Enhancing Critical Thinking Skills of Elementary School Students through Collaborative Learning

Abstract

Critical thinking and collaborative learning are both important 21st century skills. Through collaborative learning, students can discuss and work together with peers in reviewing a given scenario critically, reevaluate their initial thoughts and justify their decisions by combining the input from peers. With knowledge of the common difficulties faced in elementary school classrooms when using collaborative learning such as sharing a piece of worksheet, this study utilized the application Explain Everything Collaborate to design a series of critical thinking enhancement exercises that enables students to work simultaneously in real time. By using this application, this study designed a series of critical thinking enhancement exercise using collaborative learning. The study results found that when using the same critical thinking enhancement exercise in an individual learning situation and a collaborative learning situation, students in the collaborative learning groups performed better. Through discussions with peers, students could reexamine their answers through the exposure to different perspectives of the issue provided by their peers. Several observations and findings during the study had provided teachers with promising confidence in implementing collaborative learning in the elementary school classrooms.