The influence of collaborative group work on students’ development of critical thinking: the teacher’s role in facilitating group discussions

ABSTRACT

The objective of this study was to determine whether the incorporation of group work in a teaching intervention can effectively foster students’ critical thinking skills. Building upon Kuhn’s critical thinking model, the research involved comparison of pretest and post-test results for 140 secondary four (10th grade) students in Hong Kong on two measures of critical thinking ability and investigation of their engagement in argumentative dialogues. The findings illustrate the efficacy of group work, relative to whole-class instruction, in helping students develop critical thinking. In addition, the findings highlight the efficacious role of the teacher in breaking the deadlocks that may arise during small-group debates.

KEYWORDS:

• Critical thinking
• group work
• Kuhn’s model
• teacher participation

Acknowledgement

We thank Miss Angie Su for her participation in this research project.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1. The descriptive statistics for the CCTDI can be found in Table 3.

2. The effect size calculations in the current study were performed based on partial-η² values (Cohen, 1973). Cohen (1988) provided estimates of what constitutes a small (0.01), medium (0.06) and large (0.14) effect for partial-η².

3. Detailed information on the t-test results is omitted from this paper but can be found in Fung (2012).

4. The figure is retrieved from Fung (2012, 2014).

5. The figure is retrieved from Fung (2012, 2014).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Dennis Chun-Lok Fung

Dr. Dennis Fung is an Assistant Professor in the Faculty of Education. He has been engaged as principal investigator in many research projects and published articles in some prestigious journals since he joined the University of Hong Kong (HKU) in 2010. He had his undergraduate and postgraduate education at HKU and got his MPhil and PhD in Education at the University of Cambridge.

Helen To

Ms. Helen To is a current postgraduate research student at the University of Hong Kong. She has previously studied in University of Cambridge for a master’s degree in educational research and has worked for several teachers’ continuous professional development projects in Hong Kong. Her research interest lies in teachers’ collaborative practices and psychological development.

Kit Leung

Mr. Kit Leung graduated from the University of Toronto. He has been involved in research studies in several fields (health science, psychology and education). He completed his postgraduate diploma in education at the University of Hong Kong and got his MPhil in education at the University of Cambridge. His is interested in the experiences of students with special education needs.