The pedagogical impacts on students’ development of critical thinking dispositions: Experience from Hong Kong secondary schools

Thinking Skills and Creativity 26 (2017) 128–139

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The pedagogical impacts on students’ development of critical thinking dispositions: Experience from Hong Kong secondary schools

MARK

Dennis Fung Faculty of Education, The University of Hong Kong, Room 323, Runme Shaw Building, Pokfulam Road, The University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong

AR TI CLE I NF O

AB S T R A CT

Keywords: Critical thinking dispositions Development of critical thinking Hong Kong secondary schools Pedagogical impact Teacher participation

A quasi-experimental research study is reported in this paper. Its aim was to evaluate the effects of different types of pedagogy on the cultivation of students’ critical thinking dispositions. One hundred and forty Secondary 4 students (i.e. tenth-grade students at 15–17 years of age) from two Hong Kong schools joined a teaching intervention in which they learnt strategies of argumentation through an established critical thinking framework (i.e. Kuhn’s model [The Skills of Argument, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991]). Analysis revealed collaborative group work to exert positive impacts on students’ development of critical thinking when used in conjunction with explicit instruction in reasoning and evidence-based justifications during the intervention. The research results also showed the students who received teacher guidance to have engaged more interactively in joint learning tasks, thereby illustrating the important role of the teacher in facilitating group discussions.

1. Introduction The pedagogical approach of collaborative group work has become increasingly popular in Hong Kong, particularly since the secondary education reforms launched in 2009 (Howe, 2012, 2014; Howe, 2012, 2014). One of the highlights of those reforms was the introduction of Liberal Studies as a new mandatory interdisciplinary subject whose aim is to liberate students from dogmatic, autocratic thinking and facilitate their development into reflective, critical thinkers (Curriculum Development Council [CDC] and Hong Kong Examination and Assessment Authority [HKEAA], 2007). As a new core subject, along with Chinese, English and Mathematics, Liberal Studies was designed to broaden students’ knowledge horizons through the study of contemporary issues across disciplinary areas, such as ‘Self and Personal Development’, ‘Society and Culture’ and ‘Science, Technology and Environment’ (refer to Appendix I in Supplementary materials for details). From a pedagogical perspective, the introduction constituted a move towards a new paradigm that requires teachers to provide students with self-directed learning experiences and to employ student-centred instructional strategies in the classroom. Therefore, the subject was anticipated to lead to a shift from conventional teaching approaches, i.e. rote memorising and spoon-feeding, to interactive and constructivist learning environments (Gal, 2011). Characterised by the above subject’s nature, Liberal Studies students are expected to learn how to analyse issues from a variety of perspectives, as well as to evaluate different viewpoints based on facts and evidence. They are encouraged to raise questions, be openminded to others’ opinions and formulate their own stance on different issues. The enquiry-based learning style emphasised in the subject thus triggered efforts by teachers to incorporate more collaborative group work into their lessons. By engaging students in identifying problems and exploring solutions in support of a joint goal or mission, group work promotes autonomy and mutual

E-mail address: [email protected]. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.tsc.2017.10.005 Received 17 November 2016; Received in revised form 13 September 2017; Accepted 11 October 2017 Available online 16 October 2017 1871-1871/ © 2017 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

