Analyzing Student Teacher Critical Thinking through Blogs in an Electronic Community of Practice

Abstract

Technology is becoming increasingly popular in higher education in the way students are asked to communicate and collaborate. The student teaching experience is an integral part of developing critical thinking skills in pre-service teachers. During this experience, it is important that student teachers practice the theory they have been taught in their preparatory programs. This study determined the frequency in which student teachers at Iowa State University posted blogs in an electronic community of practice at each level of critical thinking, the relationship between the number of blogs posted by each student teacher and student teachers’ average level of critical thinking displayed in those blog posts. The Florida Taxonomy of Cognitive Behavior was used to code student teacher blog posts. Six levels of critical thinking, according to Bloom’s Taxonomy of Educational Objectives, were present. Of the student teachers’ blog posts (n=942), 89.5% (f = 843) were at lower-order levels of critical thinking, consistent with prior research. The results did not indicate a significant relationship between the number of posts per student teacher (N=21) and student teachers’ average level of critical thinking. Teacher preparation programs should focus on modeling critical thinking in order for student teachers to incorporate and practice problem-solving, evaluating, creating, and many other critical thinking skills during the student teaching experience.