The effects of environment‐based education on students' critical thinking skills and disposition toward critical thinking

This study examined the relationship between environment‐based education and high school students' critical thinking skills and disposition toward critical thinking. Four hundred four 9^th and 12^th grade students from 11 Florida high schools participated in the study. A Pretest‐Posttest Nonequivalent Comparison Group Design (9^th grade) and a Posttest Only Nonequivalent Comparison Group Design (12^th grade) were used. Interviews of students and teachers were used in the classic sense of triangulation. Data collection took place over the 2001–2002 school year. When controlling for pretest score, grade point average (GPA), gender, and ethnicity, environment‐based programs had a positive effect on 9^th grade students' critical thinking skills (p=.002). When controlling for GPA, gender, and ethnicity, environment‐based programs had a positive effect on 12^th grade students' critical thinking skills (p < .001) and disposition toward critical thinking (p < .001). The results of this study support the use of environment‐based education for improving critical thinking and can be used to guide future implementation.     

评述高校外语教学中思辨力培养存在的问题

本文讨论了目前思辨力培养中急需解决的两大问题: 1) 如何处理思辨力与外语语言能力培养之间的关系; 2) 怎样才能使思辨力培养与外语语言教学有机地融为一体? 在此基础上,我们运用真实案例,分析高校外语教学思辨力培养现状,同时指出教学中的优点和不足之处,并提出改进建议。     

An ‘infusion’ approach to critical thinking: Moore on the critical thinking debate

This paper argues that general skills and the varieties of subject‐specific discourse are both important for teaching, learning and practising critical thinking. The former is important because it outlines the principles of good reasoning simpliciter (what constitutes sound reasoning patterns, invalid inferences, and so on). The latter is important because it outlines how the general principles are used and deployed in the service of ‘academic tribes’. Because critical thinking skills are—in part, at least—general skills, they can be applied to all disciplines and subject‐matter indiscriminately. General skills can help us assess reasoning independently of the vagaries of the linguistic discourse we express arguments in. The paper looks at the debate between the ‘specifists’—those who stress the importance of critical thinking understood as a subject‐specific discourse—and the ‘generalists’—those that stress the importance of critical thinking understood independently of disciplinary context. The paper suggests that the ‘debate’ between the specifists and the generalists amounts to a fallacy of the false alternative, and presents a combinatory‐‘infusion’ approach to critical thinking.     

The effect of the biology critical thinking project on the development of critical thinking

This article describes the Biology Critical Thinking (BCT) project in which carefully designed activities for developing specific critical thinking skills are incorporated into the biology curriculum. The objectives were to find out whether the BCT project contributes to the development of critical thinking skills in various biological and nonbiological topics and how it affects students' biological knowledge and classroom learning environment. The study consisted of 678 seventh graders who were assigned randomly into two groups that studied the same seventh-grade biology textbook. Only one group, the experimental, completed the BCT activities. The results indicate that the students in the experimental group improved their critical thinking skills compared to their own initial level and compared to their counterparts in the control group. Improved critical thinking skills were observed in a new biological context and nonbiological everyday topics, suggesting generalization of thinking skills across domains. The experimental students scored significantly higher than the control on a knowledge test, suggesting that “knowledge of facts” as one educational goal and “learning to think” as another, need not conflict, but rather can interact with each other. Finally, the results show that BCT involvement decreased the frequency of teacher-centered teaching and enhanced student-centered, more active learning.     

Argumentation,critical thinking,nature of science and socioscientific issues: a dialogue between two researchers

The purpose of this paper is to compare and contrast between two theoretical frameworks for addressing nature of science (NOS) and socioscientific issues (SSI) in school science. These frameworks are critical thinking (CT) and argumentation (AR). For the past years, the first and second authors of this paper have pursued research in this area using CT and AR as theoretical frameworks, respectively. Yacoubian argues that future citizens need to develop a critical mindset as they are guided to (1) practice making judgments on what views of NOS to acquire and (2) practice making decisions on SSI through applying their NOS understandings. Khishfe asserts that AR is an important component of decision making when dealing with SSI and the practice in AR in relation to controversial issues is needed for informed decision making. She argues that AR as a framework may assist in the development of more informed understandings of NOS. In this paper, the authors delve into a dialogue for (1) elucidating strengths and potential of each framework, (2) highlighting challenges that they face in their research using the frameworks in question, (3) exploring the extent to which the frameworks can overlap, and (4) proposing directions for future research.     

