Promoting Critical Thinking of Elementary School Children Through Scientific Writing Embedded In The Instruction of Science and Technology Field

• Main Authors: Ching-Fang Su, 蘇靜芳
• Other Authors: 郭金美
• Format: Others
• Language: zh-TW
• Published: 2004
• Online Access: http://ndltd.ncl.edu.tw/handle/04982995136279205485

碩士 === 國立嘉義大學 === 科學教育研究所 === 92 === The purpose of this study was to survey the effects of critical thinking skills and dispositions of elementary school children by applying the method of scientific writing embedded in instruction for the curriculum of science and technology field. I n this study, we adopted the method of pretest-posttest quasi-experimental design. The subjects were two six-grade classes of one elementary school in Chiayi city, 33 children in each class. One of these two classes was the experimental and the other was control group. The experimental group was taught with the instruction of scientific writing, while the other group was taught with the traditional instruction. This experiment lasted for a semester. All the samples were examined with “Cornell Critical Thinking Test Level X” and “The Disposition Toward Critical Thinking Scale” before and after the instruction. All the experimental data were analyzed with ANCOVA. Four findings are listed as the following: 1. Scientific writing embedded in instruction promotes statistically the critical thinking skills of elementary school children. The experimental group children exhibited better than the control group ones in the aspects of the promoting of “holistic critical thinking skills”, “induction” and “deduction”. There was no significant difference about the abilities of “observation and decision credibility” and “recognition hypothesis”. 2. There are different influences of critical thinking among students of different levelsthrough the scientific writing embedded in instruction. The middle achievement children of the experimental group presented significantly better than the control group one. However, there was no significant difference between two groups for the high or low achievement. 3. The critical thinking dispositions of elementary school children were significantly promoted through the scientific writing embedded in instruction The experimental group children exhibited better than the control group in the aspects of “holistic critical thinking dispositions”, “systematicity and analyticity”, and “holistic and reflective thinking”. There was no significant difference about two dimensions of critical thinking: “open-mindedness” and “intellectual inquisitiveness” 4. There was no significant difference between two groups for different students of different levels about critical thinking dispositions after the scientific writing embedded in instruction According to the survey of this experiment, scientific writing is a good strategy to the enhancement of critical thinking skills and dispositions for elementary school children. We suggest that teachers can adopt scientific writing embedded in instruction to promote the development of critical thinking skills and dispositions for school children and teachers can provide a diversity of thinking ways and develop more suitable scientific writing activities towards the need of different achievement children.