Dr. Ko published a paper entitled "Impact of Social Science (Economics) Distribution Requirement on Critical Thinking Skills in Kenya’s Second and Third Year Social Science Students" in the The International Journal Of Humanities & Social Studies.
The paper focused on attendance and Economics distribution requirement. The study results indicated that attending a nine-week critical thinking course matters in developing overall critical thinking skills that improve the learning process and, ultimately, the acquirement of high order critical thinking skills such as inference and argument. At the same time, the level of Economics prerequisite coursework taken concurrently as distribution requirement positively affects critical thinking.
However, this study argues that the effects of Economics prerequisite coursework on critical thinking vary across individuals as the students who took the beginning-level conceptual prerequisite courses had higher learning effects in critical thinking than those of advanced computational courses.