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Investigating students’ critical thinking in weblogs: an exploratory study in a Singapore secondary school

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Abstract

Critical thinking is an essential competency in the new information age. But research shows that students commonly lack critical thinking skills and hence promoting students’ critical thinking becomes crucial. This exploratory study investigated the extent to which secondary school students’ critical thinking could be promoted by writing reflections in the weblog. Students’ critical thinking was measured by using the Newman’s model. Results showed that writing reflections in the weblog could help promote students’ critical thinking and according to the Newman’s model, three categories of critical thinking were promoted the most, they were bringing outside knowledge or experience (O+), relevance (R+), and justification (J+). In addition, the study also found that the types of interaction with peers and the teacher had a more positive effect on the extent of critical thinking. Implications for other research are discussed.

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Acknowledgment

This study is funded by a Learning Sciences Lab research grant, number R8019.735.CT02. We wish to thank Alison Lin, the staff and students of the Secondary School who took part in the project.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Academic Group of Learning Science and Technologies at National Institute of Education, Nanyang Technological University, 1 Nanyang Walk, Singapore, 637616, Singapore

    Qiyun Wang & Huay Lit Woo

Authors
  1. Qiyun Wang
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  2. Huay Lit Woo
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Correspondence to Qiyun Wang.

Appendices

Appendix A

See Table 5.

Table 5 Newman, Webb and Cocharane’s critical thinking indicators (adopted from Newman et al. 1995)
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Appendix B

See Table 6.

Table 6 The reflection topics
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Wang, Q., Woo, H.L. Investigating students’ critical thinking in weblogs: an exploratory study in a Singapore secondary school. Asia Pacific Educ. Rev. 11, 541–551 (2010). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12564-010-9101-5

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