Discuss about the Understanding And Teaching Of Critical Thinking.
The purpose of this essay is to critically review and argue the findings of an article. The understanding and teaching of critical thinking will be critically evaluated in this essay to understand the background of the research and the objective that the research is establishing. The core research problem will be identified in the essay in order to understand the need of critical thinking. The way by which the research is conducted will be discussed in the essay. A particular article will be critically evaluated in this research study in order to understand the limitation of the research under consideration, the assumptions and effectiveness of the article. The analysis of the article “Understanding and teaching critical thinking—A new approach” is provided in the following section.
Critical Thinking
It is essential to develop student’s critical thinking as it is a significant goal of education of the societies across the globe. The research background mainly deals with the issues associated with the critical thinking. The research paper makes use of phenomenographic theoretical approach to evaluate to understand critical thinking (Larsson, 2017). Critical thinking can be described as process and ability of thinking rationale and clearly by getting to know the logical connection between ideas. The concept and idea of critical thinking has been a concept of debate over the years. Critical thinking skills are important in education because it helps in creating the link between the ideas (Yang & Chang, 2013). Furthermore, it helps in identifying the inconsistencies and errors in reasoning. Therefore, it is essential to infuse the idea of critical thinking in school level.
A similar study was conducted with an aim of creating digital classrooms that will enable the students in developing the skills of critical thinking and information literacy. The Students in such experimental set up were instructed to act on quantitative comparison among the data sets and between the data models. The experiment proved that the students in such experimental setup found to be 12 times more spontaneous to propose chances to their process of thinking (Holmes, Wieman & Bonn, 2015). These students further showed much more sophisticated reasoning of the data. Therefore it can be said that it is possible to infuse the idea of critical thinking in students’ mind from the elementary school level. According to Kettler, (2014), developing the critical thinking skills is found to be worthy of educational goal as the reorganization of the importance of critical thinking has been increasing over the years (Liu, Frankel & Roohr, 2014). The article under analysis performs an experiment with a number of students to identify and understand their critical thinking ability.
Critical thinking is a process to clearly think and understand the logical interconnectivity between different ideas. Understanding and teaching critical thinking is essential as it provides an ability to think clearly and rationally (Smith & Szymanski, 2013). It is an ability to engage in reflective and independent thinking and therefore teaching critical thinking is essential. Critical thinking provides an ability to rigorously question an idea and assumptions without just accepting them.
A research about understanding and teaching critical study was undertaken. The research aimed to describe the different processes and hierarchically ways for understanding the tasks and different types of critical thinking those tasks delimit (Ku et al., 2014). There are certain core research questions that the article under evaluation addresses. In this article, the researcher evaluates the solving of an essay task that is designed in order to elicit critical thinking. Since a phenomenographic approach is followed for the research study, it is expected that the research will be able to find the answers to the research questions.
The research questions that the article addresses are important to address since the development of thinking critically is considered to a main goal of education in the societies and around the world. The viability of the different processes of teaching the process of critical thinking to the students is to be judged which can be done only after having a complete understanding of critical thinking.
A phenomenographic research process is followed with primary research method. The participants who were chosen for the research were aged 15-16. A total of 19 participants were chosen for the research out of which there were 11 girls and 8 boys. For implementing the task in a manner so that the participants worked separately in separate occasions without any limit of time. As an empirical analysis to the study, the different processes in which each student understood the tasks and their answers are analyzed (Larsson, 2017). The analysis involved an iterative way of reading the essay answer for similarities and differences for understanding the thinking process of each member or group. The analysis involved reading the essay answers repeatedly for accurate interpretation. The research highlights that the most important characteristics of understanding that a particular process or phenomenon is constituted of a number of discerned components.
The research article evaluated need for teaching and understanding critical thinking. The article introduced a phenomenographic approach to critical thinking to show how the selected approach can help in understanding the differences of manifestation of critical thinking and its contribution in shaping the different learning activities and process of thinking of the students (Brookfield, 2013). The findings of the research study confirm that the approach of phenemenongraphy is a feasible approach of building a strong foundation of critical thinking for the students. However, a more thorough research about the feasibility of phenomenographic approach is needed to be carried out and further exploration about the teaching process of critical thinking is needed to be carried out as well.
The article establishes the fact that critical thinking is important to be infused from the school level. This is justified as the critical thinking is considered to be an essential skill that is needed for the students of 21st century (Kettler, 2014). Kettle (2014), defined critical thinking as a purposeful and self regulatory judgment that help in easy interpretation, analysis, evalautaion and inference of the evident and concepts. This is considered to be important for the elementary school student as having an idea of critical thinking from n very early age will help in shaping the mind towards the concept and its importance.
