A Study On The Correlation Between Teachers’ Questioning Cognitive Hierarchy And High School Students’ Critical Thinking Ability

Nowadays,more and more attention has been paid to the development of critical thinking,which has been studied and concerned widely by the academic scholars.However,there are various influential factors in the process of developing students’ critical thinking ability.This paper adopts classroom observation,interview and questionnaire to study whether teachers’ questioning of different cognitive level and students’ critical thinking ability has a correlation in senior high school English classes.The study aims to explore the three research questions: 1.How is the cognitive hierarchy of teachers’ questioning distributed in class? 2.What is the current situation of students’ critical thinking ability? 3.What’s the relationship between teachers’ questions of different cognitive level and students’ critical thinking ability?This study takes two English teachers and their students in the second grade of high school in Hebei Province,that is students in a total of four classes as research subjects.The subjects of this study are two English teachers and their students.Each teacher teaches two classes.These students are in grade two of senior high school in Hebei Province.The author makes classroom observation for five weeks,records questions asked by teachers in class,and calculates the number and proportion of teachers’ questions in the process of analyzing the statistics.Then,the author interviews the teachers’ opinions on the classroom questioning after class.After the classroom observation,the questionnaire is given to the students.This study adopts the California Critical Thinking Skills Test(CCTST-CV2000)revised by Luo Qingxu and Yang Xinhui(2002).Through the questionnaire,the author collects and analyzes the data to know about the current situation of students’ critical thinking ability.This study finds that: 1.In English class,the questions of teachers are basically distributed on the low cognitive level questions and less high cognitive level questions(According to Bloom’s taxonomy of educational objectives: knowledge questions,comprehension questions belong to low cognitive level questions;application questions,analysis questions,synthesis questions and evaluation questions belong to high cognitive level questions);2.Generally,the current situation of students’ critical thinking ability is not strong,and most of them are at moderate level;3.There is a significant correlation between the different cognitive level of teachers’ questioning and students’ critical thinking ability.The more high cognitive level questions have been asked,the higher scores of students’ critical thinking ability will be.Different cognitive level questions and different sub-scales of critical thinking ability have different correlations.The study finds that the critical thinking ability of students is not strong.In view of this situation,it is hoped that this study can bring some enlightenments for teachers to improve students’ critical thinking ability.Teachers should enhance the awareness of cultivating students’ critical thinking ability and improve their professional quality continually.And they should design and use different cognitive questions scientifically so as to promote the development of students’ critical thinking ability.