英语教学中的思辨能力培养探究--一项扎根于美国课堂的质性研究

本文是一篇英语论文，本研究旨在探讨以下几个问题：（1）教师在课堂上用来培养学生批判性思维的主要活动或策略是什么？ （2）它们对学生的批判思维能力的发展有何影响？研究人员通过在课堂上做观察笔记并与教授进行面谈收集收据，描述性地概括教师所使用的活动和策略。

1 Introduction

1.1 Background of the Study
In the present era of mass data and information explosion, the core ofinternational society competition is talent competition. Innovative thinking ability isone of the most important criteria for measuring the quality of personnel training, andtraining innovative talents has become one of the main goals of higher education.China Education Department points out that the task of higher education in China is tocultivate advanced professional talents with innovative spirit and practical ability. It isobvious that the cultivation of students' creative thinking ability is an important taskin our country's education. The core of innovative talents is innovative ability, whilethe premise of innovative thinking is critical thinking. Therefore, the cultivation ofcritical thinking is very important. Cultivating critical thinking ability is also thefoundation of information processing ability and autonomous learning ability. For along time, the cultivation of students' innovative thinking ability in college teaching ishugely ignored, and it is the same with the education of critical thinking. Thetraditional “jug and mug” cramming method of teaching and exam oriented educationbound students’ thinking and innovation awareness, and a majority of students onlyfocus on rote learning, generally lack the spirit of independent thinking. Therefore, inorder to change the status quo, we must change the concept of education and way ofthinking, arouse students' critical thinking awareness and train students' criticalthinking, which is of great importance for the improvement of students' innovativeability. In recent years, critical thinking has been the focus of research at home andabroad, and the development of critical thinking ability of college students has beenwidely concerned by many experts and scholars (Siegel, 1988; Paul, 1993; Halpern,1999; Norris, 2001; Ricketts, 2003;Wu,2011).
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1.2 Objectives of the Study
More than 10 years ago, foreign language educators began to call for integrationof critical thinking ability cultivation in language classroom. However, it is even notaccepted by most of language educators theoretically, much less implement inclassroom practically. After nearly 20 years of hard work, this situation has begun tochange. Many participators of teaching competition events include the teaching ofcritical thinking ability clearly as an objective and design corresponding teachingsession and activities addressing the instruction and guidance of critical thinkingability. However, the majority of teachers who are in frontline of English educationhaven’t recognize the importance of cultivating critical thinking ability in languageclassroom or simply don’t know how to put this into practice to really get students tothink critically. There are obvious problems in terms of critical thinking cultivation inpractical teaching. For example, although the teaching of critical thinking is allegedlyto be an teaching objective of an English class, the goal is unmeasurable orunquantifiable, functioning as a meaningless label or abstract concept. As a result, theexpected effects may not be obtained regardless the enthusiasm they spent their timewith on cultivating students’ critical thinking ability. Therefore, this research will takea look into how American English classrooms do to address the issue of criticalthinking cultivation, what strategies and activities are used, how effective in terms ofactivating students’ legacy of thinking in the target language and developing students’critical thinking ability. Hopefully, the potential readers or English educators of Chinacan receive some enlightment of how to teach critical thinking ability in ChineseEnglish teaching environment.
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2.1 Definition of Critical Thinking

2.1.1 Alternative Terms for Critical thinking
Before defining critical thinking, I’ll first briefly distinguish the relationshipbetween critical thinking and three other items--higher order thinking,problem-solving, creative thinking and critical thinking by investigating thecommonalities and differences between them. As Cuban (1984) notes, "Definingthinking skills, reasoning, critical thought and problem solving is troublesome toboth social scientists and practitioners. Troublesome is a polite word; the area is aconceptual swamp" (p.676). Luckily, significant progress has been made incleaning up the “conceptual swamp” since Cuban made this statement. On the onehand, higher order thinking is considered by some scholars as an “umbrella” conceptincluding creative thinking, critical thinking as well as problem-solving (Lewis &Smith, 1993). Newman (1991) also acclaim that higher order thinking is a broaderconcept rather than a specific conception as critical thinking[34]. Simultaneously,during the process of problem-solving, there are generally four steps involved:analyzing problem; generating possible solution; choosing and implementing the bestsolution and evaluating the effectiveness of the solution (Harris, 1998, p.2).Apparently, problem-solving can be seen as “arenas where critical and creativethinking take place” (Bailin, Case, Coombs, & Daniels, 1999b, p.288).
On the other hand, critical thinking and creative thinking are also considered astwo distinctive concepts. Paul and Elder (2008b) claimed that critical thinking is aprocess of evaluating, while creative thinking is a process of creating. Criticalthinking is analytic and evaluative within a framework, while creative thinking isimaginative and inventive, and involves generating and inventing new ideas orsolutions by transcending framework(De Bono, 1976; Glaser, 1985). From thisperspective, critical thinking and creative thinking can not be separated from eachother. Being able to think critically is the foundation of creation, creation is thehighest goal of critical thinking within framework of thinking standard. ...........................

