The Critical Thinking Teaching Model and It’s Application to Social Study in the Elementary School

[[abstract]]Abstract This study attempted to construct a critical thinking teaching model for social study in the elementary school , and was aimed to investigated effects of the constructed critical teaching model and social study academic achievement on students’ critical thinking performance in social study. Four sixth grade classes were selected from an elementary school in Kaohsiung City, with two class of 67 children as control group, and the other two class of 67 as experimental group, totally 134 samples. Social Study Critical Thinking Test were adopted as data-collecting instruments. A quasi-experimental design with pretest and posttest was adopted. Quantitative analyses included two-way ANCOVA and two-way MANCOVA statistical methods for testing hypothesis. For qualitative analyses, 6 cases were selected from experimental group by sorting their social study academic scores and conducted classroom observation with them, to evaluate their developments of critical thinking abilities. The findings were as follows: 1. The critical thinking teaching model is more useful for improving critical thinking ability than ordinary teaching model. The experimental group was significantly better in total score than the control group. At high-level students of social study achievement, the experimental group was significantly better in question and emancipation score than the control group. At Low-level students of social study achievement, the experimental group was significantly better in emancipation and reconstruction score than the control group. 2. Abundant background knowledge is advantageous to students for learning critical thinking abilities. The high-level group on social study achievement was significantly better in total score than the high-level group. At control group, the high-level group on social study achievement was significantly better in reconstruction score than the low-level group. 3. The critical thinking teaching model is beneficial to raise student’s critical thinking quality. After accepting the critical thinking teaching model for social study, all cases could question about biases and faults in the opposition’s arguments; most cases could make reasonable arguments; most cases could correct improper standpoint and accommodate subject’s values; most cases could attempt to look after both sides’ values, and bring up ideas of problem-solving. 4.The originally constructed critical thinking teaching model should be partly revised. Finally, the investigator gave recommendations for critical thinking teaching and the future research.