This study used the university discussion-based seminar with the aim of exploring and improving students' experiences of face-to-face group work in Higher Education. The purpose was to devise a pedagogic strategy to address the communicative barriers that extant research and literature suggests often arise between ethnically and/or internationally different student groups in universities. A critical examination of literature relevant to co-operative behaviours in groups was undertaken across disciplines. The result was the assembly and development of a theoretical basis for designing a pedagogy that attends explicitly to compassion in HE teaching, learning and assessment. Compassion is relevant to co-operative behaviours. It is recognised across disciplines and it is valued across cultures. It is defined as the noticing of distress or disadvantaging of others, and then taking action to reduce this. The compassion-focussed pedagogy was then applied in discussion-based seminars across different subjects in a UK university. The study adopted an action research approach, which was divided into two cycles. Cycle 1 was conducted amongst mainly white, local students in a Humanities department where (n=105) students were observed in their seminars, some of whom (n=14) participated in one-to-one interviews or focus groups. Cycle 2 was conducted amongst more diverse cohorts of students in the same HEI's Business department where (n=135) students were observed, some of whom (n=20) participated in one-to-one interviews or focus groups. In total (n=9) seminar tutors were observed and interviewed. Five sampling methods and seven data collection tools were combined to support the use of Template Analysis for comparative, thematic data analysis. Overall, most students made use of the compassion-focused pedagogy, adapting and developing it in seminar discussions to benefit the learning and social experiences of themselves and others. Data from three students helped explore why the pedagogy might not be suitable for all students. There was evidence of a positive impact on seminar academic outcomes in terms of assessment for critical thinking skills, particularly for BME students, although this result is offered cautiously and requires further research. The main indications from the study are that explicit work with the concept of compassion, including overt formal assessment of its use, can be unintrusive on subject material (a tutor concern), ethically appropriate, and beneficial to enhancing social and learning interconnectivity between students. Traditional/ standard categorisations of students as local or international in origin are also found to be extremely problematic and profoundly unhelpful in understanding and unlocking communicative barriers between students.

Meaning-making in today's digital culture, using digital media, raises the need for enhanced critical thinking and analytical skills. To be literate in digital media, one must know how to use digital tools, but one is also required to develop intellectual, social, and cultural competencies to be able to interpret messages in multimodal texts, which include written text, sound, and images. This research explored the experiences of two foreign students in higher education who participated in a six-week online workshop called "improving your digital-media skills." In the online workshop, the students completed a project-based activity in which each week they worked on one step toward finishing their projects. The weekly curriculum aimed to develop particular skill of digital-media literacy to access, analyze, evaluate, and create digital media materials. Throughout this study, the data was gathered and analyzed to answer two general questions: 1) How does a project-based activity of digital media creation and consumption impact students' critical thinking and analytical skills in the digital culture? 2) How does students' awareness of cultural diversity influence the choices they make in digital media production? Seeking answers to these two questions, the study employed qualitative case study methods including participant-observation, field notes, questionnaires, interviews, and digital media products analysis. The analysis revealed that the workshop had a great impact on the students' critical analysis and evaluation skills than on critical thinking skills. There was also a noticeable increase in the students' critical thinking skills when using digital media out of the academic settings. Both participants were affected by their experience of living abroad, and this factor influenced their thinking and teaching methods. Cultural identities appeared in their thinking and choices in some parts of the workshop. This study was an initial inquiry into the importance of acquiring cultural competencies along with critical digital-media literacy in order to accept the diversity in education and appreciate our differences.

This study was concerned with making a comparative analysis of the relative effectiveness of two teaching methods in increasing students' (a) knowledge and understanding of principles, (b) ability in critical thinking, and (c) science reasoning and understanding in an introductory college zoology course. The two methods were (a) a laboratory-centered inductive-deductive method and (b) the more commonly found deductive-descriptive method organized as a large lecture section with smaller laboratory sections.

The problem of this study was an investigation of the relationships among the attitudes, critical thinking ability,and personality attributes of students in a teacher education program.

The purpose of this study was to determine the effectiveness of a direct instruction model as a means of enhancing secondary students' schema for expository text. Subjects were seventh- and tenth-grade students in regular reading and English classes in an suburban school district. Students were pre- and posttested on four measures: attitude toward expository text, independent reading comprehension and recall from expository text, organization of information from expository text in notetaking, and expository writing. A nested analysis of covariance procedure was used for data analysis to account for teacher effects and group non-equivalence. The study was conducted over a six-week period in the spring semester. A model of direct instruction in analysis of expository text structure was developed by the researcher, using sample text passages similar to those encountered by seventh- and tenth-grade students in content area reading. Treatment group teachers were provided with lesson plans and materials and were given instruction in the model; comparison group classes were given no particular instructional treatment other than that normally conducted during this period.

