Karl Popper developed a falsificationist epistemology in which knowledge grows through falsifying, or criticizing, our theories. Since criticism plays such a vital role in Popper’s falsificationist methodology, it seems natural to envisage his heuristic as a helpful resource for developing critical thinking. However, there is much controversy in the literature over the feasibility and utility of his falsificationism as a heuristic. This study argued that Popper’s falsificationism is justified on the grounds that it not only solves, theoretically, the problem of the bounds of reason in the form of comprehensively critical rationalism, but influences, practically, the research work of scientists from diverse fields. It also found that there is cause for cautious optimism about the effectiveness of falsification as a strategy for solving scientific problems. Popper’s falsificationist epistemology carries profound political and educational implications. On a political level, it is necessary to establish and maintain an open society by fostering five core values, viz. freedom, tolerance, respect, rationalism, and equalitarianism, as well as three crucial practices, viz. democracy, state interventionism, and piecemeal social engineering. On an educational level, the overriding aim is to nurture in children the requisite abilities, skills, and dispositions characteristic of critical thinking for full participation in an open democratic society. In order to achieve Popper’s educational ideal, this study proposed implementing Matthew Lipman’s Philosophy for Children (commonly known as P4C) programme in schools, arguing that the programme can fulfil the requirements of Popper’s educational ideal through using community of inquiry as methodology of teaching, philosophy as subject matter for inquiry, logic as both means and ends of inquiry, and Socrates as a model teacher for inquiry. The present study then conducted an experiment to assess the effectiveness of Lipman’s P4C programme in promoting Hong Kong children’s critical thinking. Forty-two Secondary 1 students volunteered for the experiment, from whom 28 students were randomly selected and randomly assigned to two groups of 14 each: one receiving P4C lessons and the other receiving English lessons. The students who were taught P4C were found to perform better in the reasoning test than those who were not, to be capable of discussing philosophical problems in a competent way, and to have a very positive attitude towards doing philosophy in the classroom. It was also found that P4C played a major role in developing the students’ critical thinking. Considering that the construction of children by adults as incompetent in the sense of lacking reason, maturity, or independence reinforces the traditional structure of adult authority over children in society, it runs counter to the goal of fostering critical thinking in children. As a way to return justice to childhood and to effectively promote critical thinking in children, the present study suggested reconstructing the concept of childhood, highlighting the importance of establishing a coherent public policy on promotion of agency in children and also the importance of empowering them to participate actively in research, legal, and educational institutions. / published_or_final_version / Education / Doctoral / Doctor of Philosophy

Thesis (M.I.T.)--The Evergreen State College, 2007. / Title from title screen viewed (6/23/2008). Includes bibliographical references (leaves 142-146).

Thesis (M.I.T.)--The Evergreen State College, 2007. / Title from title screen viewed (6/25/2008). Includes bibliographical references (leaves 66-70).

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Missouri-Columbia, 1997. / Typescript. Vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 132-139). Also available on the Internet.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Missouri-Columbia, 1997. / Typescript. Vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 132-139). Also available on the Internet.

Thesis (Ed. D.)--Illinois State University, 1995. / Title from title page screen, viewed May 4, 2006. Dissertation Committee: Robert L. Fisher (chair), Larry D. Kennedy, Franzie L. Loepp, Vicky L. Morgan, William L. Tolone. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 152-169) and abstract. Also available in print.

The pendulum of educators' interests often swings back and forth. In the current climate of high stakes assessment, there appears to be a greater emphasis placed on literal recall of information when reading. While in the short term, this may benefit score reports, there is a concern that higher order thinking skills, such as analysis, will fall by the wayside. In so doing, there may be long term effects on the citizenry of this country. A lack of shared experiences, paired with little or no opportunity to discuss and discern, could lead to an inability to participate in and manage a complex form of government, such as a democracy. In today's middle school literature classrooms, however, there is room for all types of thinking: from the simple to the complex. Teachers who desire to create an atmosphere that values the application of a variety of thinking can make their classrooms into communites that offer students the opportunity to think in a myriad of ways. These opportunities may be explicitly modeled by the educator and take the form of whole and small group discussion, developing questioning skills and using journal writing as a tool to develop meta-cognition.

Contributions from elementary education to the practice and reality of critical thinking are rare, largely because attempts in basic education to elucidate a concept of critical thinking have a hard time breaking through the elusiveness and indeterminacy that characterize the history and reality of the concept. This situation is due to, and a consequence of, the difficulty of delimiting critical thinking from related fields, such as metacognition, higher-order-thinking, problem solving, informal logic, reasoning skills, and decision making, to name a few. Texas school authorities designed and put into practice a battery of tools to evaluate critical thinking through the assessment programs TAKS and STAAR, without taking a position regarding the indeterminacy problems of the content of critical thinking. The purpose of this study was to reconstruct the pieces of the critical thinking model imparted to Texas elementary school children since 1999 and continues today. The findings indicate that the critical thinking model implemented in Texas elementary schools is a particular version of a skills-only approach of critical thinking that follows the classical logical paradigm, consisting of two sets of complementary skills. This model acquaints students with the components and structure of five types of arguments while it fails to substantiate the logic of argument support that demonstrates how reasons support claims and the strength of support. The application of an adequacy conditions rubric showed the strengths of the model at the argumentation analysis level, yet it showed clear signs of incompleteness and inconsistencies at the argument structure level that distort its purpose and function.

The dissertation explores middle-school students' abilities to engage in historical thinking. I dispute the Hallam-Piaget model, which discourages analytical thinking through the assumption that children lack skills to think critically about history. My historical narrative inquiry model (1) teaches procedural knowledge (the process of "doing" history); (2) enhances interpretative skills; (3) cultivates historical perspectives based upon evidentiary history; and (4) encourages student authorship of historical narratives. In the fall semester of 2006, with a classroom of twenty-five seventh-graders, I initiated a research study designed to explore the impact of the historical narrative inquiry model through a sequence of thirty-two lessons. The lessons involved small- and large-group activities, including oral presentations, discussions about primary documents, and consideration of the relation between narratology and the creation of written history. Students generated their own historical narratives in order to articulate their perspectives. Eight students having varied reading-level proficiency served as primary participants in the study. Each of these students received pre- and post-intervention interviews. Outcomes reflected the enhancement of pedagogy intended to facilitate historical thinking and historical empathy in the classroom.

This paper will examine what research has revealed about reading and learning in the areas of word recognition, scaffolding to develop understanding, metacognition and application of new knowledge in real world situations. The study then will go on to link what is known about learning to strategies that have already been developed by secondary teachers to increase critical reading skills.