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The Correlation Between the Flaws Students Define in an Argument and their Creative and Critical Thinking Abilities
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Procedia - Social and Behavioral Sciences 47 (2012) 802 – 806
CY-ICER 2012
The correlation between the flaws students define in an argument and their creative and critical thinking abilities Hakki Kadayifcia*, Basri Atasoya, Huseyin Akkusa a
Gazi Faculty of Education, Gazi University, Besevler, Ankara 06500, Turkey
Abstract Chemistry laboratory courses in which students design their researches in order to solve the problem related to the phenomenon addressed, make claims based on available data and reasons, defend the arguments they produce and refute the arguments they oppose will be more effective in rendering them learners who think critically and produce ideas. There exist studies that give rise to the thought that defining flaws in an argument is linked to a certain extent to creative and critical thinking. The aim of this study is to examine the correlation between the number of flaws students produce about an opposed argument and their creative and critical thinking abilities. To this end, the Chemistry Laboratory course was taught according to the Argument Driven Inquiry an argument and their creative and critical thinking abilities were measured. It was determined after the application that most of the students suitably employed argumentative operations of claim, warrant, rebuttal and backing by using given data. A medium-level significant correlation was found between the number of flaws students defined about an argument related to the Boyle Law and their scores from the creative thinking dimensions of fluency and flexibility and from critical thinking. This finding is in parallel with the findings of other studies in the literature. Studies might be conducted to demonstrate the nature of the relationship between high-level thinking abilities and rebuttal, which is an argumentative operation. 2012Published Published Elsevier © 2012 by by Elsevier Ltd.Ltd. Selection and/or peer review under responsibility of Prof. Dr. Hüseyin Uzunboylu Keywords: creative thinking; critical thinking; chemistry laboratory; argumentation
1. Introduction Laboratory work is an important and necessary field for chemistry education. Students can exhibit their high-level thinking skills especially in inquiry-type laboratory activities by getting the chance of controlling the variables in line with the objective of the experiment, designing the experiment procedure, deciding on appropriate observations and forming scientific hypotheses based on their findings. According to Dewey (1933), activities performed in learning environments may be reflected on students at different levels. Students, in these activities, might present only habitual behaviors, perform the activities by trying to understand them, make reflection while performing them, and feel changes in themselves through these reflections (Mezirow, 1991). In thinking oriented laboratory courses, students should be reflection and critical reflection rather than only exhibiting habitual behaviors and trying to understand. Students can produce scientific arguments in laboratories by seeking answers to the open-ended research question given to them through experimentation. An argument is an assertion with a justification (Kuhn, 1991). While * Corresponding author. Tel.: +90-312-202-3663; fax: +90-312-222-8483. E-mail address: [email protected].
1877-0428 © 2012 Published by Elsevier Ltd. Selection and/or peer review under responsibility of Prof. Dr. Hüseyin Uzunboylu doi:10.1016/j.sbspro.2012.06.738
Hakki Kadayifci et al. / Procedia - Social and Behavioral Sciences 47 (2012) 802 – 806
803
producing arguments, indicating the conditions when an argument cannot be valid and seeking for flaws in an argument to which they oppose in order to refute it point to the importance of argumentation for students. Defining flaws for an argument requires critical thinking about the condition (Cottrell, 2005). It is clearly necessary in finding flaws to criticize whether the information really supports the argument or not. In addition, critical and creative thinking are two types of thinking that most of the time cannot be separable from each other (Paul, 1987). In order to detect flaws, components of creative thinking might be necessary along with critical thinking such as considering numerous ideas (fluency), assessing the argument from various angles (flexibility) and approaching the argument in (2007) determined that there exists a significant unorthodox ways (originality). For example, Laius and on the other hand, found that the antilogos skill, which refers to the critical assessment of whether specific information can or cannot support different arguments, requires critical and creative thinking. The aim of this study was to explore the relationship between the creative and critical thinking of students, who were rendered capable of using multiple operators of argumentation properly and being at the proper level of reflective thinking through the teaching of the Chemistry Laboratory Course based on the Argument Driven Inquiry 2. Method The research was carried out in a first-year Chemistry Lab Course at a university in Turkey. The course was conducted in two-hour sessions per week consisting of ten experiments related to basic chemistry concepts and principles. Courses were taught according to the ADI model for ten weeks. After the treatment; skills of students to employ the operators of argumentation, their levels of reflective thinking, flaws they detected in an argument related