The effects of communication medium on argumentation and the development of critical thinking

The aim of this paper is to compare the effects of different communication media on the quality of arguments and the development of argumentative reasoning. The study involved 73 undergraduate students. It consisted of a pre-test, an intervention session consisting of either an asynchronous online discussion or a face-to-face discussion, and a post-test. The pre-test consisted of a mini essay to ascertain participants’ opinion of smacking, and a 21-point smacking scale, where participants indicated how much they agreed or disagreed with smacking. The online group participated in a seminar discussion over a period of 2 weeks. The face-to-face group participated in the seminar discussion for a 1-h period. The seminar discussion was about the detrimental effects of smacking on children's development. One week after the seminar discussion, the post-test was administered. No statistically significant differences were found between the two conditions in terms of improvement in the quality of the students’ arguments. However, the quality of the argumentation used in face-to-face was higher than that used in the online discussions. The implications of these findings for theoretical models of collaborative activity are discussed.     

Undergraduate physics instruction and critical thinking ability. The effects of instruction in physics upon the critical thinking ability of undergraduate students

Do PSSC materials used with undergraduates lead to better scores on a critical thinking appraisal test? Is the increment greater than conventional instruction yields?     

Effects of critical thinking on multiple-document comprehension

European Journal of Psychology of Education - The purpose of this study was to test the relationships between critical thinking, prior topic knowledge and beliefs, and multiple-document...     

The critical thinking debate: how general are general thinking skills?

This paper takes up the issue of whether the skill of critical thinking in university education is best thought of as a broad universal generic skill or rather as only a loose category taking in a variety of modes of thought. Through the linguistic analysis of some sample texts, I argue that the discourse of general thinking programs should not be thought of as a generalist discourse at all, but in fact a quite specific one. The implications both for the teaching and testing of critical thinking are considered in the light of this position.     

Using higher order thinking questions to foster critical thinking: a classroom study

To determine if quizzes containing higher order thinking questions are related to critical thinking and test performance when utilised in conjunction with an immersion approach to instruction and effort-based grading, sections of an Educational Psychology course were assigned to one of three quizzing conditions. Quizzes contained factual multiple-choice questions, factual essay questions or essay items requiring higher order thinking. Critical thinking was measured with a pre-test–post-test design and the Watson–Glaser Critical Thinking Appraisal (Short Form). Classroom learning was assessed via multiple-choice and essay tests. Critical thinking increased equally across all sections. The section receiving higher order thinking quizzes performed significantly better than the other two sections on both the multiple-choice and essay portions of the classroom tests. The implications of these findings are discussed in the context of methodological approaches to encouraging critical thinking.     

Multimodal analysis for critical thinking

This paper proposes a pedagogical approach for teaching and learning critical thinking through multimodal analysis – that is, ‘multimodal analysis for critical thinking'. The approach builds on the conviction that students require competencies that move beyond traditional notions of literacy to meet the changing demands posed by media and technology in the twenty-first century. The approach takes a social semiotic view toward critical multimodal literacy, which aims to provide students with an analytical metalanguage for the systematic analysis of multimodal texts and videos. The pedagogical approach is facilitated through the use of purpose-built software applications with comprehensive analytical frameworks designed to support the systematic teaching and learning of multimodal analysis, with a view to developing the critical literacy skills needed for life in the digital age. The potential efficacies of the approach are illustrated via the exposition of software functionalities and the sample analyses of a printed text with image components, and a short advocacy video.     

Critical thinking in criminology: critical reflections on learning and teaching

Fostering critical thinking abilities amongst students is one component of preparing them to navigate uncertain and complex social lives and employment circumstances. One conceptualisation of critical thinking, valuable in higher education, draws from critical theory to promote social justice and redress power inequities. This study explored how students’ critical thinking developed in a discrete core unit of criminology. Second and third year students were invited to participate in the research. Participants wrote critical reflections on how their thinking about crime and criminal justice had developed throughout the unit. Analysis of responses indicated that certain topics were salient to students, offering a way to engage them in deeper thinking. Students’ critical reflections showed evidence of personally relevant meaning-making, including the development of more nuanced thinking about crime and justice, and more compassionate rationales for aspiring to careers within the field. Implications for learning and teaching critical thinking in criminology are discussed.     

Beyond critical thinking skills: Investigating the relationship between critical thinking skills and dispositions through different online instructional strategies

The purpose of this study was to investigate (1) the relationship between critical thinking skills (CTS) and critical thinking dispositions (CTD), and (2) the effectiveness of different levels of instructional strategy (asynchronous online discussions (AODs), CTS instruction via AODs, and CTS instruction with CTD cultivation via AODs) in improving students' CTS and CTD. A pretest and posttest quasi-experimental design was employed to achieve this purpose. The participants in this study were 220 students enrolled in a general education course at a large university in Taiwan. The findings of this study were as follows: (1) the overall relationship between CTS and CTD was positive. However, further analysis of the relationship between the different levels of CTS and CTD showed that only the students with high CTS and medium CTD showed a significant correlation; (2) the enhancement in CTS reinforced CTD, but the improvement in CTD did not increase the level of CTS. In addition, it is recommended that to improve the CTS and CTD of all students (including the students with a high level of CTS), the instructional strategy, CTS instruction with CTD cultivation, be employed.