Research On The Cultivation Of Critical Thinking Disposition Of College Art Majors Based On The Discovery Method

The research of critical thinking was done overseas from the middle of the twentieth century,including its definitions,design of assessment tools,status quo research,the research of cultivation and so on.However,the domestic research on critical thinking began in the end of the twentieth century,mainly focusing on its definitions,translation and design of the assessment tools and the status quo.While the critical thinking disposition is the important part of critical thinking,there are few empirical studies of using the scientific teaching methods to cultivate students' critical thinking disposition.In the related critical thinking researches,most of the research objects are English majors,and some of the researches on non-English majors are mainly focused on medicine,science and engineering.Whereas the college art majors are the important group of non-English majors,there are few researches on how to cultivate the critical thinking disposition of the college art majors.Therefore,paying attention to cultivating the critical thinking disposition of the college art majors is of great significance to enrich the research of critical thinking and promote the critical thinking of the college art majors.After analyzing the relevant literature of critical thinking disposition and discovery method,we have found that discovery method is helpful in cultivating students' critical thinking disposition,thus we tried to use discovery method to cultivate critical thinking disposition of the college art majors.The study was conducted in two classes of freshmen from a university in Chongqing.There are 32 students in the experimental class and 35 students in the controlled class.After having a questionnaire survey and interview in two classes at the beginning of the first semester,I made a one year teaching experiment in College English lessons.The experimental class was taught by using the discovery method,aiming at training the critical thinking disposition,guiding students to think independently,discover the knowledge actively and work out the problems positively.When students' ability to use English in a well-rounded way was developed and students' critical thinking disposition was also trained.The controlled class was taught by using the traditional teaching method,emphasizing developing students' ability to use English in a well-rounded way and paying no attention to the training of critical thinking disposition.After one year experiment,there is a post-questionnaire survey and interview in the experimental class.All the data are analyzed with the software SPSS21.0.Through independent sample t-test,we check whether the discovery method is helpful in cultivating the critical thinking disposition of the college art majors.What's more,an in-depth interview for the experimental class was conducted and the teaching diary was analyzed to verify the experiment results further.The study shows that the critical thinking disposition of the experimental group is significantly higher than that of the controlled group after one year teaching experiment,especially in the three dimensions of truth-seeking,systematic and maturity.That is,the discovery method is helpful in cultivating critical thinking disposition of the college art majors.Hence,some teaching suggestions are put forward by using discovery method to cultivate the critical thinking disposition of the college art majors in College English teaching.In the process of teaching,teachers should create a democratic teaching atmosphere,select problems scientifically,use the questions for students reflection consistently,enrich the contents and methods of teaching,and adopt diversified classroom assessments.At the same time,teachers should improve their own knowledge literacy actively as well.