on and creative thinking skills were measured. The sample of the study consisted of 30 first-year students enrolled in the Chemistry Teaching Program. At the end of the treatment, in order to determine whether students had used the operators of argumentation properly, they were asked to indicate the relevant operators (claim, warrant, rebuttal and backing) of argument departing from an observation about the conservation of mass. In addition, the 16-itemed Reflective Thinking Scale, developed by Kember et al. (2010), was adapted to Turkish and administered to students in order to determine the levels of in Table 1 below. These findings suggest that the participants were ready to present the skill of detecting flaws in an argument and they exhibited adequate thinking practices in laboratory activities. thinking levels at the end of application Uses of Argumentation Operators (N:26)
Levels of Reflective Thinking (N:30)
Number of Operators
Number of Students
Ratio
Levels
Mean (Max: 4)
1
0
0.0%
Habitual Action
2.4
2
4
15.4%
Understanding
3.2
3
4
15.4%
Reflection
4.0
4
18
69.2%
Critical Reflection
3.6
Experiments were performed according to the argument driven inquiry model that consists of the steps of identification of a task, generation and analysis of data, production of a tentative argument, argumentation session, investigation report, double-blind peer review, revision of the report and explicit and reflective discussion, as suggested by Sampson et al (2009). At the beginning of each session an open-ended research question was given, then; students were divided into groups, they performed experiments in order to answer that question, collected data, prepared big papers (Fig. 1) explaining their answers with data and reasons, presented their answers to other groups and finally defended their arguments. The proper answer to the question was decided after discussions. Then, students turned their works into reports; they assessed these reports and discussed the study in general.
804
Hakki Kadayifci et al. / Procedia - Social and Behavioral Sciences 47 (2012) 802 – 806
As the data sources of th (CCTDI) and Assessment of Student Creativity (ASC) scale were used. Students were asked to read the following statement with the aim of determining the A person claims that the volume of a syringe, which contains air, can be reduced to the same proportion as the applied pressure is increased. To support this argument, she presents the following information inverse proportion between the volume and pressure of a certain amount of gas, that is, the pressureThe flaws that students produced about the support of the information on the claim were counted and given points. California Critical Thinking Disposition Inventory: The original scale was developed by Facione & Facione (1992), while it was adapted to Turkish and its validity and reliability studies was conducted by Kokdemir (2003). In -type scale, was scored in this study according to the degrees the students agreed with the expressions presented in its items. Assessment of Student Creativity: The original scale was developed by Enger & Yager (1998) and it was adapted free of insects and to produce ideas regarding the reasons and consequences of such a situation. The creativity score was calculated by totalling the scores of fluency, flexibility and originality. The number of ideas the students produced was used in calculating the fluency score, whereas the diversity of the areas of these ideas was used to calculate the flexibility score and the rarity of ideas the originality score. 3. Findings Most of the students produced one or two flaws ( : 2,25). Examples of the flaws that the students produced about The temperature would not stay constant, because the friction of piston increases it. The volume could not be reduced continuously, because it would become impossible after no space remains between air particles. The air liquefies if the pressure is increased enough. The air starts to deviate from the ideal as pressure rises and volume decreases. Table 2
n
Critical Thinking Creative Thinking
N
r
p
30
.376
.048
Fluency
27
.397
.040
Flexibility
27
.423
.028
805
Hakki Kadayifci et al. / Procedia - Social and Behavioral Sciences 47 (2012) 802 – 806 Originality
27
.273
.168
A medium-level (Cohen, 1988) significant correlation was found between the flaws the students produced and their critical thinking dispositions, fluencies and flexibilities in producing creative ideas (p < .05). On the other hand, produced was not significant (p > .05, Table 2). 4. Discussion Even though an argument seems to be based on solid information, it is still possible to produce various flaws for that argument. The argument analysis skill is among the critical thinking skills (Halpern, 1998). In addition, Bayer (1987) characterized the detection of ambiguities in an argument as a critical thinking skill. Critical thinking is a way of thinking that has dimensions of skill and disposition. The two main characteristics of those who tend to think critically are being sceptics and thinking didactically (Cottrell, 2005). Students who were more sceptical about whether the information really supported the claim might have detected more flaws about the argument. As for the relationship between creative thinking and producing flaws, it was observed that those students who were able to produce numerous ideas (fluency) on a subject and to approach it from different perspectives (flexibility) managed to produce more flaws about an argument. It is not enough for producing flaws only to utilize the existing state recorded in memory about a claim or information, it is also necessary to think creatively in order to be able to detect the peculiar relationships and inconsistencies between these operators. produce new and different ideas (originality) and the number of flaws they produced. In the study, flaws were examined in quantitative terms, not qualitative. Another study may address the qualities of the flaws produced by students who think differently. References Beyer, B.K. (1987). Practical strategies for the teaching of thinking. Boston MA: Allyn and Bacon, Inc. Cohen, J. (1988). Statistical power analysis for the behavioral sciences (2nd ed.). Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum. Cottrell, S. (2005) Critical thinking skills. Developing effective analysis and argument. Palgrave Macmillan, Basingstoke. Dewey, J. (1933) How we think, Boston: Heath. Enger, S. K., & Yager, R. (Eds.). (1998). The Iowa assessment handbook. Iowa: University of Iowa. Facione, E. A., & Facione, N. C. (1992). The California critical thinking disposition inventory test manual. Millbrae, CA: California Academic. Glassner, A. and Schwarz, B.B. (2007) What stands and develops between creative and critical thinking? Argumentation?. Thinki ng Skills and Creativity, 2, 10 18. Halpern, D. F. (1998). Teaching critical thinking for transfer across domains. American Psychologist, 53, 449 455. Kember, D; Leung, D.Y.P.; Loke, A.Y.; McKay, J.; Sinclair, K.; Harrison, T.; Webb, C.; Wong, F.K.Y. & Yeung, E. (2010) Development of a Questionnaire to Measure the Level of Reflective Thinking. Assessment & Evaluation in Higher Education, 25(4), 381-395. Kokdemir, D. (2003) Belirsizlik durumlarinda karar verme ve problem cozme. Ankara Universitesi Sosyal Bilimler Enstitusu, Doktora Tezi, Ankara. Kuhn, D. (1991). The skills of argument. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. l issue-based - August 25th. , 2007, 1 - 8 .
806
Hakki Kadayifci et al. / Procedia - Social and Behavioral Sciences 47 (2012) 802 – 806
Mezirow, J. (1991). Transformative dimensions of adult learning. San Francisco: Jossey-Bas Paul, R. (1987). Dialogical thinking: Critical thought essential to the acquisition of rational knowledge and passions. In J. Baron, & R. Stenberg (Eds.), Teaching thinking skills
Theory and practice. W.H. Freeman and Company.
Sampson, V., Grooms, J., & Walker, J. (2009). Argument-driven Inquiry: A way to promote learning during laboratory activities. The Science Teacher, 76(7), 42-47.
Procedia - Social and Behavioral Sciences 47 (2012) 802 – 806
CY-ICER 2012
The correlation between the flaws students define in an argument and their creative and critical thinking abilities Hakki Kadayifcia*, Basri Atasoya, Huseyin Akkusa a
Gazi Faculty of Education, Gazi University, Besevler, Ankara 06500, Turkey
Abstract Chemistry laboratory courses in which students design their researches in order to solve the problem related to the phenomenon addressed, make claims based on available data and reasons, defend the arguments they produce and refute the arguments they oppose will be more effective in rendering them learners who think critically and produce ideas. There exist studies that give rise to the thought that defining flaws in an argument is linked to a certain extent to creative and critical thinking. The aim of this study is to examine the correlation between the number of flaws students produce about an opposed argument and their creative and critical thinking abilities. To this end, the Chemistry Laboratory course was taught according to the Argument Driven Inquiry an argument and their creative and critical thinking abilities were measured. It was determined after the application that most of the students suitably employed argumentative operations of claim, warrant, rebuttal and backing by using given data. A medium-level significant correlation was found between the number of flaws students defined about an argument related to the Boyle Law and their scores from the creative thinking dimensions of fluency and flexibility and from critical thinking. This finding is in parallel with the findings of other studies in the literature. Studies might be conducted to demonstrate the nature of the relationship between high-level thinking abilities and rebuttal, which is an argumentative operation. 2012Published Published Elsevier © 2012 by by Elsevier Ltd.Ltd. Selection and/or peer review under responsibility of Prof. Dr. Hüseyin Uzunboylu Keywords: creative thinking; critical thinking; chemistry laboratory; argumentation
1. Introduction Laboratory work is an important and necessary field for chemistry education. Students can exhibit their high-level thinking skills especially in inquiry-type laboratory activities by getting the chance of controlling the variables in line with the objective of the experiment, designing the experiment procedure, deciding on appropriate observations and forming scientific hypotheses based on their findings. According to Dewey (1933), activities performed in learning environments may be reflected on students at different levels. Students, in these activities, might present only habitual behaviors, perform the activities by trying to understand them, make reflection while performing them, and feel changes in themselves through these reflections (Mezirow, 1991). In thinking oriented laboratory courses, students should be reflection and critical reflection rather than only exhibiting habitual behaviors and trying to understand. Students can produce scientific arguments in laboratories by seeking answers to the open-ended research question given to them through experimentation. An argument is an assertion with a justification (Kuhn, 1991). While * Corresponding author. Tel.: +90-312-202-3663; fax: +90-312-222-8483. E-mail address: [email protected].
