The Revise And Testing Of The Self-designed Questionaire Of College Students' Critical Thinking

Critical thinking, a hot issue in recent years, not only attracts psychologists'attention, but also evokes the interest of education experts and philosophers. It is one of the important tools to achieve the goal of seeking truth or that close to the truth in the process of human development. In addition, critical thinking is an important resource for the intellectual exploitation, which drives the society towards a further knowledge one. Due to the importance of critical thinking, more and more countries, including the United States, have intended to cultivate and improve students' ability of critical thinking since the 1980s. It is also essential for Chinese college students to equip themselves with the capacity to think critically in order to keep clear mind and tell right from wrong. In this regard, the present study aims to formulate questionnaire and explore the critical thinking structure of college students, which has important theoretical significance and practical significance.The research group of Higher education institute in Shantou university, made some progress in the studies on the critical thinking of college students. They wrote initial questionnaires to examine the critical thinking pattern of the college students in Shantou University. The current research is to revise their initial questionnaires and test the reliability and validity of the questionnaires. The questionnaires revised are adopted to scrutinize the differences between different student groups and development of their critical thinking, which is aimed to make contributions to the teaching reform in terms of the improvement of critical thinking ability. .According to the research purpose and content, this thesis mainly adopts five methods: interview, literature analysis, measurement, investigation and statistical analysis, to unfold the following aspects.(1) It introduced the foundation on which my study is based, including the the major achievements the research group has obtained, and the methods they has adopted.(2) It revised the college students'critical thinking questionnaires and tested their reliability and validity. Including the forecast test for initial questionaires by 20 students, the second test for the second questionaires by 1079 students, as well as the last test for the third questionaires by 407 students. (3) It formed two sets of formal questionnaires after experencing three times revision, then, to measure some college students and high school students with the formal questionaires to understand their critical thinking development present situation, and the differences between or among different groups.(4) It analyzed testing results and discussed the possible reasons for the differences, and gave some references for making up the differences and improve students'critical thinking ability.In the study, four major findings are discovered through the above work. Firstly, it is feasible to explore college students' critical thinking structure by empirical methods such as interviews. Secondly, two revised principles (participantsfeedback principle and data analysis principle) and two revised standards (factor analysis standard and project analysis standard) prove to be effective. Thirdly, the test results of university students and middle school students showed: in critical thinking scores, university science students score higher than liberal arts students; Further analysis, in comparison of different specialized classifications, scores from high to low in turn is: natural science, social science, humanities; Boys score higher than girls; The important group of middle school scores higher than college group. Finally, students'attitude and motivation in the testing process affect greatly the results of the critical thinking.