Research On The Design And Application Of Blended Learning Environment With The Orientation Of Critical Thinking

With the development of informatizaion in the modern society,critical thinking has become one of the most important skills that a citizen in 21 st century must possess.In recent years,how to cultivate critical thinking in the instruction of different subjects has drawn more and more attention of the educators.In the teaching practice,however,the cultivation of critical thinking is constricted by many factors.Blended learning,being flexible and convenient,has become increasingly popular in education and could produce more opportunities for the cultivation of critical thinking.Developing students' critical thinking through blended learning not only reflects the need to cultivate “core competencies” of each subject in teaching but also realizes the deep integration of ICT in education.The review of the relevant studies in this field,however,suggests some weaknesses in the design: first,the objective of critical thinking development is not connected to the learning activity;second,the instructional factors are not concerned in a systematic way.Under such background,the study proposes promoting students' critical thinking through the construction of blended learning environment.Grounded in the real context of blended learning environment construction,this research adopts the paradigm of “Design-Based Research” and combines qualitative and quantitative method.Through literature review,systematic review,grounded theory,content analysis,quasi-experiment,questionnaire investigation and interview,the current research is conducted to explore the blended learning environment from the perspectives of theoretical inquiry,model construction,strategy generation and effect examination.In the theoretical inquiry section,the research focuses on three aspects.First,the research defined the nature of the environment.Second,based on the interpretation of the relationship between elements of thinking and intellectual standards in Paul-Elder's Model,together with the analysis of dichotomy of educational objectives,the research constructed “Eight elements,Ten standards” thinking analysis framework and “ Two dimensions,Eight elements” objective analysis framework,which were combined to create the Framework of Critical Thinking Skills.Third,having summarized the factors that promote the development of critical thinking,the research generalized the features of the environment elements.In the model construction section,based on the theatrical framework of the environment,the research first built a tentative designing model of the blended learning environment with the orientation of critical thinking.Then the model was implemented in the course of Practical English Writing with two rounds of action research.Based on the reflections from the action research,the research improved and finally completed the designing model of the learning environment.In the strategy generation section,the research first summarized a series of tentative strategies for designing the environment.After two rounds of implementation,the final strategies were put forward after adjustment and improvement.The research also generalized some strategies in designing the key supporting elements for learning activities of different types.In the effect examination section,the research compared the effect of the learning environment with the regular learning environment through a quasi-experimental study.The results reveal that the blended learning environment with orientation of critical thinking has a positive effect in terms of students' critical thinking and academic work.Meanwhile,the data from the questionnaires and the interview suggests that students have a pleasant experience of the environment and are generally positive towards it.