2.2 Critical Thinking Model
Generally, there are four critical thinking models commonly used by scholars ofthis field: Richard Paul’s model, Robert Sternberg’s componential model, Bloom’staxonomy and Wen Qiufang’ s hierarchical model which are in consistence with orderive from three different theoretical traditions: Philosophical tradition,psychological tradition and educational tradition with variant concerns and purposes.The philosophical tradition emphasized more on the nature of critical thinking anddevoted much attention to the requirements of formal logical systems (Sternberg,1986). In contrast with the philosophical approach, psychological approach is mainlyconcerned with the processes and skills of critical thinking in practical context (Moon,2008). Educational tradition to critical thinking is a combination of philosophic andpsychological approaches (Sternberg, 1986). Educators are primarily concerned withhow to develop students into critical thinkers rather than the process or skill itself(Moon, 2008). Bloom’s taxonomy model is used in this research.
2.2.1 Richard Paul’s Model
Richard Paul’s model has been evolved and improved since it was proposed in1993. The purpose of Paul’s model has always been to develop a flexible theory ofcritical thinking that can be contextualized across various disciplines. As depicted inFigure 4, it consists of three parts: elements of reasoning, standards of thought, andintellectual traits (Paul & Elder, 2008a). Critical thinkers habitually employ thestandards to assess the elements of reasoning in order to develop intellectual traits.There are eight elements of reasoning: purpose, point of view, concept, question,information, assumption, inference, and implication. The elements are referred to asthe fundamental structure of human thought and are always present in human thoughtconsciously and subconsciously whenever and wherever reasoning is taking place.The ability to identify the elements of reasoning is essential to critical thinking. Aperson, who is adept at the identification of the elements, can be in a better position torecognize the flaw in this or that part, and thus, can be in a better position to analyzethe mistakes in their thinking or in the thinking of others (Paul & Elder, 2002).
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3 Theoretical Foundation...................................... 20
3.1 Constructivism..................................... 20
3.2 Benjamin Bloom’s Taxonomy of Critical Thinking.......................................21
4 Research Design and Research Process.............................. 22
4.1 Research Questions........................... 22
4.2 Research Methodology..................................22
5 Research Results and Discussion............................27
5.1 Classroom Results and Analysis.............................. 27
5.2 Document Collection Data Analysis and Relevant Discussion --- Effects ofImplementation............................... 35

5 Research Results and Discussion

5.1 Classroom Results and Analysis
In general, there are five predominant strategies and activities used by the teacher:Socratic questions, problem solving strategy, self-evaluation and peer-evaluation;inpidual conference, and teaching students’ learning strategies. Being involved inthose teaching strategies and activities, students take the responsibility of themselves’and their classmates’ learning by thinking actively, learning collaboratively to helpeach other, developing learning strategies using their cognitive ability in order tobecome autonomous learners and prepare them for lifelong learning which is oneof the requirements of being competitive nowadays.
In the excepts above, Instead of asking students lower order questions or shortanswer questions, there are lots of WHY, WHAT, and HOW questions generated bythe teacher to push students to think further to articulate and explain their ideas moreclearly and to promote digging beneath the surface of ideas, which is slightly differentfrom Chinese situation where teachers ask more yes/no questions testing students’memory of facts. As a result, students can just repeat facts changing rapidly withouthaving their own opinions or judgements about them through thinking about suchquestions like “why”, “what”, and “how”. The process of speaking is also thinkingprocess because students’ brain function actively in order to get their meaning acrossto the listener.
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6 Conclusions

6.1 Research Findings
In the classroom I have observed, the teacher mainly implemented thesestrategies and activities as follows in order to improve both students’ critical thinkingability and language proficiency: Socratic questions; Problem solving strategy;Self-evaluation and peer-evaluation; Inpidual conference; And teaching studentslearning strategies. Among all these classroom events, students need to think actively,work collaboratively to help each other and gradually developed their metacognitiveand cognitive ability.

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