Critical Thinking of Students: Essence, Structure, Conditions of Development

Abstract

The article analyzes and defines the essence of the concept of «critical thinking», presents the structure of critical thinking. The purpose of the article is to reveal the essence of the concept of «critical thinking», to determine its structure and to characterize the conditions of its effective development on the basis of the conducted analysis of the scientific literature. The following methods were used in the study: analysis and interpretation of domestic and foreign philosophical, normative, psychological, pedagogical and methodological literature; analysis and generalization of advanced domestic, foreign and personal pedagogical experience on the research problem. The results. On the basis of the considered position of the theory of critical thinking development according to S. Terno and regularities on which this technique is based, the procedures which belong to the operating block of critical thinking are defined. The essence of the concept of «students’ critical thinking» is interpreted as a system of judgments that is used to analyze things and events with the formulation of sound conclusions and allows students to make sound judgments and interpretations, as well as correctly apply conclusions to situations and problems. The peculiarities of the development of students’ critical thinking include the following: the consistent pattern of dynamics, according to which the number of all subsequent changes depends on the number of changes at the previous stage; the regularity of personality development in the educational process; the regularity of educational process management; the stimulation regularity; the regularity of unity of sensory, logical and practice in the educational process; the regularity of unity of external (pedagogical) and internal (cognitive) activities; the regularity of the educational process conditionality. It is proved that the structure of students' critical thinking consists of three components: motivational, activity, reflexive-evaluative. The author developed a model for the development of students’ critical thinking, the tasks of which are: mastering by students the knowledge of logical, problem, creative thinking; teaching students the basic logical concepts (reflection – denial – criticism – criticism – self-criticism – argumentation – proof – refutation – evaluation – self-evaluation – evaluative judgment); forming the students’ ability to build critical reasoning; teaching students to identify logical errors of critical assessment of the phenomenon, behavior. Conclusions. The results of the study showed that an effective means of managing the process of forming students' critical thinking is the use of techniques and methods for solving problems, and that different forms and methods of teaching are used depending on the content of teaching, teaching aids, the students’ individual characteristics of the study level, and the level of teachers’ readiness to the development of critical thinking of students.