The effect of the biology critical thinking project on the development of critical thinking

Abstract

This article describes the Biology Critical Thinking (BCT) project in which carefully designed activities for developing specific critical thinking skills are incorporated into the biology curriculum. The objectives were to find out whether the BCT project contributes to the development of critical thinking skills in various biological and nonbiological topics and how it affects students' biological knowledge and classroom learning environment. The study consisted of 678 seventh graders who were assigned randomly into two groups that studied the same seventh-grade biology textbook. Only one group, the experimental, completed the BCT activities. The results indicate that the students in the experimental group improved their critical thinking skills compared to their own initial level and compared to their counterparts in the control group. Improved critical thinking skills were observed in a new biological context and nonbiological everyday topics, suggesting generalization of thinking skills across domains. The experimental students scored significantly higher than the control on a knowledge test, suggesting that "knowledge of facts" as one educational goal and "learning to think" as another, need not conflict, but rather can interact with each other. Finally, the results show that BCT involvement decreased the frequency of teacher-centered teaching and enhanced student-centered, more active learning.The development of reasoning and critical thinking has for a long time been the goal of education. Leading figures in this area were two Israeli researchers (Frankenstein, 1970;Feuerstein, 1987;Feurstein, Rand, & Rynders, 1988) who are famous for their work with culturally disadvantaged children. In this article, however, we focus on ordinary children in mainstream classrooms.Numerous educational endeavors to foster the development of reasoning skills have been reported recently. One of the approaches common to such endeavors is the "infusion" approach,

Characteristics and Difficulties of Teachers Who Mentor Environmental Inquiry Projects

“…This is supported as well by Windschitl (2002) who advocated experiencing inquiry in preservice teaching programs and by Crawford (1999) who described the characteristics of a successful teacher in conducting inquiry as flexible, collaborative, and embraces inquiry both from a content and pedagogical perspective. Zohar, Weinberger, and Tamir (1994) who described a successful biology critical thinking project in Israel highlighted the differences between biology teachers, who had practiced inquirybased learning, and teachers in other scientific subject matter who did not have such experiences. In our study, the ETs were all biology teachers, while most of the ITs came from other disciplines, a difference that might contribute to an explanation of the differences.…”

The Nature and Development of Scientific Reasoning: A Synthetic View

“…Although attempts at teaching formal and post-formal reasoning patterns in the classroom do not achieve the same degree of success as one-onone sessions such as those just described, students do show marked improvements as a consequence of the right sort of classroom instruction (e.g., Cavallo, 1996;Germann, 1994;Harrison, Grayson & Treagust, 1999;Johnson & Lawson, 1998;Lawson, 1992Lawson, , 1999Lawson et al, 2000aLawson et al, , 2000bNoh & Scharmann, 1997;Shayer & Adey, 1993;Shymansky, 1984;Shymansky, Kyle & Alport, 1983, 2003Westbrook & Rogers, 1994;Wong, 1993;Zohar, Weinberger & Tamir, 1994). In general successful classroom instruction begins with explorations in which students encounter puzzling observations.…”

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