English Language and Literature Students’ Perceptions of Critical Thinking

Abstract

The fundamental purpose of the function of thinking is to attribute meaning to events in our lives, classify these events into categories and identify them subjectively. As an important dimension of education on thinking, the teaching of critical thinking since the 1950s has attained a wide conceptual framework. Accepted as a factor that facilitates the aquisition and comprehension of information, critical thinking is a desirable learning outcome of education. Some of the characteristics and properties of critical thinking are being aware, systematic, flexible and patient, encompassing open-meaning, metacognition, reconstruction, motivation and discussion. From this point, the perceptions of the students of Karabuk University, English Language and Literature Department, regarding critical thinking, were investigated in detail, in the Spring semester of the academic year 2017-2018. This study is a descriptive one and utilises the survey model to determine the levels of critical thinking in 222 teacher candidates, comprised of students ranging from freshmen to seniors and from both daytime and evening education. The findings have been evaluated and a set of conclusions have been drawn. While a statistical difference according to classes was not found when Anova results were analysed on the sub-dimensions of metacognition, flexibility, systematicity, open-mindedness, a difference was found between the sophomore and senior students on the sub-dimension of perseverance-patience.

The Undergraduate English Students’ Perception, Plan, and Implementation of Critical Thinking Skills in Their Presentation

“…It can be admitted this study tends to follow most research that found students had a good perception in their use of critical thinking skills in their presentation. To use critical thinking skills, not only use perseverance and patience (Tosuncuoglu, 2018), students need to prepare several important things to use their critical thinking skills.…”

Critical Thinking Skills and Dispositions of Turkish Pre-service Teachers: A Systematic Review of Research

“…To illustrate, gender was one of the background variables used in the studies we reviewed. Our analysis showed that while gender was a significant determinant of CTD of pre-service in some of the studies (2,7,12,13,21,23,25,31,35,40,51,62,63,65,74,79,84,85,88), more studies did not find any significant difference between gender and CTD scores of the participants (1,5,10,11,15,19,22,24,27,30,32,37,39,41,45,46,47,50,53,54,55,58,69,71,72,76,77,78,81,86). In addition, almost two-thirds of th...…”

“…CT as a Higher-Order Thinking Process. The review results indicated that CT was specified as a higher-order thinking process in almost half of the studies (n=37) (9,11,12,14,17,21,23,24,25,26,27,28,29,31,32,35,36,38,41,45,50,51,52,55,56,60,69,70,71,72,74,76,77,84,85,87,88). For instance, in study 14, the CT definition of Facione et al (1994) was adopted: "higher-order reasoning used in reaching professionally informed judgments in high-stakes, time-constrained, and many times, novel problem situations" (p. 41).…”

Enhancing Critical Thinking in Analyzing Short Story “The Lazy Jack” Viewed from Identity Theory

“…individuals who can effectively utilize critical thinking in their lives are individuals who possess the skills and disposition necessary for critical thinking. critical thinking is an important cognitive skill that affects students' viewpoints on events, their perceptions concerning what transpires in their environment and their decision-making processes (Tosuncuoglu, 2018). It means that critical thinking is needed as a thinking framework in responding to any issues or problems.…”