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responsibility for student learning (Blatchford, Kutnick, Baines, & Tolmie, 2013; Galton & Pell, 2010). This instructional method also offers an advantageous setting for students to apply the argumentative skills essential to the learning style required in the Liberal Studies context (Fung, 2014b). It is precisely in this local educational context that this study was carried out with the aim of investigating the efficacy of collaborative group work in nurturing students’ critical thinking dispositions in Liberal Studies lessons. 1.1. Literature review 1.1.1. The concepts of group work and critical thinking In the classroom literature (e.g. Blatchford, Kutnick, Baines, & Galton, 2003; Oh & Reeves, 2015), collaborative group work is regarded as both a learning community and a pedagogical approach in which students work together in groups in pursuit of a shared goal (Garside, 1996; Nezami, Asgari, & Dinarvand, 2013). As a learning community, students sitting together in groups engage one another in joint planning, negotiating and evaluating to accomplish common tasks. As a pedagogical approach, group work places emphasis on the constructivist paradigm, which envisions students acquiring new information from their peers and encourages the recall of knowledge and retention of subject matter, thereby contributing to academic performance and more effective learning attitudes (Schreiber & Valle, 2013; Shenderovich, Thurston, & Miller, 2015). In view of the advantages of collaborative group work, some researchers believe that it facilitates the development of critical thinking, a concept that has been elaborated upon in various ways but still lacks a generally agreed-upon definition (see, e.g. Hughes & Lavery, 2015). For example, Scriven and Paul (1996) conceptualised critical thinking as an intellectual discipline that underlies the process of acquiring and evaluating information and drawing conclusions about it, whereas Watson and Glaser (1980) considered it to be a blend of performance, attitude and knowledge encompassing the identification of hypotheses, making of inferences and evaluation of rational arguments. The term ‘critical thinking’, which Ennis (1985) defined as ‘reasonable reflective thinking that is focused on deciding what to believe or do’ (p. 10), is also considered by researchers to encompass a wide range of ‘dispositions’, such as the cognitive powers of reasoned judgement and self-monitoring meta-cognition. Ennis (1987) derived a taxonomy of critical thinking dispositions that classifies them into 118 subcategories organised into twelve aspects, thereby providing useful guidance in understanding exactly what is meant by critical thinking. In a similar vein, Laird (2008) emphasised the behavioural aspects of critical thinking, e.g. analytical propensity, inquisitiveness and truth seeking, in relation to intellectual development and the liberalisation of values and attitudes for critical inquiry. In contrast to Ennis’s (1987) perspective, McPeck (1981) stated that critical thinking involves the ‘propensity and skill to engage in an activity with reflective scepticism’ (p. 8), noting that ‘skills’ should also be recognised as an integral element of such thinking. According to this definition, as scepticism involves the skills necessary to engage in critical thinking activities, critical thinking cannot be separated from the skills that make those activities what they are. As many other well-established researchers (e.g. Abrami et al., 2008; Facione, 2011; Halpern, 2014) have subsequently recognised skills as an indivisible part of critical thinking, it is now well accepted that critical thinking embraces the dual dimensions of ‘skills’ and ‘dispositions’. Whilst the foregoing definitions of critical thinking capture various aspects of the concept, another, more systematic, interpretation can be found in Kuhn’s (1991) model, which underpins the discussion of critical thinking in this article. Of particular interest is Kuhn’s (1993) description of critical thinking as ‘the ability to recognise the possible falsehood of a theory, and the identification of evidence capable of disconfirming it’ (p. 100), and conceptualisation of the concept as comprising five core components, namely, the ability to: (K1) distinguish opinions (or points of view) from formal evidence; (K2) support opinions by facts or good reasoning based on critical judgement; (K3) suggest alternative opinions and seek evidence that would support them; (K4) provide evidence to both sustain arguments and rebut alternatives; and (K5) weigh up and evaluate evidence through an epistemological lens. Kuhn’s conceptualisation has been widely adopted in numerous studies which demonstrate that students’ critical thinking can be enhanced by guided practice in argumentative instruction. 1.1.2. Cultivating critical thinking through a constructivist approach The significance of collaborative group work for critical thinking is premised first and foremost on the notion that social context plays an important role in student learning (Resnick, Levine, & Teasley, 1991; Rogoff, 1990). For example, Piaget (1928) demonstrated that cognitive dissonance, which is commonly induced by peer social interaction, plays a significant role in cultivating cognitive growth and reinforcing learning effects. In this sense, collaborative group work can be considered a peer-to-peer interactive platform that fosters joint decision-making and group responsibilities via cognitive conflicts that, in turn, facilitate students’ affective development as co-learners. Therefore, collaborative group work functions as what Lipman (1991) called ‘a community of enquiry’ in cultivating higher level, critical thinking abilities in students. In the process of interactive and shared learning1 (e.g. in-depth group discussion), students engage in exploring materials with their peers, acquiring new knowledge, comparing their own opinions with those of others, evaluating multiple perspectives and improving their problem-solving skills. The wide range of cognitive endeavours involved offers good reason to believe that critical thinking is constantly put to task and honed in collaborative group work, particularly with respect to critical reasoning assessment (Aubrey, Ghent, & Kanira, 2012; Kennedy, Fisher, & Ennis, 1991). Johnson et al. (2010), for instance, reported that the application of a joint learning method known as ‘structured controversy’ led to improvements in students’ higher order cognition and interest in critical thinking. In addition, Glaser (1984) observed that 1 Compared with the concepts of interactive and shared learning, the concept of group work emphasises a more structured, collaborative form of classroom organisation (Galton, 1990), the role of students and teachers in group activities (Kutnick, Blatchford, & Baines, 2002), group size and composition (Wheelan, 2009), seating arrangements, and social and communication skills (Johnson & Johnson, 1990).

