A Correlation Study Of College Students’ Critical Thinking Disposition And Intercultural Awareness

Critical thinking ability includes critical thinking skills and critical thinking disposition.Critical thinking disposition is the consistent internal motivation to solve problems and make decisions by using critical thinking(Facione 1995).Intercultural awareness is one of the important dimensions reflecting intercultural communication competence.There is no doubt that the improvement of critical thinking disposition and intercultural awareness plays a positive role in promoting critical thinking ability and intercultural communication competence.However,the relationship between critical thinking disposition and intercultural awareness remains to be further studied.At present,there are few studies combining critical thinking ability with intercultural communication competence.And most research in China focus on the current situation of critical thinking ability and intercultural communication competence and means of cultivating them.Critical thinking ability and intercultural communication competence are broad concepts composed of multiple dimensions,which need a variety of tools to measure and evaluate.Therefore,this paper selects their sub-dimensions,that is,critical thinking disposition and intercultural awareness to put the broad concepts into specific ones and aims to make an empirical study on the correlation between critical thinking disposition and intercultural awareness.This paper aims to answer the following questions:(1)What is the current situation of college students’ critical thinking disposition and intercultural awareness?(2)How is college students’ critical thinking disposition correlated with their intercultural awareness?(3)What are the similarities and differences between liberal arts and science students’ critical thinking disposition and intercultural awareness?And how is their critical thinking disposition and intercultural awareness correlated respectively? In order to answer the above research questions,this study uses Critical Thinking Disposition Inventory for Chinese College Students from Wen Qiufang’s2009 edition and Inventory of Cross-cultural Sensitivity designed by K.Cushner(1997)to conduct questionnaire surveys on 200 senior students from 5 universities in Northeast China.The results of the questionnaires are analyzed by SPSS,and six representative students are selected for interview.The major findings are as follows:(1)College students in this study generally have positive critical thinking disposition with reluctant support attitude and their intercultural awareness is at a medium to high level.(2)There is a significant positive correlation between students’ intercultural awareness and critical thinking disposition.All the 8 sub-dimensions of critical thinking disposition have weak or moderate correlations with Cultural Integration,but they have no correlation with Empathy.Except for Empathy,the other four sub-dimensions of intercultural awareness are weakly or moderately correlated with one or several sub-dimensions of critical thinking disposition.(3)Liberal arts students’ critical thinking disposition and intercultural awareness are slightly higher than those of science students,but the differences are non-significant.The correlation coefficient of overall critical thinking disposition and intercultural awareness of liberal arts students is slightly higher than that of science students.Both liberal arts and science students’ Empathy have no correlation with all critical thinking disposition sub-dimensions,but the correlation coefficients of some sub-dimensions of liberal arts and science students are different.The above findings indicate that college students’ critical thinking disposition and intercultural awareness are closely interrelated overall and the findings provide a new perspective and data support for the research of critical thinking ability and intercultural communication competence.The implications of this study include that there is still room of improvement in critical thinking disposition and intercultural awareness for college students,and efforts are needed for new relevant courses and new culture experience activities so as to encourage students’ autonomy in exploring and experiencing cultures as a way of promoting their critical thinking disposition and intercultural awareness.