Abstract
The purpose of this study is to probe into the effects of teaching critical thinking in Civic Education on junior high school students' critical thinking skills and critical thinking disposition.
This very study adopts quasi-experimental design, and the subjects are 68 junior high school students, of whom 34 are put into the experiment group and the other 34 the control group. The experiment group is taught with the critical thinking approach in Civic Education classes while the control group is taught with the traditional teaching method.
The quantity-data-collection instruments include the Critical Thinking Skills Inventory for Elementary and High School Students, the Critical Thinking Disposition Inventory, and the Learning Feedback Questionnaire, which is edited by the researcher. These are used to measure whether or not teaching critical thinking in Civic Education classes achieves the teaching goal, which is to improve the students' critical thinking skills and disposition.
As for the quality analysis, data collected by learning sheets, records of the discussion, the Learning Feedback Questionnaire, and the teacher's observation diary are used to record the students' change in the duration of the teaching experiment so as to examine the teaching effects.
After the quantity and quality analysis, the results indicate that:
1. After the teaching experiment, the students of the experiment group have significantly better performance than the students of the control group on the items of Inference, Interpretations, and Evaluation, but not on the items of Recognition of Assumptions and Deductions.
2. After the teaching experiment, the students of the experiment group have significantly better critical thinking disposition than the students of the control group on the items of Open-mindedness and Systematicity, but not on the items of Truth-seeking, Analyticity, and Inquisitiveness.
3. According to the results of the quality analysis, it is reasonable to say that the students have made an improvement on their abilities of interpretation, inference, deductions, and evaluations as well as on their critical thinking disposition. Moreover, most of them have a positive attitude toward teaching of critical thinking.
Based on the results of this very experiment on teaching critical thinking, there are some suggestions for further research:
1. The subjects should be selected from different schools in different areas.
2. The duration of experiment should be extended.
3. The model of teaching critical thinking in this study is of great worth in Civic Education in junior high school.
4. Pluralistic testing should be adopted.
5. Topics of teaching activities should be related to the teaching materials and to the students' daily life experience.
6. The learning sheets could be designed to help students focus on the issues of discussion.
7.Group discussion is a better way to help students to think.
8.Teachers should pay attention to teaching critical thinking and should undertake related research.
9.Teachers could cooperate with each other to reduce their burden.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:NSYSU/oai:NSYSU:etd-0213103-153110 |
| Date | 13 February 2003 |
| Creators | Chung, Tung-Yu |
| Contributors | none, none, none |
| Publisher | NSYSU |
| Source Sets | NSYSU Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Archive |
| Language | Cholon |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | text |
| Format | application/pdf |
| Source | http://etd.lib.nsysu.edu.tw/ETD-db/ETD-search/view_etd?URN=etd-0213103-153110 |
| Rights | withheld, Copyright information available at source archive |
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