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students who acquire critical thinking skills through collaborative group work significantly outperform individual learners in the Watson-Glaser Critical Thinking Test, whilst Gokhale (1995) similarly illustrated the way in which peer collaboration can be utilised as an advantageous educational approach for acquiring new knowledge and cultivating argumentative reasoning. Moreover, research by Haukoos and Penick (1983) also shows that a cooperative approach to inquiry learning in junior college science classrooms can result in better inquiry skills and higher levels of achievement relative to other approaches. Hence, in a nutshell, the foregoing empirical evidence all points to the promise that collaborative group work, as an educational method, holds for critical thinking (i.e. Garcha & Kumar, 2015; Lee et al., 2016). However, there is limited research on the specific strategies of such group work that most effectively help students to develop critical thinking. As Tsui (1998) pointed out, the influence of instruction is often overlooked in studies that examine critical thinking amongst college students. Even when particular teaching methods are investigated, the varying emphases on pedagogy across studies have resulted in few consistent findings on exactly what teaching strategies can be applied to nurture students’ critical thinking (Eggen & Kauchak, 2011; Wendland, Robinson, & Williams, 2015). Further, in terms of research design, most of the existing literature on critical thinking focuses on students’ self-report data and quantitative data from such standardised tests as the Watson-Glaser Critical Thinking Appraisal and Cornell Test of Critical Thinking (Bensley, Crowe, Bernhardt, Buckner, & Allman, 2010; Magno, 2010), which limits the potential to delve deeper into how students’ collaborative learning experiences, especially group discourse and student-teacher interaction, shape their development of critical thinking skills and dispositions. In addition to the aforementioned scarcity of pedagogy-related studies on critical thinking, another limitation of the extant literature is that the findings on the role of teachers in group work are relatively inconclusive, and sometimes even conflicting. This is a significant limitation because the question of whether teachers should participate in group work remains a matter of controversy. For example, some scholars argue that teachers’ intervention is desirable and even necessary for nurturing students’ critical thinking. For instance, Smith (1977, 1980) reported a consistently positive connection between instructor-influenced classroom interactions and improved critical thinking performance in students. Similarly, there is also research evidence supporting the notion that teacher participation in groups leads to more effective group functioning and provides students with strategic guidance that facilitates their acquisition of collaborative skills (Meloth & Deering, 1999). However, Cohen (1991, 1994) fears that the presence of teachers in groups may limit group activities and hinder students’ development of collaborative and task management skills (see also Shuell, 1996). Given these conflicting views, exploration of ways to maximise the teacher’s role in group work (or the teacher-supported condition in group work research) to the benefit of students in the critical thinking context is an important area for research. In addition, most of the current research on the two domains of group work and critical thinking is arguably confined to the practice of computer-aided group learning instead of face-to-face interaction in authentic classroom contexts (e.g. Cavus & Uzunboylu, 2009; Newman, Johnson, Webb, & Cochrane, 1997; Pear, Schnerch, Silva, Svenningsen, & Lambert, 2011). Yet, face-to-face interaction still plays a significant part in most group learning these days, which justifies the present research in an ecologically valid school context situated in an authentic Liberal Studies classroom. 1.2. The present study 1.2.1. Context of the research This article is one in a series of papers emerging from a large-scale project examining the effects of collaborative group work on students’ learning of critical thinking in the context of Liberal Studies in Hong Kong secondary schools. Previous publications (e.g. Fung & Howe, 2012, 2014; Fung, To, & Leung, 2016) have demonstrated the close relationship between group work and critical thinking against the backdrop of Hong Kong’s education reforms and highlighted such prominent factors as teachers’ role in smallgroup activities and the influence of ground rules on Chinese students’ learning culture (i.e. Fung, 2014a). Fung and Howe (2014) reported that a group-based teaching intervention based on Kuhn’s model (which is illustrated in the sections below) promoted students’ development of critical thinking ‘skills’ and that students in the ‘teacher-supported’ group work condition made greater progress than those in the ‘self-directed’ group work condition. Premised on these results, this article takes a step further in exploring group work and critical thinking ‘dispositions’, with a particular focus on a more fine-grained investigation of the teacher-supported group work condition through in-depth analysis of classroom dialogues. Accordingly, the article’s aim is to expand the concept of critical thinking from the skill level to the attitudinal level in the group work context. Hence, the study reported herein addressed two main questions: 1 Is group work more effective than whole-class instruction in cultivating students critical thinking dispositions in Liberal Studies lessons? 2 Can teacher-supported group work better facilitate students critical thinking dispositions than self-directed student group work? 1.2.2. Research design In the current study, a quasi-experimental research design was employed to evaluate the impact of different types of pedagogy (see Table 1) on students’ development of critical thinking in a teaching intervention. The intervention adapted the aforementioned Kuhn’s model and was contextualised in 10 Liberal Studies lessons in two secondary schools in Hong Kong. An attempt was made to teach students critical thinking through a conceptual framework, i.e. Kuhn’s five critical thinking components, to facilitate their development of a concrete understanding of the concepts of reasoning and evidence-based justification. Appendix II in Supplementary materials presents the schedule and content of the teaching intervention. 130

