A Multi-Case Study On High School English Teachers’ Cultivating Students’ Thinking Quality

To cultivate thinking quality is one of the training areas of English subject that is proposed by the English Curriculum Standard for Senior High School(2017 Edition).As an important component of core competence,development of thinking quality should keep pace with language ability and cultural awareness,and reflect the mental and intellectual requirements of core literacy.It has been more than 4 years since thinking quality was listed as one training area,but its effect in guiding teachers in their instruction remains unknown in practice.Therefore,it is the core purpose of the study to explore what teachers are doing to help develop students’ thinking quality and the effect of cultivating students’ thinking quality in practice.This study is based on the theory that language is the tool of thinking and the theory of Bloom’s Taxonomy of Educational Objectives.Taking three English teachers teaching Grade Two in No.15 Senior High School of Yueyang as the subject,it tries to investigate the situation of teachers’ cultivating students’ thinking quality through qualitative methods of case analysis and interview,and aims at exploring the following questions:(1)What is senior high school English teachers’ awareness of cultivating and developing students’ thinking quality in the design of teaching objectives?(2)What is the emphasis when senior high school English teachers cultivate and develop students’ thinking quality in terms of logic thinking,critical thinking and creative thinking?(3)What are the levels in areas of observation and comparison,analysis and inference,induction and construction,criticism and creativity in the instruction of senior high school English teachers?Through the research,the main findings are as follows:(1)Teachers’ requirement for students’ logical thinking and creative thinking has been reflected in their teaching objectives,and students’ low-level thinking has been in the majority,but the structure of the thinking quality is not well designed,and the requirement for the level is at a low degree.Teachers are not aware of the importance of developing students’ thinking quality and do not consciously take the cultivation of students’ thinking quality into consideration when they design their teaching objectives.(2)In teaching practice,teachers firstly pay attention to and tend to develop students’ logical thinking and the cognitive process of "Understanding",then creative thinking.However,students’ critical thinking is hardly developed in classes.(3)The majority of teaching activities enables students to reach the first level of "observation and comparison","analysis and inference","induction and construction","criticism and innovation";and in some activities,students can reach the second level of "observation and comparison".