Critical Thinking Theory And Its Evaluation Study

This dissertation puts forward a synthetic theory of critical thinking and develops a new assessment method of critical thinking based on fuzzy synthetic judgment, following by systematically analyzing the theories and test methods of critical thinking which have been developed by other psychologists. Seven parts are included in the dissertation.Part one: history of critical thinking research. The dissertation not only overviews the history of critical thinking research movement in 20 century, but also analyzes philosophical views about critical thinking before then.Part two: psychological theories of critical thinking. Based on five different dimensions, the critical thinking theories are divided into five groups. They are problem-solving theory, skill theory, cognitive development theory, information processing theory and society-culture-history theory. By analyzing main points of the five groups and as compared them with each other, the dissertation concludes some important problems which need be researched hi critical thinking study field nowadays.Part three: inquiry on critical thinking researches. The dissertation analyzes the challenges to critical thinking movement which comes from postmodernism and instructional field, and point out how we should deal with the inquiry well.Part four: the state and problems of critical thinking test. The dissertation systematically analyzes the state and problems of current critical thinking test, and chooses CCTST and CCTDI as study samples. They are revised. The revision of CCTST and CCTDI Chinese version includes translation and test, the results are reported.Part five: the reappraise of critical thinking researches. The dissertation studies the main problems which need be resolved hi current critical thinking research field, suggests that "critical thinking" is a valued non-strict natural term, divides the critical thinking into three important groups following three dimensions, and creates several conceptions about critical thuiking judgment standard and analyzes the relationships among critical thinking, logic, language, and creative thinking as well.Part six: a new alternative of critical thinking theory and assessment. The dissertation bring up a synthetic theory of critical thinking which emphasizes on emotion dimension of critical thinking and its' relationship with contextual knowledge. Underlying the synthetic theory, the dissertation develops a new critical thinking assessment method which based on the fuzzy synthetic judgment and computer technology and reports the some results which come from the exploring experiment.Part seven: cultural tradition and cultural barrier of cultivating social member's critical thinking skills in China. The dissertation studies the cultural tradition and cultural barrier, and puts forth that morality and reason critical thinking conception that comes from different culture will combine into one.