Investigating Students’ Critical Thinking through Questioning Case Study: Third Year Students of Linguistics and ESP at the Department of English at MMUTO
Loading...
Date
2016-06
Authors
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
Mouloud Mammeri University of Tizi-Ouzou
Abstract
The present study is concerned with the extent to which teachers’ questions help in
developing learners’ critical thinking. It is intended to figure out whether teachers ask
students high order questions or low order ones, and whether the degree of students’
participation and involvement in the learning process is determined by the type of questions
employed. The present study adopted Bloom’s Taxonomy of Educational Objectives and the
Revised Version as an analytical frame work. To carry out our research, two questionnaires
distributed to sixteen teachers and sixty students of third year Linguistics and ESP at the
department of English at MMUTO. In addition, we have conducted a classroom observation
with sixteen teachers who have allowed us to gather a corpus containing (82) questions. The
study combines between the qualitative and quantitative methods through using SPSS
(Statistical Package for Social Sciences Version 17.0) and qualitative content analysis. The
results show that questions are frequently used by teachers. However they tend to use more
the questions which target low order thinking skills rather than those which stimulate
learners’ critical thinking. The results have also revealed that students’ participation rises
when high order questions are used contrary to low order questions. To help students develop
their thinking skills we have provided a set of suggestions.
Description
77p.:ill;30cm.(+cd)
Keywords
Teachers’ questions, critical thinking, type of questions, Bloom’s Taxonomy, high order thinking skills, low order thinking skills.
Citation
Langage et Communication