Fostering college students’ critical thinking skills through peer assessment in the knowledge building community

ABSTRACT

Critical thinking is one of the core twenty-first century skills. This study designs the strategy of peer assessment based on the theory of knowledge building to improve a class of 33 undergraduate students’ critical thinking skills in one semester. The context of knowledge building has four phases—idea generation, idea connection, idea improvement, and rising above—which are iterated by three rounds of peer assessment. In this study, the dependent variable was critical thinking skills, and the independent variable was peer assessment. Data sources include critical thinking skills surveyed, peer comments on Knowledge Forum and grades scored by students. The results showed that (1) students’ critical thinking skills were significantly improved; (2) students’ reports have risen in peer assessment; and (3) students’ critical thinking skills are significantly correlated with peer assessment in the knowledge-building community with both peer comments and peer grades. The findings indicated that knowledge building created a positive culture for the promotion of critical thinking skills, comments that expressed strong disagreement could improve students’ critical thinking skills, and the formation of community knowledge played a substantial role in promoting students’ critical thinking skills.

KEYWORDS:

• Knowledge building
• critical thinking skills
• peer assessment
• learning community

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Correction Statement

This article has been corrected with minor changes. These changes do not impact the academic content of the article.

Notes

1 The golden mean is one of the Confucian thought in ancient China. Its main idea is to respect people’s innate nature, get rid of confusion through cultivation, and be a wise man, so that people’s words and deeds conform to the way of heaven. In this way, the behavior and communication with others in society are impartial and reasonable. The golden mean focuses more on interpersonal relationships (such as humility and tolerance, human supremacy, etc.), while the West advocates individuality and attaches more importance to the demonstration based on the expression of personal views (such as what is the origin of the world, what is truth, etc.). There are fundamental differences in the way of thinking between the two cultures.

In the Song Dynasty (about 800 years ago), the golden mean was reinterpreted by the philosopher Xi Zhu and other scholars. Later, it was gradually misinterpreted as compromise and taking its middle value, neither side offends. Modern people’s thought has also been influenced to some extent, which is not consistent with the development of critical thinking.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by Tackling of key scientific and technical problems of Henan Province: [Grant Number 212102310092].