Critical thinking in reflective sessions and in online interactions

Abstract

This paper focuses on online educational sessions of a continuing teacher education programme. The aim of this programme is to give a contribution to the continuing education of teachers of English as critical professionals, aware of discursive classroom practices, able to analyze them in the light of objectives to be reached and knowledge to be constructed. The paper gives a detailed account of how teachers deal with central issues in face to face reflective sessions and online interactive discussions and shows the results of a pilot intervention aiming at helping teachers develop more reflective and critical perspectives. Maria Antonieta Alba Celani and Heloisa Collins The research problem in the context of online interactionsClose observation of asynchronous discussions in the online component of the program has shown that a large majority of contributions are directed to the teacher only, do not show explicit connections with other messages and focus on the exchange of shared information and reiteration of common problems and dilemmas. This is considered to be an inadequate development of the program that included, among its aims, to promote mutual collaboration among participants to foster new teaching ideas and professional solutions, to encourage reflective discussions about those issues and to support close social ties and the formation of an online learning community.This kind of problem situation has also been reported by other researchers that have been involved in mapping the possibilities and limitations of asynchronous conferencing for the development of critical thinking in higher education (Garrison et al. 2003, Pawan et al. 2003, Gunawardena et al. 1998and Kanuka and Anderson 1998. In fact, asynchronous online discussions potentially seem to offer the ideal conditions for intense reflective discussions.Asynchronicity allows participants to elaborate their thinking at their own pace, to plan and structure their contributions carefully, to review their writing for appropriateness of content and structure before they make it available to other people, to estimate the relevance of their own contribution in the context of other people's and to participate freely, without the constraints of face-to-face competitions to take the floor. Besides, since all communication is registered by the system, remains available and can be retrieved in different forms of organization (by date, by communicative thread, by author and by subject), asynchronicity makes it possible for participants to revisit their own messages and raise their awareness about how efficiently they can define or understand a problem or an issue. In other words, evaluation of ones' own performance, or other people's in complex activities, for example, connection of ideas and synthesis, can be made more helpful and efficient.Connectivity, in turn, allows for quick delivery of contributions to the forum and offers all participants full access to the complete set of messages previously sent, to the last minute. This allows for feelings of belong...

Revalidate Forms of Presence in Training Effectiveness

“…The CoI explores the asynchronous discussion of knowledge construction and CP (Celani & Collins, 2005; Garrison, Cleveland-Innes, & Fung, 2010). Learners exhibit CP when being promoted continual interaction through CMC to construct and confirm an understanding of the learning content (Garrison et al., 2001).…”

An Empirical Verification of the Community of Inquiry Framework

“…According to these authors, intersubjective modality in the online environment occurs when a participant explicitly refers to another participant's statement when developing their own post, thereby both connecting themselves to the other participant and laying the foundation for higher level inquiry. Other recent studies supporting the "social presence as foundation for cognitive presence" perspective include those by Molinari [18] and Celani and Collins [19].…”

“…Of the three types of presence in the CoI framework, cognitive presence likely is the one most challenging to develop in online courses [19,15,24]. While participant interaction certainly is foundational for developing cognitive presence, it appears that critical thinking skill might be enhanced via a variety of online course formats [24,25,26].…”

IRRODL Volume 9, Number 2

“…According to these authors, intersubjective modality in the online environment occurs when a participant explicitly refers to another participant's statement when developing their own post, thereby both connecting themselves to the other participant and laying the foundation for higher level inquiry. Other recent studies supporting the "social presence as foundation for cognitive presence" perspective include those by Molinari (2004), and Celani and Collins (2005).…”

“…Of the three types of presence in the CoI framework, cognitive presence likely is the one most challenging to develop in online courses (Celani & Collins, 2005;Garrison & Cleveland-Innes, 2005;Moore & Marra, 2005). Emerging research suggests a complementary relationship between teaching presence and cognitive presence.…”