Use Of Critical Thinking Skills Research Articles

BUILDING CRITICAL-THINKING SKILLS OF MASTERS IN THE PROCESS OF ENGLISH-LANGUAGE RESEARCH PAPER PREPARATION

The article is aimed at considering the use of critical-thinking skills in the process of scientific English language studying for Masters at aviation universities. It is claimed that this approach in the educational process contributes to the formation of English-speaking skills for paper presentation in scientific and professional spheres of the future aviation specialists. Keywords: critical-thinking skills, professional activity, standard task of professional training, research paper presentation, scientific and professional field.

The use of the Socratic inquiry to facilitate critical thinking in nursing education.

BackgroundCritical thinking is a skill that nurse practitioners are required to have. Socratic inquiry can be used to facilitate critical thinking in nursing. Nurse educators seek methods to infuse into teaching content to facilitate students’ critical thinking skills, and one of such methods is the use of Socratic inquiry as a teaching method.AimThis article aims to explore and describe how Socratic inquiry can be used to facilitate critical thinking in nursing education.SettingThis study took place in a nursing department at a university in Johannesburg.MethodsA qualitative, exploratory, descriptive and contextual design was used. Purposive sampling was used to draw a sample of 15 nurse educators determined by data saturation. Miles, Huberman and Saldaña’s methodology of qualitative data analysis was used. Lincoln and Guba’s strategies for trustworthiness and Dhai and McQuoid-Mason’s principles of ethical consideration were used.ResultsThree main themes emerged: the context necessary for Socratic inquiry, dispositions in Socratic inquiry and strategies to use in Socratic inquiry to facilitate critical thinking skills of students.ConclusionsSocratic inquiry can be used both in education and practice settings to facilitate the use of critical thinking skills to solve problems.

Developing children’s reasoning and inquiry, concept analysis, and meaningmaking skills through the community of inquiry

This paper presents the results of a research done to investigate the effectiveness of Philosophy for Children (P4C), a pedagogy employing philosophical dialogue in a community of inquiry, in a Philippine primary school. Quantitative analysis of critical thinking skills identified by Sharp and Splitter (1995) as (1) reasoning; (2) concept analysis; and (3) meaning-making revealed that there was a considerable increase in the frequency of the children’s use of such critical thinking skills over the course of fifteen (15) sessions of dialogical inquiry. Moreover, qualitative analysis of excerpts from the dialogue transcripts accounted for the refinement of the children’s use of the critical thinking skills. This pioneering work thus calls for further research that will implement P4C in other grade levels and to explore other indicators of development in children’s thinking. Further, it recommends that primary schools adopt P4C in Philippine basic education curriculum and that teacher education institutions provide teacher training and include P4C for pre-service training.

Critical thinking in the context of Chinese postgraduate students’ thesis writing: a positioning theory perspective

ABSTRACTWhile research exists on the effectiveness of pedagogical methods in relation to the development of Chinese students’ critical thinking (CT), there has been little research on Chinese students’ experiences around CT in relation to their own contexts. This paper reports on the findings of a study that investigated the experiences of the use of CT by 29 Chinese postgraduate students studying in a range of contexts in China and the UK. All student participants were engaged in second language education at Master’s level. Data were collected mainly through ethnographic interviews and analysed within the framework of positioning theory. The findings reveal that the students’ use of CT skills was not only a demonstration of ability but also a consequence of their positioning. In the context of thesis writing, the students’ positioning was exercised as perceived rights and duties regarding knowledge, directed by their own goals for personal development. The study has implications for research and teaching of CT in cross-cultural contexts.

Self-Assessment of Critical Thinking Skills in EFL Writing Courses at the University Level: Reconsideration of the Critical Thinking Construct

The Critical Thinking (CT) component has by now secured a key place within EFL curriculum aims and objectives. The integration of a CT dimension into the teaching of the writing skill in particular has received considerable attention in research. However, research has also pointed to the failure of assessment practices to evaluate CT development. It is within this context that the present work advocates a standard based approach to the assessment of CT in EFL writing that aligns assessment criteria to the critical abilities articulated in the learning outcomes (i.e., standards). This fosters a conception of CT measures that associates components of CT with higher order writing skills. Accordingly, the first objective of the study is to empirically test the relationship between CT dispositions and metacognitive strategy use in an attempt to establish a model of writing (self-)assessment that combines these two dimensions. As assessment is viewed as a formative evaluation process subservient of learning, the study also targets the students’ self-assessment strategies during the writing process. To this purpose, a questionnaire has been designed, and administered to 100 students at the Faculty of Letters and Human Sciences in Rabat to tap their perceptions and use of CT skills. The data analysis revealed that critical thinking development and assessment are metacognitive in nature; it follows that metacognitive skills such as planning, self-evaluating and reflecting are to be used as an essential vehicle in the development of Critical Thinking skills. This points to the paramount role of CT-informed formative (self-)assessment practices in benefiting ELT writing learners.

