Mavadat Saidi; Mobina Shaghaghi
Abstract
The current study aimed to investigate the representation of critical thinking in English for the Students of Medicine (II) and the status of the EAP students’ critical thinking ability as its main users. Peterson’s model was used to identify different types of critical reading questions. ...
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The current study aimed to investigate the representation of critical thinking in English for the Students of Medicine (II) and the status of the EAP students’ critical thinking ability as its main users. Peterson’s model was used to identify different types of critical reading questions. Furthermore, 150 students of medicine, as the main users of the textbook, completed a critical thinking questionnaire. The results revealed that a large proportion of the exercises in this textbook reflected Vocabulary in Context and Literal Comprehension questions while Extended Reasoning questions, as the major category catering for critical reading, constituted only five percent of the whole items. The results of an independent sample t-test also indicated a moderate level of critical thinking ability among the EAP students of medicine regardless of their gender. The findings call for revisiting the English for Medical Purposes materials and incorporating more activities and exercises gearing to higher-order cognitive skills and critical thinking ability to empower the EAP students with the required set of skills to be successful in their academic and professional communities.
Marzieh Soozandehfar; Seyyed Mohammad Ali Soozandehfar
Abstract
This study attempted to examine the extent to which university instructors contributed as obstacles or facilitators to developing critical thinking skills in undergraduate, graduate, and doctorate students. To this end, six university classes, two classes from each of the above-mentioned programs, were ...
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This study attempted to examine the extent to which university instructors contributed as obstacles or facilitators to developing critical thinking skills in undergraduate, graduate, and doctorate students. To this end, six university classes, two classes from each of the above-mentioned programs, were selected randomly from the Department of Foreign Languages and Linguistics in a State University. The corpus of the study was collected via video recordings during a semester. Vygotsky’s (1978) sociocultural theory was utilized to interpret the data. The results revealed that instructors in BA and one of MA classes were facilitators of critical thinking skills, while those in the other MA class and both Ph.D. classes acted more as obstacles to such skills. This finding contradicted the expectations of the researcher who, based on Fisher’s (2005) arguments, believed that thinking skills should be more developed at tertiary levels by instructors, particularly as one moves from bachelor to master and doctoral levels, which are more about frontiers of knowledge. The implications of the study pointed to the vital role of the university instructors in promoting thinking skills by decreasing interruptions, increasing wait-time, asking referential questions, and using selective repair.
Mostafa Hatami; Ali Akbar Shaikhi Fini; Abdol Wahab Samavi
Abstract
AbstractThe present study aimed to design a curriculum pattern on the basis of critical thinking and its use among the undergraduate students of Isfahan University. This research is applied in terms of purpose using a mixed method in data collection. The research method in the qualitative part is content ...
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AbstractThe present study aimed to design a curriculum pattern on the basis of critical thinking and its use among the undergraduate students of Isfahan University. This research is applied in terms of purpose using a mixed method in data collection. The research method in the qualitative part is content analysis and the tool used to collect data was note-taking. As the statistical population of this study, in the qualitative section, of all written sources gathered by targeted sampling method, only critical- thinking related sources were selected as the research samples. In the quantitative part, the research method was descriptive-survey and the tool was a researcher-made questionnaire whose content validity was examined by experts and its reliability using Cronbach's alpha was 0.94. The statistical population in this section included the faculty members of the University of Isfahan, and based on Morgan and Krejcie tables, 230 of them were selected by sampling method appropriate to the size of the statistical population. According to the results of this study in the qualitative part, the characteristics of the elements of the curriculum model based on critical thinking were extracted and in the quantitative part the results showed that the curriculum model on the basis of critical thinking is used by faculty members among undergraduate students.
Mehdi Dehghayedi; Mohammad Sadegh Bagheri
Abstract
This study examined the relationship between EFL teachers’ emotional intelligence, critical thinking, and reflectivity and their language learning as well as teaching beliefs. It investigated how well each of the variables can predict EFL teachers’ language learning beliefs and its respective ...
