| Critical thinking includes both critical thinking dispositions and critical thinking skills.In recent years,as the national demand for innovative talents has greatly increased,critical thinking,which is the core of innovative thinking,has attracted more and more attention.Critical thinking,as an important part of the core literacy system,has also received focused attention in the field of education.Among them,the2017 edition of the General High School Biology Curriculum Standards takes critical thinking as an important component of scientific thinking and requires students to be able to use critical thinking to explore and interpret biological phenomena and laws.Problem-based Learning(PBL)is a teaching model that takes learners as the main body and places learning in real problem situations,where students analyze problems and solve them through group work in order to help them acquire scientific knowledge,form relevant skills,and develop higher-level thinking.Based on this,this study aims to develop students’ critical thinking tendencies and explore the effects of applying the PBL teaching model to high school biology teaching on students’ critical thinking tendencies in order to provide new ideas for the cultivation of students’ critical thinking.In this study,literature research method,questionnaire survey method,interview method and experimental research method were used to conduct theoretical research and practical exploration on critical thinking and PBL teaching mode.Firstly,the literature research method was used to sort out the current situation of domestic and international research on critical thinking and PBL teaching mode,define the concept and structure of critical thinking,and outline the connotation,characteristics and basic process of PBL teaching mode,which laid the theoretical foundation for the subsequent research.Secondly,the Critical Thinking Disposition Inventory(Chinese version)(CTDI-CV)was used to investigate the level of critical thinking disposition of 240 students in the senior class of the internship school,and the interview method was used to understand the awareness and cultivation of the PBL teaching model and critical thinking disposition of five high school biology teachers in the school,so as to prepare for the follow-up work.Based on the preliminary survey,this study referred to the existing PBL teaching process and simplified the PBL teaching process in high school biology classroom based on the cultivation of critical thinking disposition,taking into account the reality of the low quality of student population and the tight schedule of biology classroom in the internship school,and constructed a PBL teaching strategy pointing to the cultivation of each dimension of critical thinking disposition.On this basis,PBL teaching was selected in the 2019 edition of high school biology compulsory two "Genetics and Evolution",and the content with moderate difficulty and knowledge was selected for teaching design and teaching practice.Two general classes with comparable levels of critical thinking disposition and biology achievement and taught by the same biology teacher were selected through pre-testing.The control class was taught mainly by lecture,and the experimental class was taught by the constructed PBL teaching process and teaching strategies.After the teaching practice,the CTDI-CV scale was used again to measure the level of critical thinking disposition of students in the control and experimental classes,and the data were analyzed to draw conclusions from the study.The study showed that:(1)The average score of critical thinking disposition of the senior class students was 283.12,which was at a strong level of disposition.In terms of each dimension,the relationship between the high and low levels of the seven dimensions is: Inquisitiveness(44.55 points)> Analyticity(43.70 points)> Open-Mindedness>(41.53 points)> Self-Confidence(39.09 points)> Maturity(38.93 points)> Systematicity(38.63 points)>Seeking the truth(36.69 points).Among them,the three dimensions of Inquisitiveness,Analyticity,and Open-mindedness are at a strong horizontal tendency.(2)Biology teachers lacked in-depth knowledge of the PBL teaching model,and all recognized the importance of critical thinking tendency development,but did not specialize in it.Interviews with five biology teachers in the internship schools revealed that some of them simply thought that the PBL teaching model was a learning model that threw questions at students,and some of them even heard of it for the first time.The teachers recognized the importance of developing students’ critical thinking tendency,but most of them said that they had not specialized in it and the method was more limited to discussion and questioning.However,the teachers agreed that the PBL model can have a positive impact on students’ critical thinking tendencies.(3)After teaching with the PBL teaching model,students in the experimental class improved their scores of critical thinking disposition in total and in all dimensions.The improvement was significant in the four dimensions of Analyticity,Self-confidence,Inquisitiveness,and Maturity,but not significant in the three dimensions of Seeking the truth,Open-mindedness,and Systematicity.Compared with didactic teaching,the PBL teaching mode was more effective in enhancing students’ critical thinking dispositions,producing a significant increase in the Analyticity,Self-confidence,and Inquisitiveness dimensions of critical thinking dispositions.However,the development of critical thinking dispositions does not happen overnight and requires long-term persistence.Finally,this study concludes with some suggestions,shortcomings,and outlooks that clarify the direction of further research in the future. |
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