How To Cultivate Critical Thinking In High School

In the knowledge economy era,information acquisition and dissemination have become extremely convenient so that we need critical thinking to gain insight into truth now more than ever.Due to the increasingly fierce pressure of global competition,countries have devoted themselves to the 21 st century skills movement of which critical thinking is considered to be the core.The changing history of human knowledge and competency from survival skills to "reading,writing and arithmetic" and to "21st century skills",could be considered as the process of human beings’ liberation from the struggles to survive and stride toward the general awakening of self-consciousness.Critical thinking may be the most important piece of the puzzle to complete the "hidden plan of nature".However,the cultivation of critical thinking has not received much attention in Chinese basic education where misunderstanding pervades.To address this dilemma,this dissertation further clarifies the meaning of critical thinking by tracing back its historical roots: critical thinking as a way of thinking,originated in the pedagogical practice of Socrates in ancient Greek city-states,has been fully reflected in Popper’s falsification which formed a tradition of critical rationalism;critical thinking as a concept,originated in Dewey’s “reflective thinking”,has been continuously expanded and enriched in the informal logic movement,eventually resulting in an independent curriculum area.Disagreement in teaching modes of critical thinking is explored and evidence from empirical studies and neuroscience that demonstrate that critical thinking requires deliberate practice is examined.Finally,it examines the independent critical thinking curriculum in the international curriculum.On this basis,four representative international courses which takes critical thinking as a core objective,including OCR AS/A Level Critical Thinking,CIE AS/A Level Thinking Skills,CIE Singapore H2 Knowledge and Inquiry,IBDP Theory ofKnowledge,are selected and under further examination.Based on the textual analysis of their syllabus,this dissertation analyzes and compares these four courses in light of their visions and aims,content and structure,and assessment:(1)In terms of visions and aims,despite the differences,all of them put an emphasize on their interdisciplinary nature and the generality and transferability of critical thinking,while focusing on the dimension of competence and cultivation of values ??and world outlook;(2)In terms of course content,these four courses are constructed from two different routes: OCR Critical Thinking and CIE Thinking Skills are mainly constructed in the informal logic tradition,using argumentation as the main line and text reading as the carrier,while Singapore’s Knowledge and Inquiry and IBDP’s Theory of Knowledge are mainly constructed in the tradition of critical rationalism,with knowledge theory as the main line and knowledge analysis as the carrier;(3)There are three ways of assessment,including written tests,essay writing and presentations,in which essay writing and presentations better reflect the outcome of students.Detailed assessment criteria are developed in all these courses.Finally,it explores the implications that these courses may bring to critical thinking teaching in our country,including the following points:(1)the possibility of integrating two different course construction routes;(2)the possibility of dividing the content of critical thinking courses into different modules and systematically integrated them into different disciplines;(3)the possibility of establishing a moral education based on critical thinking;(4)the possibility of taking critical thinking as an important assessment objective and introducing multiple assessment methods to reduce the negative impact of examination-oriented education.