Critical thinking is widely recognized as a key objective of higher education, encompassing a complex interplay of cognitive skills, knowledge, and dispositions. However, assessing critical thinking in authentic educational contexts remains a challenge. This presentation introduces findings from a systematic-narrative review that examined how performance-based assessments are used to evaluate critical thinking in higher education. Performance-based assessments aim to elicit authentic responses by placing students in real-world-like situations that require critical thinking. The review focused on peer-reviewed empirical studies published between 2013 and 2023, identified through searches in EBSCOhost, Scopus, and the Social Science Database. A total of 28 studies were included. The review process followed four phases: identification, screening, data extraction, and synthesis. The first three phases adhered to the PRISMA protocol, while the final phase involved qualitative content analysis. Findings showed that most studies employed open-ended performance tasks, with selected-response formats being less common. There was no consistent theoretical framework across the studies. Critical thinking was typically defined as a skill or a set of skills, though a few studies acknowledged the role of dispositions. Evaluation and inference were the most frequently assessed skills, while dispositions were not explicitly targeted in any of the assessments. The results revealed a misalignment between how critical thinking is defined and how it is assessed through performance-based methods. This raises important questions about the validity and comprehensiveness of current assessment practices. The presentation will discuss implications for future research and higher education, highlighting the need for more integrated frameworks that encompass both skills and dispositions in the assessment of critical thinking.