The experimental results shows that the phenomenographic approach to critical thinking can be considered as a strong theoretical framework for a clear understanding of the issues and differences in manifestation of critical thinking, understanding the concept to develop the critical thinking ability of the students. This approach therefore can be considered as a solid and cohesive theoretical framework, which can further help in understanding and studying critical thinking (Yuliani & Saragih, 2015). By performing the experiment with the students of varied age group, it is established that the phenomenography can provide a feasible way to create a strong foundation of critical thinking as the students in the experimental condition has been found to be performed in a better way. The main significance of the article is that although critical thinking is one of the major unsolved mysteries of pedagogy, a specific theoretical approach can help in infusing the concepts on the same in students’ mind which will in turn help in shaping their critical thinking ability (Kong, 2014).
According to the Holmes, Wieman & Bonn (2015), critical thinking is an ability to take proper decisions based on the use of data and its inherent uncertainties. Therefore, the young minds need to develop the critical thinking ability from school level as the need for such quantitative and critical thinking can occur in many contexts (Aizikovitsh-Udi & Cheng, 2015). The key ability of making an accurate decision based on the available data is considered to be a result of critical thinking.
The article provides a good understanding of critical thinking and the need for teaching as well as getting a good understanding of critical thinking. However, there is a need for carrying out a research on the teaching strategies of critical thinking. The phenemenographic may or may not have an effect on the teaching sequences. This is one of the major limitations of this research study. The major assumptions that the author has made in this research is that the phenomenographic approach will be effective to all the age groups. This is agreeable as the article has provided an understanding of the process by which phenomenography can act as a cohesive theoretical frame for teaching as well as understanding the concept.
The article is quite effective is establishing the fact that it is essential for the students’ to develop a critical thinking ability to tackle any situations in a more effective manner. As discussed in the report, many different authors have also established the need for including the concepts of critical thinking in the curriculum from the school level. However, the article does not discuss any process or strategies of making use of phenomenographic approach in teaching critical thinking, the presence of which could have made the article more effective.
Conclusion
The essay evaluates the need for understanding and teaching critical thinking. The researcher performs an experimental study to evaluate the effectiveness of phenomenographic approach in infusing the idea of critical thinking to the students. Ideas from different authors are discussed in this essay to evaluate the effectiveness of this article. The article is found to lack the strategies of implementing phenomenographic approach in teaching critical thinking.
References
Aizikovitsh-Udi, E., & Cheng, D. (2015). Developing critical thinking skills from dispositions to abilities: Mathematics education from early childhood to high school. Creative Education, 6(04), 455.
Brookfield, S. (2013). Teaching for critical thinking. International Journal of Adult Vocational Education and Technology (IJAVET), 4(1), 1-15.
Holmes, N. G., Wieman, C. E., & Bonn, D. A. (2015). Teaching critical thinking. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 112(36), 11199-11204.
Kettler, T. (2014). Critical thinking skills among elementary school students: Comparing identified gifted and general education student performance. Gifted Child Quarterly, 58(2), 127-136.
Kong, S. C. (2014). Developing information literacy and critical thinking skills through domain knowledge learning in digital classrooms: An experience of practicing flipped classroom strategy. Computers & Education, 78, 160-173.
Ku, K. Y., Ho, I. T., Hau, K. T., & Lai, E. C. (2014). Integrating direct and inquiry-based instruction in the teaching of critical thinking: an intervention study. Instructional Science, 42(2), 251-269.
Larsson, K. (2017). Understanding and teaching critical thinking—A new approach. International Journal of Educational Research, 84, 32-42.
Liu, O. L., Frankel, L., & Roohr, K. C. (2014). Assessing critical thinking in higher education: Current state and directions for next?generation assessment. ETS Research Report Series, 2014(1), 1-23.
Smith, V. G., & Szymanski, A. (2013). Critical thinking: More than test scores. International Journal of Educational Leadership Preparation, 8(2), 16-25.
Yang, Y. T. C., & Chang, C. H. (2013). Empowering students through digital game authorship: Enhancing concentration, critical thinking, and academic achievement. Computers & Education, 68, 334-344.
Yuliani, K., & Saragih, S. (2015). The Development of Learning Devices Based Guided Discovery Model to Improve Understanding Concept and Critical Thinking Mathematically Ability of Students at Islamic Junior High School of Medan. Journal of Education and Practice, 6(24), 116-128.
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