The Effect Of Problem-Driven Cooperative Learning On Critical Thinking Of High School Students

Critical thinking is a cognitive process of thinking.It refers to a kind of cognitive ability that an individual comes to an objective judgement about the process,background,arguments and evaluations of studying things.It determines an individuals' thinks and actions through positive thinking,analysis of the truth and accuracy of certain substances and phenomena.It mainly consists of two aspects: critical thinking preference and critical thinking skills.The previous researches showed that both problem teaching and cooperative learning model can promote the development of students' critical thinking.However,there are seldom researches on the influence of the combination of the two on critical thinking.Therefore,this paper explores the influence of cooperative learning driven by problem on critical thinking of high school students.The research instruments of this paper are the California Critical Thinking Disposition Scale(CCTDI)and California Critical Thinking Skill Test(CCTST).The CCTDI's retesting validity was good since Cronbach's alpha coefficient was 0.86>0.8,and the split-half coefficient was 0.79,and the reliability was also good.The test-retest reliability of CCTST was r=0.63,p<0.01.Both the validity and reliability were good.The two scales both have good reliability and validity.The current experiment mainly based on quasi-experimental methods,with literature research method,comparative analysis method and questionnaire survey method as supplement.The research subjects are students of Class 57 and Class 58 from Linfen No.12 Middle School.The students in Class 57 were taught in a collaborative,problem-driven learning model,while the students in Class 58 were taught in the traditional way.In the current experiment,the independent variable was the problem-driven collaborative learningapproach and the dependent variable was the students' critical thinking score.The control of unrelated variables were mainly conducted from the following aspects: 1)The basic conditions of the experimental subjects were the same.The number of students in these two classes were accordance with each other,as well as the proportion of male and female.Moreover,the critical thinking score and biological score were also at the similar level.2)The teacher of these two classes was same.3)The teaching contents were same.4)The progress of teaching was consistent.5)The after-class tutoring was same.6)The extracurricular activities were same.From October to December in 2017,I taught 6 times in the experimental class(Class 57)under a problem-driven cooperative learning strategy and conducted the teaching experiments.Firstly,the critical thinking scales were issued both before and after the experiment as the pre-test and post-test.Then,three students were selected to conduct interviews in order to know the students' feelings about the teaching strategy.Finally,based on the data collection and analysis of the critical thinking scales' scores before and after the experiment,and the final grades of the last semester as well as the current semester of the two classes,some conclusions could be drawn as follows:(1)The cooperative learning driven by problems can significantly promote the development of students' critical thinking.a.The critical thinking preference: the mean score of post-test in the experimental class was 282.864,while that in the control class was 265.184.And P-values of independent t-test of the two classes in the post-test was 0.004(<0.05),which indicated that the students in the experimental class had a significant improvement of the critical thinking preference after teaching.To be specific,compared with the pre-test,both the scores of males and females' critical thinking preference had improved significantly;however,compared with the traditional teaching,there was a significant improvement in females' performance(p=0.009<0.05 of the independent t-test)while there was no significant difference among males' performance(p=0.224>0.05 of the independent t-test).c.Critical thinking skills: the mean score of the post-test in the experimental class was 17.159 while the mean score of the control class was 15.237.And the P-values ofindependent t-test of the two classes in the post-test was 0.007(<0.05),which indicated that the students in the experimental class have gained a significant improvement of critical thinking skills after teaching.To be specific,compared with the pre-test,there was a significant difference among males' score in the experimental class in the post-test,while there was no significant difference among females.Compared with the traditional teaching,there was a significant improvement among male students' scores(p=0.006<0.05 of the independent t-test),and although there was a improvement of female students' scores,it was not significant(p=0.243>0.05 of the independent t-test).(2)The cooperative learning driven by problems has different effects on different dimensions of critical thinking.a.The critical thinking preference: there was not significant improvement of these two dimensions of the truth seeking and the mind opening.The result of one-way ANOVA analysis showed that P was 0.064 for the truth seeking,P was 0.714 for the mind opening.The P-values of them were both higher than 0.005;there were significant improvement for the results of five dimensions of systematic ability(p=0.001),self-confidence(p=0.009),curiosity(p=0.003),cognitive maturity(p=0.000),and analytical ability(p=0.032),and the P-values of them were all lower than 0.05.b.Critical thinking skills: There was no significant improvement in the dimensions of assessment(p=0.864)and analysis(p=0.736),while the improvement of reasoning(p=0.000)was significantly.(3)There was no correlation between critical thinking preference and critical skills.Since the r of the correlation test coefficient was 0.195,P-value was 0.068(>0.05).It showed that there was no correlation between them.(4)The problem-driven cooperative learning could significantly improve students' biological scores.The P-value of the independent t-test of these two classes in the post-test was 0.000<0.05,which indicated that the teaching method could significantly improve the students' biological scores.(5)The results of the interviews showed that the improvement of students' critical thinking scores was related to the students' enthusiasm in cooperative learning.The studentswith high motivation had a greater degree of critical thinking ability.