| Purpose. The purpose of this study was to describe how young adults talk and write about film and to determine how a semester-long high school Film Study course fostered critical thinking skills.; Procedures. This descriptive inquiry was divided into four phases and involved several data sources. Audio/video tapes and field notes of focus group sessions, field notes of small group discussions, a teacher's journal, informal interviews, and students' written documents comprised the data. Data was analyzed through color coding, ranking, enumeration, and searching for discernable patterns and changes in students' responses.; Findings. The data revealed that there were differences in the ways students talked about film and wrote about film, but both forms of discourse demonstrated critical thinking. The following categories, indicative of critical thinking, emerged in student talk: using two-valued and multi-valued orientation; generalizing and elaborating; using cliched descriptions effectively; connecting and synthesizing; making distinctions; decoding and analyzing; using differences in gender; using differences in cognitive schema; collaborating and respecting other points of view; and interpreting/criticizing. In formal essays, the critical thinking markers evinced were: analyzing by describing images and scenes; analyzing by forming conclusions; analyzing by decoding film conventions; and analyzing by thinking in pictures.; Conclusions. Considerations of viewing context and how students watched movies, both within the classroom setting and outside the classroom, influenced the ways students talked and wrote about films, and there were commonalities of response as students applied learned strategies to film analysis. Students became more aware of their personal tastes and biases regarding film, and small group discussions fostered collaborative learning. They also became more adept at decoding images and developed critical thinking strategies to use when talking and writing about movies. These findings show that students used a variety of ways to evaluate film, and that a semester of Film Study enhanced understanding and appreciation regarding film art. |
