An Investigation On The Fostering Of Critical Thinking In French High School Philosophy Subject

The era that we live is the one of globalization and knowledge economy,which makes the cultivation of critical thinking of great significance to the development of individuals and countries.However,the critical thinking performance of high school students in China is not optimistic.Since philosophy has long been closely related to critical thinking,and the French high school philosophy subject is its traditional characteristic subject in French education,this paper focuses on the development of critical thinking in French high school philosophy subject,and explores the following two essential questions: how is the philosophy subject in French high school and does it support the cultivation of students' critical thinking?Using the methods of literature research,interviews,classroom observation and analysis,this dissertation takes Facione's critical thinking two-dimensional model as the guiding framework,the critical thinking teaching model and Socratic Questioning framework as the branch frameworks,and explores the core issues of this dissertation from the four aspects,the objectives,the content,the implementation and the evaluation of the subject.The present dissertation draws the following conclusions:In terms of subject objectives,whether in theory-the description of the goal in the philosophy subject program,or in practice-the subject implementers' understanding of the subject objectives,the objectives of the philosophy subject and critical thinking skills and dispositions presented in the two-dimensional model of critical thinking.But it focuses more on the development of critical thinking skills.In the subject content,the philosophical subject content formulated in the outline has three characteristics: strong interdisciplinarity,transferability and diversity of views,which are intrinsically compatible with the connotation of critical thinking.The subject content presented in the teaching material reflects the specific subject content in the practice of philosophy subject,it is not the column of philosophical knowledge points,nor is it the development of philosophical historical knowledge,but also revolves around the inquiry and inquiry of a series of concept-related issues,the interface framework between the contents of each content follows the logic of thinking,and therefore the subject content points to the cultivation of critical thinking.In the implementation of the subject,the teaching organization commonly used by philosophy teachers has an inherent fit with the teaching mode of critical thinking cultivation.By analyzing the teaching behaviors of the teacher as case,this paper discusses the coherence between the teaching steps of philosophy subject and the steps of teachers' behavior in the teaching mode of critical thinking cultivation,and shows that the teaching organization of philosophy subject helps to train students' critical thinking skills.On the other hand,the teaching method of the case teacher presents the characteristics of the traditional Socratic questioning method to promote the development of critical thinking,and pays attention to mobilizing students' learning initiative,paying attention to the logic of teaching,and expanding the range of students' subject areas to enhance the communication between students and the outside world.These teaching characteristics are beneficial to the cultivation of students' critical thinking.In the subject evaluation,the external evaluation form of philosophy subject: the thesis and text interpretation,is an examination of students' critical thinking skills and dispositions,rather than the degree of memory of objective knowledge of philosophy.In the specific implementation of subject evaluation,the evaluators also conclude the examination of critical thinking.Philosophy teachers have encountered three major problems,one is that there's a gap between students' written performance and the in-class oral performance,the other is that there's a tension between the knowledge needed in the subject and the students' cultural literacy,and the third is that students tend to fall into the trap of relativism.In general,the philosophy subject provides a critical thinking enlightenment for high school students,an opportunity to promote the development of students' critical thinking skills and emotional temperament.According to the results of the study,this paper summarizes the enlightenment that the French high school philosophy subject can bring to our country's high school education:(1)to add specific critical thinking skills and dispositions to the description of subject objectives in the subject.At the same time,improve the awareness of teachers on the cultivation of critical thinking and the understanding of critical thinking.(2)It is suggested that the subject content should be set up with the general concepts and problems in the subject area,rather than focusing only on specific knowledge items,so as to shift the focus on knowledge mastery to the focus on thinking ability.(3)In the implementation of the subject,it may be considered that Socratic questioning method should be extended to the teaching of various disciplines.(4)In the subject evaluation,we can consider improving the subject evaluation form,choose the evaluation form which can better examine the students' critical thinking skills and dispositions,so as to get students to acquire critical thinking in the process of practices.At the same time,to develop a detailed evaluation scale and let students know the evaluation indications,which draws teachers' and students' attention to develop critical thinking.(5)Develop an initial philosophy subject for high school students.