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Table 1 Quasi-experimental setting. Quasi-experimental Research Total Participants (N = 140) Classification

Control Group (N = 70) Type 1

Experimental Group (N = 70) Type 2

Pedagogy Group Size Total Numbers of Groups

Conventional Class (N = 70) N/A N/A

Self-directed Group Work (N = 40) Around 7 students 6

Type 3 Teacher-supported Group Work (N = 30) 4

The participating schools were chosen randomly from a list of 80 secondary schools that enjoy strong collaboration with the principal investigator’s university, and two Liberal Studies teachers and two whole classes (with 35 students each) of Secondary 4 students (i.e. tenth-grade students at 15–17 years of age) were selected in each school. Accordingly, a total of 140 students and four teachers participated in the study. In each individual school, one of the two classes (i.e. Class A) served as a control group, and was exposed to the whole-class teaching approach (Type 1). The other class (i.e. Class B) acted as the experimental group, and engaged in collaborative group work. The experimental group was further divided, with members randomly assigned to a self-directed student group work (Type 2) or teacher-supported group work (Type 3) subgroup. The control and experimental groups were equivalent in terms of academic standards. 1.2.3. Training workshops Prior to commencement of the teaching intervention, several training workshops were conducted for the participating teachers in each participating school. Led by the principal investigator, the workshops lasted approximately one hour each and offered teachers training in critical thinking instruction with the support of Kuhn’s model. They were also shown how to act as role models to demonstrate for students the skills of asking questions, taking turns and giving explanations. In essence, these workshops provided teachers with multiple and convergent means of introducing and reinforcing Kuhn’s five critical thinking components (e.g. distinguishing opinions from evidence and suggesting alternative opinions and seeking evidence to support them, to name just two) in the Liberal Studies context. Teachers were also trained in argumentative questioning and the skills needed to defend, refute and respond to challenges and critiques in group debates. 1.2.4. Teaching intervention Each of the 10 sessions in the teaching intervention lasted approximately one hour, with one five-minute break halfway through. Sessions 1 and 2 involved several ice-breaking tasks and assessed students’ critical thinking before their participation in formal lessons in argumentative thinking. In the first session, the teachers provided students with an opportunity to familiarise themselves with the members of the groups in which they would be working during the intervention. Subsequently, the teachers outlined the programme and their expectations of students. To evaluate students’ initial critical thinking dispositions, the California Critical Thinking Disposition Inventory (CCTDI)2 was administered as a pre-test in the second session. After the assessment had been completed, the participating teachers began to teach Kuhn’s model using daily life examples. In the third and fourth sessions, students were taught the concept of ‘counter-arguments’. After they had demonstrated their competence in understanding the concepts illustrated in the previous session (i.e. ‘problem’ and ‘reasoned argument’), they were requested to demonstrate their own counterarguments with the aid of several examples, such as the following (see Anderson, Howe, Soden, Halliday, & Low, 2001). It was argued that poor teaching causes school failure. However, an opposing view is that drugs cause school failure: a) Not everyone that fails in school is on drugs. Some people that fail come from better homes, or even if they dont live in better [homes] … theyre not on drugs, and their minds are straight. b) I couldnt say … because I know there are people whore born, you know, born with some screws loose [with mental deficiencies]. c) I dont think Id even try to say something against that because I feel he’s entitled to his opinion. If he wants to believe it, that’s fine. I am not argumentative. In this example, statement (a) provided rebuttals to the argument whilst the other statements failed to address or justify the corresponding counter-arguments. In the lessons, teachers looked for students who could demonstrate their own counter-arguments to check whether they had understood the concept thoroughly, and additional examples were given to those who remained confused by it (refer to Fung and Howe (2014) for further examples). During the intervention, particularly during Sessions 4–8, the experimental group students (Type 2 and Type 3) engaged in regular group discussions in which they were designated to either ‘for’ or ‘against’ sides to debate sample Liberal Studies questions (see Appendix III in Supplementary materials). They were asked to propose and sustain arguments and weigh up evidence before they switched sides for another round of debate. Three of the five groups of students were assigned to engage in self-directed group work 2

