Research On The Effectiveness Of Geography Teaching Based On PBL In Cultivating Critical Thinking Skills Of Senior High School Students

With the rapid development of the information age,critical thinking has become one of the necessary skills in adapting future society and Problem-Based Learning has been proved being an effective way.Meanwhile,the contents of population,resources,environment,development,which involved in geography,are closely related to PBL.The research constructs a geography PBL teaching model that points to the cultivation of critical thinking skills and a tool for measuring critical thinking skills in geography is developed.Also,activities are designed based on the PBL Model.After that,Two parallel classes of grade ten were taken as the research objects from a Ningbo senior high school,and the experimental class and the control class were set up.The experimental class conducted PBL for 3 months with 10 classes while the control class got conventional teaching.One week after the experiment,students were asked to finish critical thinking skills test in geography in 40 minutes.The following conclusions can be drawn: critical thinking skills of the students in the experimental class were better than those in the control class(P<0.001)after the PBL,indicating that students’ critical thinking skills has been improved by PBL.Among them,the experimental class students’ Analysis(P<0.001),Inference(P<0.001),and Evaluation(P<0.05)are better than the control class.Besides,the experimental class students’ Relevance(P<0.001),Clarity(P<0.001),Logical(P<0.05)and Flexibility(P<0.05)are also better than the control class.The research enriches theoretical research in the field of critical thinking skills,and will be helpful to geography teachers in exploring PBL teaching models,activities designing,and cultivation of students’ critical thinking skills.