Students need to be equipped with critical thinking skills as they are the 21st century skills that will help students to face challenges in life ahead. Teachers themselves should be first to be equipped with the skills before they could teach student

Wirawani Kamarulzaman,

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Open University Malaysia Knowledge Repository

Promoting Critical Thinking Skills among Students in KSSR classroomDr Wirawani Kamarulzaman (OUM)Prof Dr Rosnani Hashim (IIUM)CONTENT• Background of study• Research method• Findings & Discussions• ConclusionBACKGROUND OF STUDY o Students need to be equipped with critical thinkingskills as they are the 21st century skills that will helpstudents to face challenges in life ahead.o The new curriculum, KSSR (Kurikulum Standard SekolahRendah; Primary School Standard Curriculum)introduced by the Ministry of Education in Malaysia wasto inculcate critical thinking skills in students.o Teachers themselves should be first to be equippedwith the skills before they could teach students.o Due to this development, various studies were found tosuggest that critical thinking should be taught inclassroom. But none were found to study the processof teaching and learning in the KSSR classroom.OBJECTIVE OF THE STUDYo Thus the objective of the paper is to investigate the teaching and learning process done is KSSR classrooms, specifically to explore the approaches teachers employed in cultivating critical thinking skills among students. RESEARCH 6 teachers from diverse backgroundDuration of Interview sessions before and after observationMETHODBoth data was transcribed and analyse through colour coding Classrooms observations –twice for each teacherinterview –30- 45minsFINDINGS: THEME 1- STUDENT CENTREDTeacher as facilitatorTeachers only play the role as facilitators, Group discussions and presentationA lot of group Equal opportunity for all studentsEach student is given the equal Lively classroomStudents are giving guidance to students which indicate that the classroom is more student-centered and students have to search information on their own. “…student search for information…while teachers only give guidance as facilitators”activities and group presentationClassroom layout- seating arrangements- in groupsopportunity to contribute to class activitiesStudents have done group discussions, it is fair to listen to all actively taking partsStudents benefited from group discussions –share infoDISCUSSIONS• Student-centeredness was the most prominent theme thatemerged from the data collected. Students were instructed towork in groups for activities, such as group presentation andgroup discussion.• Student-centered learning has been found to promote criticalthinking as compared to teacher-centered. This is congruentwith Marin and Halpern (2014) who stated that student-centered approach supports the development of the 21stcentury skills such as critical thinking, problem solving andcollaboration.• According to the Ragoff (1998, as cited in Dwyer, et al., 2014) oneway to engage students in learning is to focus on students, andteachers are as instructors to facilitate learning by providingscaffolding. The consistency between the literature and the practiceof teachers in KSSR classroom is found when in the KSSRclassrooms, teachers act as facilitators only.• Group discussions and presentations exercised in KSSR classroomsinfluence student interest, which is also necessary to motivatelearning. This is in line with Boomer (1992, as cited in Dwyer, et. al,2014) who reports that teachers should engage student interest forquality learning. The goal of student-centered approach is to endurestudent engagement in learning and when they are engaged theyactively participate in the teaching and learning processFINDINGS: THEME 2- QUESTIONING METHOD• Questioning method is encouraged in KSSR and students were trained to think more. • Clues can be infused in questions, and teachers as facilitators helped students to think by giving questions. • Another informant teacher added that those questions asked required students to think and to give ideas, as what he labelled as KBAT (Kemahiran Berfikir Aras Tinggi; Higher Order Thinking Skills, HOTS) questions. • Some questions might be easy but they were twisted and manipulated by teachers in order to check students’ understanding of the subject matter as well as their apprehension on the question itself. • Through the use of ‘why’ and ‘how’ questions, students had to think critically, such as to make comparisons and to analyze.DISCUSSIONS• This method is congruent to Socratic Method which promoted the uses ofquestions to study values, principles and beliefs of students and at the same timehelp students to think critically (Reich, 2003).• This method is also noticeable during class observations. Teachers were spotted torecurrently asked questions and students were seen to be brave enough to reply,some answers were correct, while others were not.• Although according to Costa and Kallick (2000) in their Habits of Mind (HoM)theory stated that in order for students to be critical thinkers, they should be ableto manage impulsivity.• This means that they should think before they act, and they need to strive foraccuracy in answering questions. Above all, the most important thing is whenstudents are willing to respond, it shows that they want to share their thoughtswith others and this signifies that they are able to use language and communicateeffectively, which the characteristics of critical are thinking skills (Paul & Elder,2012).FINDINGS: THEME 3- I-THINK TOOLDISCUSSIONS• Rosnidah, Haeidatul Nashrah, Norazilawati & Nik Azmah(2015) in their research on the use of i-Think maps in a sciencesubject topic for Year 4 students found that students showedmore interest in their learning process when teachersrequested them to employ the maps.• Furthermore, the students were also found to betterunderstand the topic with the use of the maps. Norazlina(2013) also found that students could remember the subjectmatter better when teachers employed i-Think maps inclassrooms.• According to Sutcliffe (2014), among thepurposes of i-Think program is to increase criticalthinking skills and to equip future generationswith higher order thinking skills.• The development of i-Think maps requiresstudents to have the understanding of what theyread or heard the collection of knowledge thatthey have and then put that knowledge intowriting, which suggests the transfer of training orknowledge has taken place as proposed byHalpern (2014).• The objectives of the study were to explore the approaches teachers employedto teach critical thinking skills in KSSR classrooms. • Qualitative study, mainly interview and observation were used to gather the information.• The informants of the study were six primary school teachers and they were interviewed, and observed, and the data collected was analyzed using coding and emerging themes.• Findings suggested that teachers believed that the student-centered approach in KSSR helped a lot in terms of student participation in classrooms, where students had more opportunities to share ideas and present their ideas in classrooms. • Teachers are only acted as facilitators and this increase liveliness in classrooms.• Furthermore, teachers used questioning method and i-Think tool in promoting critical thinking skills among students.• Finally, it is believed that KSSR enables students to think critically as suggested by the Malaysian Blueprint. • It is hope for future research, more schools with various achievements could be investigated in order to explore teachers’ methods and approaches in teaching students critical thinking skills.

Promoting Critical Thinking Skills among Students in KSSR classroom

http://library.oum.edu.my/repository/1147/1/library-document-1147.pdf

Promoting Critical Thinking Skills among Students in KSSR classroom

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