The CCTDI results, and detailed analysis thereof, are reported in Fung et al. (2016). They are omitted here owing to space limitations.

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(Type 2). For these groups, the teacher was encouraged to observe students’ group work carefully but not to participate in the discussion in any way. In contrast, the teacher joined the two remaining groups of students (Type 3), providing them with guidance to facilitate their collective discussions and dialogic interactions. Finally, after reaching consensus in the joint discussions, both groups (Types 2 and Type 3 groups) presented their arguments to the other groups of students in the class. The Type 1 students received critical-thinking instruction through the conventional, whole-class teaching approach rather than working together in groups as their Type 2 and Type 3 peers did. In particular, the Type 1 students sat separately from one another and worked independently during classroom activities. Instead of group discussions, they were assigned by the teachers to take turns presenting their respective views and then answering questions from their classmates. As the whole class discussion was led by the teachers in its entirety, the students can be considered individual learners rather than members of a collaborative group. At the end of the discussion, the teachers encouraged students to engage in self-reflection and to consolidate and evaluate what they had learnt from the issues discussed. Students were provided with ample time to answer the sample questions, and were invited by the teachers to share their ideas if they produced excellent pieces of work. In general, the teachers in the Type 1 groups played a major role, giving directions, delivering lesson content and promoting individualised learning. For the Type 2 groups, the teachers played only a monitoring role, that is, they monitored group activities to ensure that the students had sufficient time to complete their work and that the sample questions chosen were thoroughly addressed in the group discussions. Finally, the teachers in the Type 3 groups were encouraged to adopt the ideal role of a patient, supportive and helpful co-learner whose presence aided the smooth progression of student learning. These teachers encouraged students to share their views and gave them hints (or thinking directions) but did not dominate the dialogue. In a nutshell, the essential difference in the teachers’ role between the Type 1 and Type 3 conditions is that in the former the teacher interacted with the whole class most of the time and observed student performance primarily on an individual basis, whereas in the latter the teacher was given the opportunity to circulate between different groups and evaluate student performance and group work at both the individual and group levels. Near the end of the intervention, the teachers provided consolidated knowledge for students related to the validity of the evidence. A post-test of the CCTDI was then administered to evaluate students’ end-of-intervention critical thinking dispositions. 1.2.5. Data collection and analysis The data collected in this research had two main sources including video-recordings of classroom dialogues and focus-group interviews with all teachers and randomly selected students. More specifically, several intervention sessions in both the experimental and control conditions were video-recorded to compile dialogic evidence. Students’ development of critical thinking is revealed in the video-recordings of their dialogues in group discussions and individual presentations. Each video-recording of the dialogues and presentations lasts for 5–10 min. Moreover, qualitative data were obtained from interviews with six focus groups (two groups each for the Type 1, Type 2 and Type 3 conditions) comprising four students each. The teachers in each school were also interviewed in groups by the principal investigator, who asked them to reflect upon their pedagogical experiences during the intervention. Both the teacher and student participants were asked a series of formalised questions concerning the learning atmosphere during lessons and the latter’s demonstration of critical thinking. The information collected from the focus group interviews supplements the classroom dialogue results. Both the classroom dialogues and focus group interviews were transcribed for further scrutiny. In particular, coding was performed on the transcripts of the classroom dialogues, and one-way ANOVA was employed to make statistical comparisons amongst the three pedagogical groups of students. Finally, a few insightful and reflective interview extracts were selected for qualitative analysis to triangulate the earlier findings. 2. Results 2.1. Analysis of classroom dialogues Coding based on Kuhn’s critical thinking model was performed to analyse students’ classroom dialogues (see the column headed ‘Kuhn’s Arg.’ in Extracts A, B and C below). A measure of interrater reliability was employed to ensure that the level of subjectivity in the coding remained acceptable: 25% of codes were independently coded by a second rater, with interrater agreement attaining a Cohen’s (1968) kappa of к = 0.81 (p < 0.05). The descriptive statistics of the results on the number of codes (per excerpt) for the three student groups were as follows: Type 1 (M = 3.69, SD = 0.94), Type 2 (M = 5.75, SD = 0.89) and Type 3 (M = 7.09, SD = 1.02); Cronbach’s α = 0.84. One-way ANOVA identified significant differences in the number of codes amongst the three student groups, F (2137) = 4.65, p < 0.01. Subsequently, Bonferroni post-hoc t-tests indicated that all of the pair-wise comparisons (i.e. Type 1 vs. Type 2 [t = 4.57, p < 0.05], Type 1 vs. Type 3 [t = 6.98, p < 0.01] and Type 2 vs. Type 3 [t = 3.06, p < 0.05]) were significant. Accordingly, as Fig. 1 shows, the average number of ‘critical thinking codes’ (based on Kuhn’s model) in the Type 3 students was significantly higher than that in the Type 2 students. The Type 1 students had the smallest number of codes. To better understand how the different pedagogical approaches affected students’ learning of critical thinking, a set of excerpts was extracted from the recordings of students’ dialogues for further investigation. In the excerpts below (i.e., Extracts A, B and C), the students are discussing the issue of domestic violence in Hong Kong (also see Appendix III in supplementary materials). These excerpts illustrate the way in which the students answered the argumentative question through individual and collaborative efforts. The authors believe them to constitute substantive evidence of students’ critical thinking dispositions, particularly as they were subjected to in-depth qualitative analysis to further determine whether intellectual collaboration is necessary for cognitive 132