1877-0428 © 2012 Published by Elsevier Ltd. Selection and/or peer review under responsibility of Prof. Dr. Hüseyin Uzunboylu doi:10.1016/j.sbspro.2012.06.738
Hakki Kadayifci et al. / Procedia - Social and Behavioral Sciences 47 (2012) 802 – 806
803
producing arguments, indicating the conditions when an argument cannot be valid and seeking for flaws in an argument to which they oppose in order to refute it point to the importance of argumentation for students. Defining flaws for an argument requires critical thinking about the condition (Cottrell, 2005). It is clearly necessary in finding flaws to criticize whether the information really supports the argument or not. In addition, critical and creative thinking are two types of thinking that most of the time cannot be separable from each other (Paul, 1987). In order to detect flaws, components of creative thinking might be necessary along with critical thinking such as considering numerous ideas (fluency), assessing the argument from various angles (flexibility) and approaching the argument in (2007) determined that there exists a significant unorthodox ways (originality). For example, Laius and on the other hand, found that the antilogos skill, which refers to the critical assessment of whether specific information can or cannot support different arguments, requires critical and creative thinking. The aim of this study was to explore the relationship between the creative and critical thinking of students, who were rendered capable of using multiple operators of argumentation properly and being at the proper level of reflective thinking through the teaching of the Chemistry Laboratory Course based on the Argument Driven Inquiry 2. Method The research was carried out in a first-year Chemistry Lab Course at a university in Turkey. The course was conducted in two-hour sessions per week consisting of ten experiments related to basic chemistry concepts and principles. Courses were taught according to the ADI model for ten weeks. After the treatment; skills of students to employ the operators of argumentation, their levels of reflective thinking, flaws they detected in an argument related on and creative thinking skills were measured. The sample of the study consisted of 30 first-year students enrolled in the Chemistry Teaching Program. At the end of the treatment, in order to determine whether students had used the operators of argumentation properly, they were asked to indicate the relevant operators (claim, warrant, rebuttal and backing) of argument departing from an observation about the conservation of mass. In addition, the 16-itemed Reflective Thinking Scale, developed by Kember et al. (2010), was adapted to Turkish and administered to students in order to determine the levels of in Table 1 below. These findings suggest that the participants were ready to present the skill of detecting flaws in an argument and they exhibited adequate thinking practices in laboratory activities. thinking levels at the end of application Uses of Argumentation Operators (N:26)
Levels of Reflective Thinking (N:30)
Number of Operators
Number of Students
Ratio
Levels
Mean (Max: 4)
1
0
0.0%
Habitual Action
2.4
2
4
15.4%
Understanding
3.2
3
4
15.4%
Reflection
4.0
4
18
69.2%
Critical Reflection
3.6
Experiments were performed according to the argument driven inquiry model that consists of the steps of identification of a task, generation and analysis of data, production of a tentative argument, argumentation session, investigation report, double-blind peer review, revision of the report and explicit and reflective discussion, as suggested by Sampson et al (2009). At the beginning of each session an open-ended research question was given, then; students were divided into groups, they performed experiments in order to answer that question, collected data, prepared big papers (Fig. 1) explaining their answers with data and reasons, presented their answers to other groups and finally defended their arguments. The proper answer to the question was decided after discussions. Then, students turned their works into reports; they assessed these reports and discussed the study in general.