IT’S IN THE GENES: EXPLORING RELATIONSHIPS BETWEEN CRITICAL THINKING AND PROBLEM SOLVING IN UNDERGRADUATE AGRISCIENCE STUDENTS’ SOLUTIONS TO PROBLEMS IN MENDELIAN GENETICS

This study was conducted to examine the statistical relationship between problem solving and critical thinking to guide future teaching and research for agricultural educators using the problem-solving approach. Students enrolled in an undergraduate genetics course in the College of Agricultural and Life Sciences at the University of Florida were prompted to use their criticalthinking skills while answering a problem in the context of biotechnology. Students’ criticalthinking skills were assessed through content analysis of a think-aloud protocol. Other cognitive factors assessed included problem-solving style, problem-solving level, and critical-thinking disposition. A path analysis was used to examine how these trait-based variables and use of critical-thinking skills contribute to solving a problem. Of these cognitive factors, only problem-solving level, critical-thinking disposition, and use of critical-thinking skills were included in the revised model. The authors argue that although correlations were significant, they were low and indicated that critical thinking and problem-solving may be more independent than previously thought. Limitations of this study require more research to better understand how these cognitive factors are employed by the learner to solve problems.

Postoperative Nursing Care of Gastric Bypass Patients

The incidence of morbid obesity is increasing epidemically in the United States. Multiple factors affect the disease process. Numerous methods have been used to treat morbid obesity. The current gold standard operation, Roux-en-Y gastric bypass, has gained popularity. Because a variety of surgical procedures for weight loss are being performed and new procedures are being introduced, the delivery of specialized nursing care has come to the forefront. Nurses' application of current nursing literature and standards of care for postoperative gastric bypass patients puts nurses in a pivotal position to affect both early and late outcomes of these patients after surgery. Morbid obesity is defined, and current treatment trends and postoperative complications are discussed. Recognition and identification of unique nursing considerations and use of critical thinking skills to best meet the needs of postoperative gastric bypass patients, including how obesity affects hemodynamic parameters and airway management, are highlighted.

Teacher Trainees in Ghana in the Early 1960s: Women and the Teaching of Home Science

GHANA STUDIES / Volume 8 ISSN 1536-5514 / E-ISSN 2333-7168© 2007 by the Board of Regents of the University of Wisconsin System 103 TEACHER TRAINEES IN GHANA IN THE EARLY 1960s Women and the Teaching of Home Science RICHARD GLOTZER LILA ENGBERG I was happy I could impress Ghanaian illiterate women ... these women are old and will die away soon, giving way to the young folk; ... why not help the young girls to develop in one way or another? I therefore concluded to try and have a Housecraft course ... Prologue1 Young women were presented with unprecedented opportunities and challenges in the newly independent Ghana of the early 1960s. In their own words, a small group of teacher trainees reflect on how their upbringings and early education prepared them for the challenge of making a place for themselves in a society where rapid transition to western style modernity and resilient traditional values coexisted in uneasy rivalry, often mediated by vestiges of colonialism. Relying on interviews with their former teachers, archival sources, and autobiographies, this article examines three aspects of these women’s lives: their use of critical thinking skills—developed in a school curriculum discouraging critical thought; the influence of families on school achievement; and their assessment of future life and career aspirations. 1. Drafts this paper were presented at the Canadian Association for African Studies Annual Meeting, Sherbrooke, Quebec (May, 1999), and the Midwest Alliance for African Studies, University of Kansas at Lawrence (October, 1999). Grants from the Rockefeller Archives Center, North Tarrytown, N.Y. to the first author for a larger project on Anglo-American relations in post-war Africa, supported portions of this research. 104 Ghana Studies • volume 8 • 2005 Introduction In 1943 Fred Clarke, one of Britain’s foremost educators, prepared a typescript memorandum, Mass Education of African Peoples, recommending greatly expanded opportunities for girls and women in education and society . Looking ahead to the post war period, Clarke sought a gradual inclusion of women into an expanded educational system leading to broader roles in African societies. Writing for colleagues on a Colonial Office Subcommittee , his ideas were subsumed in Mass Education in African Society (1944), a report largely silent about women. Tampering with African family roles and social structure at a time when large numbers of young African men would be demobilizing after war service seemed inadvisable.2 Within a few short years Britain’s post-war African development plans would be in disarray. The Gold Coast Colony, believed to be the most advanced and stable of Britain’ s West African territories achieved home rule in 1951 and independence as Ghana in 1957. Gone were the gradualist notions of infrastructure development.3 In its place was the scramble to develop national institutions, embracing Ghanaian aspirations and western style modernity while preserving African authenticity. The government’s rapid expansion of places in primary education led to increased competition for scarce places at the secondary level.4 With elementary education now compulsory, just over 500,000 children were 2. CO 879/148, CO No. 186., 1944, Colonial Office Archives, Kew, London, U. K., also Timothy Parsons, “Dangerous Education? The Army as School in Colonial East Africa”, Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History, 28, 1 2000, pp. 112–134. 3. In the 1940s the Elliot Commission on Higher Education in West Africa recommended establishing one English speaking University for the whole of British West Africa to serve Sierra Leone, Ghana and Nigeria. By the l950s, popular sentiment, symbolized by the 1958 All Africa People’s Party Conference in Accra, dashed plans for a single university (to be based in Ibadan, Nigeria) in favor of national institutions. Clive Whitehead (1987) “The ‘Two-way Pull’ and the Establishment of University Education in British West Africa”, History of Education, 16, 2, pp. 119–133. 4. Foster, Philip (1965), Education and Social Change in Ghana. Chicago, University of Chicago Press, pp. 179–219. Glotzer and Engberg • Teacher Trainees in Ghana in the Early 1960s 105 in school, with many expecting to go on for post-primary education, also slated to become compulsory. While twice as many boys were at primary and middle school as girls, this represented a marked improvement over the...