Education literature is replete with articles on critical thinking in secondary and post secondary education. However, the bulk of this literature focuses on the process from the educators perspective of student performance and understanding of critical thinking. Very little research seems to have been done to uncover what the students themselves may think. <p>This thesis attempts to address this lack of enquiry into student perceptions by illuminating how a group of pre-service teachers (and one long service master teacher) have experienced critical thinking in their education, and how they define and understand it. The thesis consists of a literature review that briefly examines the history of critical thinking in education, and how student understandings of critical thinking are perceived by professors and others at the post secondary level.<p>Then, through a series of semi-structured interviews, the thesis examines the perspectives of eleven participants in comparison to those commonly held by writers and educators in the field. The data indicate that most of the participants did not acknowledge encountering critical thinking methodologies or structures during their K-12 education in any significant way, and that K-12 did not prepare them for critical thinking at the University level- and in fact often did not meet the criteria laid out in Saskatchewan Curricula. This finding is in general agreement with the literature. However, in addition, most of the students asserted that their experience indicated that high level critical thinking was not actually required for success at the undergraduate level.<p>The data from this thesis suggest that further study may be useful in understanding how critical thinking may be better taught and encouraged at all levels of education.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:USASK/oai:usask.ca:etd-07082008-121114 |
| Date | 10 July 2008 |
| Creators | Luukkonen, David Walter |
| Contributors | Julien, Richard |
| Publisher | University of Saskatchewan |
| Source Sets | University of Saskatchewan Library |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | text |
| Format | application/pdf |
| Source | http://library.usask.ca/theses/available/etd-07082008-121114/ |
| Rights | unrestricted, I hereby certify that, if appropriate, I have obtained and attached hereto a written permission statement from the owner(s) of each third party copyrighted matter to be included in my thesis, dissertation, or project report, allowing distribution as specified below. I certify that the version I submitted is the same as that approved by my advisory committee. I hereby grant to University of Saskatchewan or its agents the non-exclusive license to archive and make accessible, under the conditions specified below, my thesis, dissertation, or project report in whole or in part in all forms of media, now or hereafter known. I retain all other ownership rights to the copyright of the thesis, dissertation or project report. I also retain the right to use in future works (such as articles or books) all or part of this thesis, dissertation, or project report. |
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