This study researches questions concerning arts education and critical thinking. The study poses two questions. What strategies for critical thinking are revealed in conversation with five art educators? And how can art education be a suitable platform for critical thinking?  The Swedish school authorities have set out strong general guidelines concerning the need for schools to develop students skills in critical thinking. This subject is traditionally focused on the social sciences yet this study wants to go into how critical thinking may be integrated and used in art education. The data from the study is presented in six themes; “self reflection”, “conscious planning”, “making the many perspectives visible”, “giving space for individual expression”, “trust, safety and relationships”, and “norms”. These themes are then critically appraised in the light of “norm criticism”, a contemporary social theory that works with questioning the societal norms around subjects such as gender, race, sexuality. The study shows many important strategies for critical thinking in the concerned group of educators. The educators assert the need for appropriate planning, creating a safe and encouraging space for students to express their thoughts and feelings in their art work and in critical analyses of pictures and discussions concerning societal norms. Although the study has its limitations – it’s based on data from a small group, who were partly selected out of their interest in the subject of critical thinking – it suggests that there are many good reasons to work more deeply with critical thinking in art education. Art education also has the advantage of creativity and the work with picture analyses. Using their own individual expression students may learn a more intimate understanding of what critical thinking really means, not only as a mere thought process, but a bodily, practical understanding. Further studies would be good and could e.g. include an ethnological study of the current condition of critical thinking in Swedish art education of today. The study includes a figuration which is inspired by theme ”trust, safety and relationships” and is called  ”Trygga rum”, “The Safe Space”. “The Safe Space” a three part sculpture made out of a combination of metal and textile in the shape of cocoons (and sound installation), representing the qualities of safety as a crucial part of the processes of developing critical thinking.

M.Cur. / Critical thinking is the ideal of a democratic citizenry of a country. Intellectual liberation is the characteristic of the human mind, but it is learned as the individual takes a conscious step into developing his/her critical thinking skills. The virtues of a critical thinker are open-mindedness, intellectual integrity, intellectual empathy, intellectual courage, accommodation for ambiguity, ability to metacognise and acceptance of one's faults in thinking and a willingness to adapt one's beliefs and values. The nursing profession has a dire need for critically thinking practitioners, who will be able to make calculated judgements that brings about life-saving decisions. Nursing education need to adopt an educational approach that integrates development and facilitation of critical thinking in students. Scholars support the ideal of development and facilitation of critical thinking in the classroom as well as in practice. The purpose of this study is to describe strategies that can be used to overcome obstacles in the facilitation of critical thinking in nursing education. To realize this purpose the researcher undertook a qualitative, exploratory, descriptive and contextual research approach (Mouton 1998). The research design is conducted in 2 phases. The recommendations arising out of the study are based on the findings that there is an urgent need to make a concerted effort to facilitate critical thinking in students and further research on how to integrate critical thinking in the curriculum as well as appropriate evaluation of the skills.

M.Ed. (Education) / Please refer to full text to view abstract

Flexible Learning is a personal investigation of the relationship between the design-thinking process and standardized primary education. The problem-solving methods used in graphic design, are studied as a means of enhancing skills among students—skills that are not generally being developed, some of which are creativity, engagement, collaboration, evaluation, refinement, and presentation techniques. While I access and synthesize information from my clients, a child also access and synthesize information from his or her teacher. When a client comes to me with a design request, I research, create, and then present the most appropriate solution. In the classroom, this kind of thinking process is also possible when the teacher offers students the opportunity to solve a problem, usually in the form of a project. I will explain how more intensive and creative application of design thinking process could expand the horizons for whole brain learning and creative thinking among students.

An education that does not recognise schools as places for the mere transmission and assimilation of knowledge, but as places for critical and creative inquiry, is quality education. Philosophising with children in schools assumes that children are actively and deliberately encouraged in seeking responses to the questions about reality they raise at a very early age. The practice of philosophy is undoubtedly one of the underpinnings of a quality education for all. By contributing to opening children‘s minds, building their critical reflection and autonomous thinking, philosophy contributes to the protection against manipulation and exclusion at the hands of adults. If education in general must open up to children the maps of an intricate world in a continuous state of tension, then philosophy is a compass for navigating that world. Hence children, irrespective of their geographical location and regardless of their social milieu or state of development of their country, deserve to be equipped with the tools so motivated for. Using conceptual analysis as a tool, I explore the Lipman method of Philosophy for Children by presenting a case for an African perspective of the same. I situate doing philosophy with children in the context of the African philosophy debate. While Lipman‘s model provides the case for the role of rational, logical and systematic thinking in children, the African background promises the raw materials on which the said instruments work. I therefore settle for a hybridised Philosophy for Children programme that marries the universalist and the particularist views of doing philosophy. I argue that the traditional African notion of community plays a significant role in our understanding of the community of inquiry as pedagogy of doing philosophy with children. Embedded in African ―community‖ is the concept of ukama qua relationality, which constitutes a keystone in the envisaged African perspective of Philosophy for Children. I conclude that doing philosophy with children in schools in Africa contributes to the interpretation of the cultural, economic and circumstances of the African situation.