Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Texas at Austin, 2000. / Vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 205-233). Available also in a digital version from Dissertation Abstracts.

Thesis (M. Ed.)--University of Hong Kong, 2001. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 93-97).

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Washington, 2003. / Vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 179-191).

Thesis (M. Ed.)--York University, 1999. Graduate Programme in Education. / Typescript. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 88-94). Also available on the Internet. MODE OF ACCESS via web browser by entering the following URL: http://wwwlib.umi.com/cr/yorku/fullcit?pMQ56178.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Washington, 2002. / Vita. Includes bibliographical references (p. 101-108).

Thesis (M. Ed.)--University of Hong Kong, 2002. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 117-122).

Critical thinking is widely acknowledged as crucial for 21st century learners to be able to tackle the complex tasks arising every day in a rapidly changing world. Earlier critical thinking research has mostly focused on the related micro-skills, which have been criticized as inadequate. Recent studies have placed more emphasis on nurturing the dispositions towards critical thinking. Another trend in critical thinking research is the realization that good performance on generic critical thinking skills tests does not guarantee critical thinking performance in the real world. In line with the recent trends in critical thinking development, educators have shown growing interest in fostering critical thinking skills and dispositions in students through collaborative inquiry in authentic problem-solving contexts. However, empirical research that examines students’ critical thinking behavior while they engage in extended collaborative inquiry is rare. Further, it is not clear whether differences in students’ critical thinking abilities contribute to differences in their engagement and learning outcomes in collaborative inquiry. This study aims to investigate the relationship between students’ critical thinking and the quality of their collaborative inquiry. The study involved a class of secondary two students studying a humanities module through collaborative inquiry involving the use of an online platform. Given the debates over the value of different methods of measuring critical thinking, this study first seeks to explore the relationship between three different critical thinking tests: two standardized surveys on generic skills and dispositions, and a constructed-response test on context-specific skills. Second, this study examines whether students with higher critical thinking scores are better able to apply critical thinking to real-life situations. This is done through analyzing students’ critical thinking behaviors exhibited in the context of authentic problem solving. Third, this study explores the relationship between students’ critical thinking behavior and their knowledge building engagement in the learning process. Finally, this study uses the standardized tests to determine whether there is any significant change in the students’ critical thinking ability after a sustained engagement in collaborative inquiry to tackle an authentic problem. The analysis revealed a number of interesting findings. First, the three critical thinking tests are related but measure different aspects of critical thinking. Second, compared with traditional standardized surveys, the context-specific critical thinking test is a better indicator of the likelihood of the students to autonomously apply critical thinking in authentic problem-solving contexts. Third, critical thinking behaviors exhibited by students contributed to their engagement in knowledge building. Fourth, there was a statistically significant increase in students’ critical thinking dispositions after the extended collaborative inquiry of an authentic problem. The study has both theoretical and methodological implications. The study has both theoretical and educational implications. It deepens our understanding of the relationship between critical thinking and computer-supported collaborative inquiry. This study has provided strong evidence that traditional measures of critical thinking cannot predict the quality of students’ critical thinking engagement in authentic problem-solving contexts. Further, it also provides empirical support the theoretical claim that engaging students in knowledge building activities will enhance their critical thinking skills and dispositions. / published_or_final_version / Education / Doctoral / Doctor of Philosophy

This study aims to investigate the automated question detection and classification methods to support teachers in monitoring the progression of discussion in Computer-Supported Collaborative Learning (CSCL) discourse of Hong Kong students. Questioning is an important component of CSCL. Through the analysis of question types in CSCL discourse, teachers may probably get a general idea of how an inquiry is constructed. This study is an attempt to take up this time-consuming task of question classification with the techniques developed from machine learning. In general, the performance of machine learning algorithms will improve by increasing the amount of empirical data for training. The amount of training data is a determining factor for the performance of machine learning algorithms. The machine learning based question classification algorithms may not able to detect those question types with a small amount of training data. In order not to miss out those questions, an extra step to detect the occurrence of all question types might be needed. One Chinese and one English datasets are collected from an online discussion platform. These datasets are selected for comparing the performance of question detection and classification in the two languages, and a sentence is defined as the unit of analysis. Question detection is a process to distinguish questions from other types of discourse act. A hybrid method is proposed to combine the rule-based question mark method and machine-learning-based syntax method for question detection. This method achieves 94.8% f1-score and 98.9% accuracy in English question detection and 94.8% f1-score and 93.9% accuracy in Chinese question detection. While question detection focuses mainly on the identification of questions, question classification concentrates on the categorization of questions. The literature showed that the tree kernel method is almost a standardized method for question classification. The classification of English verification and reason questions using tree kernel method can both attained f1-score above 80%. Though the precision of Chinese question classification using the same settings remains at a similar level, the recall drops greatly. This result indicates that the syntax-based tree kernel method may not be appropriate for classifying questions in Chinese languages. In order to improve on the Chinese question classification result, Case-Based Reasoning (CBR) is introduced. CBR is a method to retrieve example case(s) which shares the maximum percentage of similarity with the test case from a database. In this study, the similarity is measured by the lexemes that composed a question. Although the implementation of the CBR method can improve the recall, it also causes the great drop of precision. Considering the high precision of tree kernel method and wide coverage of CBR method, a hybrid method is proposed to combine the two methods. The experiment result shows that f1-score of the hybrid method for multi-class classification surpasses the tree kernel and CBR methods. This indicates that the implementation of hybrid method can generally improve the result of Chinese question classification. / published_or_final_version / Education / Master / Master of Philosophy

