinking deficits in Saudi higher education and supporting the human-capital aspirations of Vision 2030. Practically, these findings indicate that a low-cost, easily embedded classroom protocol can yield substantial critical-thinking gains, offering instructors, curriculum designers, and higher-education policymakers a scalable, resource-light strategy for strengthening students' reasoning without wholesale curricular reform.
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Article Type: Research Article
PEDAGOGICAL RES, Volume 11, Issue 4, October 2026, Article No: em0296
https://doi.org/10.29333/pr/19632
Publication date: 16 Oct 2026
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