A Study Of Senior English Teachers' Cognition Of Speculative Ability And Its Relationship With Teaching Behavior

Critical thinking is the ability to make a purposeful and reasonable judgment of things or opinions according to certain standards,which integrates meta-critical thinking ability,cognitive skills and affective dispositions.This thinking ability is precisely the goal of cultivating the thinking quality of high school students as required by the The High School English Curriculum Standards(2017).Therefore,in order to achieve this training goal and enhance students' ability of analyzing,reasoning and evaluating,it is necessary to integrate the cultivation of critical thinking into the practice of English teaching.As one of the fundamental elements of classroom teaching,teachers' own critical thinking cognition and teaching behaviors will directly influence this training effect.In view of that,based on the theories of Blooms' Taxonomy of Cognitive Domain and Wen Qiufang's Hierarchy Model of Critical Thinking Ability,this study used questionnaires to investigate 52 English teachers' critical thinking disposition and conducted semi-structured interviews and classroom observations of 3 teachers.All the participants were from three local senior high schools.This thesis aimed to solve the following three questions:1.What is the critical thinking cognition of high school English teachers?2.What teaching behaviors do English teachers adopt to cultivate students' critical thinking ability?3.What is the relationship between the cognition of critical thinking and teaching behaviors of English teachers?Research showed that: Firstly,high school English teachers' cognition of critical thinking is rather accurate.Specifically,the critical thinking disposition of them is positive as a whole.In the seven aspects of the disposition,inquisitiveness,analyticity,open-mindness and maturity disposition are positive,while self-confidence,systematicity and seeking-truth disposition are negative.And teachers' cognition towards meta-critical thinking ability and reasoning skills is relatively insufficient.Secondly,teachers mainly adopt teaching behaviors such as teacher-questioning,group-discussing,peer-evaluating and reading for writing activity to promote students' development of critical thinking ability.Thirdly,there are majority of consistencies between teachers' cognition and their teaching behaviors,but there are minority of differences too.The consistency is reflected in the fact that teachers' cognition of critical thinking will be implemented in their teaching practice,while the difference is manifested in that the teachers' behavior is inconsistent with teacher'teaching behaviors.For example,teachers promote students' analyzing and evaluating skills by teacher-questioning and peer-evaluating in teaching practice.Besides,teachers believe that critical thinking should help students to form a good cross-cultural ability,but there are few related behaviors such as cultural teaching in teachers' teaching practice.On the basis of the above findings,we expect this study would provide reasonable suggestions for the effective implementation of critical thinking teaching.On the basis of the above research,it is expected that this study would enrich the research perspective of critical thinking theories and provide suggestions for improving the critical thinking teaching practice of the first-line high school English teachers.