This research investigates what impact (if any) do personal epistemology (PE) have on individual’s engagement and ideas progression when engaged in a CSCL discourse designed to stimulate knowledge building (KB) (Scardamalia & Bereiter, 2003). Through literature review, this thesis sets out with an assumption that a learner’s engagement in a collaborative learning discourse is influenced by three kinds of beliefs: nature of knowledge, how learning takes place, and quality criteria for good knowledge. Reflective judgment (RJ), i.e. network of beliefs on knowledge and knowing underpinning personal judgments on ill-structured issues (Kitchener & King, 2002), is the key PE construct underpinning this study. Further, it is believed that the extent to which an individual pursues explanatory coherence (EC) (Thagard, 1989) when engaged in a CSCL discourse reflects his/her beliefs about the quality criteria for good knowledge. The empirical part of this study was undertaken in a grade 8 class involving 32 students over a 12-weeks period. Students worked in groups on an integrated-humanities module to develop proposals for new tourist attractions in Hong Kong. Students were encouraged to use Knowledge Forum® (KF) for online collaborative discussions throughout different inquiry stages of the module. A questionnaire instrument was designed and administered to assess students’ RJ. Using this instrument, fifteen students were identified as pre-reflective and seventeen as quasi-reflective. Independent-samples t-tests on students’ participatory statistics in KF show that quasi-reflective students’ usage of two metacognitive-oriented KF features, scaffolds and note revision, were significantly more frequent than pre-reflective students (p<=.05). Four qualitative indicators for RJ were developed to assess epistemic properties of all written notes students contributed on KF: purpose of the note, type of query raised, structure of claims, and basis for justification. The first two reflect disposition and the other two reflect argumentative rigor of a note. No statistically significant difference in the mean of epistemic properties contributed by students at different RJ levels was found. In average, students are disposed towards contributing argumentative notes and raise explanatory questions in the online collaborative discourse. Furthermore, student’s contributions are mainly justified on idiosyncratic basis. The study further investigates whether individual’s EC seeking notes in threads reflects his/her beliefs about quality criteria for good knowledge, and how EC seeking affects ideas progression. Qualitative analysis of threads show students sought EC on ideas and the inquiry process through raising concerns about contextual issues, challenging causal views, task-space evaluation, and methodological evaluation. In many threads analyzed quasi-reflective students were the initiator of EC seeking. They are also active contributors of argumentative build-ons that contribute towards changes in view among peers. Independent-samples t-tests suggest that quasi-reflective students have contributed significantly more notes that sought EC about contextual issues than pre-reflective students (p=.016). To conclude, epistemic properties of notes contributed and individual’s EC seeking acts provide preliminary evidence to support the notion that RJ and individual’s beliefs about quality criteria for good knowledge influence engagement and ideas progression in CSCL. Further studies on using developmental PE theories to study learner’s beliefs and engagement in KB discourse are recommended. / published_or_final_version / Education / Doctoral / Doctor of Philosophy

The project-based collaboration setting is becoming increasingly common at different educational levels. Recent years have witnessed the rising use of wikis as computer-supported collaborative learning (CSCL) environments. However, reports on the application of wiki technology in facilitating collaborative projects at the primary level are few; in particular, information on the affordances and constraints of wikis at this learning stage is limited. Such information is essential for educators when planning and implementing wikis as an effective educational tool. This study aimed to introduce wiki technology to facilitate collaborative project-based learning (Collaborative PjBL) in a primary “General Studies” (GS) course and to explore the associated affordances and constraints. A total of 388 Hong Kong Primary-five (P5) students from 4 local Chinese primary schools used a wiki for their social science group project during their GS course. Adopting a mixed-method approach, a combination of qualitative and quantitative data were collected, including focus group interviews, students’ activities within the wiki platform, students’ reflections written on the wiki pages, and a questionnaire. These data were used to explore the affordances and constraints of the wiki for collaborative projects as perceived by the primary-school students, and to gain an understanding of students’ attitudes towards and perceptions of the wiki in general. The findings showed that the wiki provided five kinds of educational affordances, six kinds of technological affordances, and two kinds of social affordances. The affordances that were aimed for the collaborative PjBL task were therefore achieved. At the same time, constraints were found to be related to technological factors and users’ dispositions. To counterbalance constraints, teachers could select wiki variants and provide more scaffolding on the use of wiki during the process of project completion. Students’ attitudes and perceptions towards the wiki were found to be strongly positive after the group project implementation. The research contributes to our understanding of the use of a form of social media, wiki technology, in primary education. On a theoretical level, it deepens previous research by identifying the categories of the wiki’s affordances and constraints for primary-school students’ collaborative PjBL. On a practical level, the pedagogical implications derived from this study may provide guidelines for primary-school educators to plan collaborative PjBL activities with wiki technology. / published_or_final_version / Education / Master / Master of Philosophy