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This study examined the relationship between EFL teachers’ emotional intelligence, critical thinking, and reflectivity and their language learning as well as teaching beliefs. It investigated how well each of the variables can predict EFL teachers’ language learning beliefs and its respective levels. Accordingly, four questionnaires were given to 130 EFL teachers, and the elicited data were analyzed via correlational and multiple/multivariate regression analyses. Results revealed that 18% of teachers’ beliefs was significantly explained by the triplex unity. Critical thinking and emotional intelligence had significant contributions of 25% and 19%, respectively. The collective contributions of the three variables were only significant to three of the five dependent levels, i.e. 8% to language nature, 17% to motivation and expectation, and 22% to learning and communication. Accordingly, some pedagogical implications were elucidated.
Alireza Ghasemizad; Kamran Mohammadkhani; Fateme Saadatrad
Abstract
This study aimed at scrutinizing the mediating role of critical thinking in relation to higher education students'metacognition and self-efficacy in Islamic Azad University, Nourabad Mamasani. Samples were collected throughrandom sampling method and it was equal to 248. Instruments used in this study ...
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This study aimed at scrutinizing the mediating role of critical thinking in relation to higher education students'metacognition and self-efficacy in Islamic Azad University, Nourabad Mamasani. Samples were collected throughrandom sampling method and it was equal to 248. Instruments used in this study were three standard questionnairesincluding critical thinking, metacognition and self-efficacy. Cronbach's alpha was employed to estimate theinstruments’ reliability, based on which critical thinking was found to be 0.88, metacognition 0.89 and self-efficacy0.87. Findings revealed that meta-cognition could significantly predict students' self-efficacy and critical thinking.Also, it was found that meta-cognition and critical thinking could significantly predict students’ self-efficacy. Thisstudy also showed that critical thinking had a mediating role in relation to students’ meta-cognition and self-efficacy.The dimensions of meta-cognition and critical thinking could significantly predict students’ self-efficacy.
Elham Irani; Parisa Farrokh
Abstract
This study aimed at uncovering the extent to which the content of reading section of English Proficiency Test (EPT) engages the critical thinking. The corpus of this research included 16 reading comprehension texts among 24 recent tests, and totally 600 cases were randomly selected and analyzed ...
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This study aimed at uncovering the extent to which the content of reading section of English Proficiency Test (EPT) engages the critical thinking. The corpus of this research included 16 reading comprehension texts among 24 recent tests, and totally 600 cases were randomly selected and analyzed based on Rummy’s content analysis method in terms of critical thinking. The content of the reading comprehension texts was examined in four general dimensions. Using William Rummy's content analysis method, the reading comprehension texts, pictures, questions, and activities were scrutinized through a comprehensive quantitative analysis. Frequencies and percentages were calculated for each category and the data were analyzed by using Rummy’s formula. The findings revealed that the reading comprehension content, questions, and activities of the EPT did not enhance critical thinking in respondents. Since Rummy’s model includes picture categories benefited from criteria of critical thinking, the texts were also studied to see if the pictures benefited from the criteria of critical thinking based on Rummy’s content analysis method. It was cleared that there was no picture in the reading sections of the EPT.
Mohammad Sharifi; Jalil Fathabadi; Abdolazim Karimi; Masoud Sharifi
Abstract
The present study, conducted in Timss 2007 framework, aimed to examine the effectiveness of teachingcritical thinking on students’ academic achievement in mathematics and science. Research design was Quasi-experimental. Research sample (With available sampling method) included two classes of third ...
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The present study, conducted in Timss 2007 framework, aimed to examine the effectiveness of teachingcritical thinking on students’ academic achievement in mathematics and science. Research design was Quasi-experimental. Research sample (With available sampling method) included two classes of third grade students in Eghbal middle school in Baharestan, Tehran, Iran in 2014-15 randomly assigned to experimental and control groups. Afterwards, the experimental group received critical thinking instructionfor 12 sessions, while the control group received no training during this period. The data were gathered using parallel forms of Timss 2007 framework, which were implemented in three periods. The data were analyzed through Analysis of Covariance (ANCOVA), and t-test. Results showed that critical thinking teaching could considerably improve students’ performance in mathematics and science in domains of reasoning and applying; however, no significant relationship was revealed between critical thinking teachingand students’ performance in the domain of knowing. Findings of the follow up test, in addition, indicated a significant decrease in applicants’ scores of the experimental group. It can be concluded that critical thinking teachingshould be brought into sharper focus in syllabuses of middle schools as its principles could not only resolve students’ problems in academic issues but they would also result in improving performance of students in the domains of mathematics and science.