804
Hakki Kadayifci et al. / Procedia - Social and Behavioral Sciences 47 (2012) 802 – 806
As the data sources of th (CCTDI) and Assessment of Student Creativity (ASC) scale were used. Students were asked to read the following statement with the aim of determining the A person claims that the volume of a syringe, which contains air, can be reduced to the same proportion as the applied pressure is increased. To support this argument, she presents the following information inverse proportion between the volume and pressure of a certain amount of gas, that is, the pressureThe flaws that students produced about the support of the information on the claim were counted and given points. California Critical Thinking Disposition Inventory: The original scale was developed by Facione & Facione (1992), while it was adapted to Turkish and its validity and reliability studies was conducted by Kokdemir (2003). In -type scale, was scored in this study according to the degrees the students agreed with the expressions presented in its items. Assessment of Student Creativity: The original scale was developed by Enger & Yager (1998) and it was adapted free of insects and to produce ideas regarding the reasons and consequences of such a situation. The creativity score was calculated by totalling the scores of fluency, flexibility and originality. The number of ideas the students produced was used in calculating the fluency score, whereas the diversity of the areas of these ideas was used to calculate the flexibility score and the rarity of ideas the originality score. 3. Findings Most of the students produced one or two flaws ( : 2,25). Examples of the flaws that the students produced about The temperature would not stay constant, because the friction of piston increases it. The volume could not be reduced continuously, because it would become impossible after no space remains between air particles. The air liquefies if the pressure is increased enough. The air starts to deviate from the ideal as pressure rises and volume decreases. Table 2
n
Critical Thinking Creative Thinking
N
r
p
30
.376
.048
Fluency
27
.397
.040
Flexibility
27
.423
.028
805
Hakki Kadayifci et al. / Procedia - Social and Behavioral Sciences 47 (2012) 802 – 806 Originality
27
.273
.168
A medium-level (Cohen, 1988) significant correlation was found between the flaws the students produced and their critical thinking dispositions, fluencies and flexibilities in producing creative ideas (p < .05). On the other hand, produced was not significant (p > .05, Table 2). 4. Discussion Even though an argument seems to be based on solid information, it is still possible to produce various flaws for that argument. The argument analysis skill is among the critical thinking skills (Halpern, 1998). In addition, Bayer (1987) characterized the detection of ambiguities in an argument as a critical thinking skill. Critical thinking is a way of thinking that has dimensions of skill and disposition. The two main characteristics of those who tend to think critically are being sceptics and thinking didactically (Cottrell, 2005). Students who were more sceptical about whether the information really supported the claim might have detected more flaws about the argument. As for the relationship between creative thinking and producing flaws, it was observed that those students who were able to produce numerous ideas (fluency) on a subject and to approach it from different perspectives (flexibility) managed to produce more flaws about an argument. It is not enough for producing flaws only to utilize the existing state recorded in memory about a claim or information, it is also necessary to think creatively in order to be able to detect the peculiar relationships and inconsistencies between these operators. produce new and different ideas (originality) and the number of flaws they produced. In the study, flaws were examined in quantitative terms, not qualitative. Another study may address the qualities of the flaws produced by students who think differently. References Beyer, B.K. (1987). Practical strategies for the teaching of thinking. Boston MA: Allyn and Bacon, Inc. Cohen, J. (1988). Statistical power analysis for the behavioral sciences (2nd ed.). Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum. Cottrell, S. (2005) Critical thinking skills. Developing effective analysis and argument. Palgrave Macmillan, Basingstoke. Dewey, J. (1933) How we think, Boston: Heath. Enger, S. K., & Yager, R. (Eds.). (1998). The Iowa assessment handbook. Iowa: University of Iowa. Facione, E. A., & Facione, N. C. (1992). The California critical thinking disposition inventory test manual. Millbrae, CA: California Academic. Glassner, A. and Schwarz, B.B. (2007) What stands and develops between creative and critical thinking? Argumentation?. Thinki ng Skills and Creativity, 2, 10 18. Halpern, D. F. (1998). Teaching critical thinking for transfer across domains. American Psychologist, 53, 449 455. Kember, D; Leung, D.Y.P.; Loke, A.Y.; McKay, J.; Sinclair, K.; Harrison, T.; Webb, C.; Wong, F.K.Y. & Yeung, E. (2010) Development of a Questionnaire to Measure the Level of Reflective Thinking. Assessment & Evaluation in Higher Education, 25(4), 381-395. Kokdemir, D. (2003) Belirsizlik durumlarinda karar verme ve problem cozme. Ankara Universitesi Sosyal Bilimler Enstitusu, Doktora Tezi, Ankara. Kuhn, D. (1991). The skills of argument. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. l issue-based - August 25th. , 2007, 1 - 8 .
806
Hakki Kadayifci et al. / Procedia - Social and Behavioral Sciences 47 (2012) 802 – 806
Mezirow, J. (1991). Transformative dimensions of adult learning. San Francisco: Jossey-Bas Paul, R. (1987). Dialogical thinking: Critical thought essential to the acquisition of rational knowledge and passions. In J. Baron, & R. Stenberg (Eds.), Teaching thinking skills
Theory and practice. W.H. Freeman and Company.
Sampson, V., Grooms, J., & Walker, J. (2009). Argument-driven Inquiry: A way to promote learning during laboratory activities. The Science Teacher, 76(7), 42-47.