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Fig. 1. Number of Codes of Kuhn’s Model per Excerpt in Type 1–Type 3 Groups.

development (Ladd et al., 2013; Vygotsky, 1978) or whether the explicitly social aspect of group work influences the quality of students’ thinking, and thus explains the improvement in argumentation (Kuhn, 2015) observed in this research.

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In Extract A, the Type 1 students present their views on the issue of domestic violence in front of the whole class. It is noteworthy that these students, who worked alone on the question at their desks, tended to state their opinions and support their claims with reference to personal experience (e.g. ‘blue collar workers who have to work for long hours under high pressure … easily lose their temper at home’ [lines 8–10] and ‘most family tragedies are caused by low socio-economic status’ [lines 13–14]). Also worthy of attention is the little evidence of conflicting opinions in the extract, the presence of which is considered a productive component of critical inquiry mastery (Ames & Murray, 1982; Schwarz, Neuman, & Biezuner, 2000). For example, it can be seen from the extract that all three student participants in the dialogue (i.e. students 1, 2 and 3) unanimously agreed with the issue statement, i.e. ‘Low socio-economic status is the main cause of domestic violence in Hong Kong’, without having any opportunity to attend to or examine any possible opposing views (see lines 4, 13 and 15). From the cognitive developmental perspective, in pondering the conversation in Extract A in terms of critical thinking advancement, the absence of contrasting (or multilateral) opinions arguably constitutes an unfavourable dialogic interaction scenario, as the students stood no chance of directly engaging one another’s thinking or reasoning in such a unilateral situation (Crowell & Kuhn, 2014). Under the circumstances, it was difficult for the students to benefit from the whole class discussion. Moreover, a second notable observation from the extract is that the dialogic interaction in the classroom was confined largely to interactions between the teacher and successive students rather than between peers. The likelihood of peer dialogic resolution (Howe, 2010), in which students can resolve their differences in a progressive manner, such as by rejecting similar ideas and looking for an alternative (Howe, McWilliam, & Cross, 2005), was thus remote. Extract B features a group discussion illustrating how the Type 2 students argued their standpoints more critically. Although in the beginning the individual students failed to offer any justifications to support their claims (e.g. ‘No, I don’t think so’ [line 4]), it can be observed that group work afforded them a chance to ‘prompt’ their classmates, successfully motivating them to elaborate upon any ‘unjustified’ opinions (e.g. ‘Why not?’ [line 5] and ‘Could you explain?’ [line 13]). Relative to the Type 1 students’ conversation shown in Extract A, the comparative merit of the peer discussion demonstrated by the Type 2 students is that it demands attention to one’s classmates, engages them more deeply and authentically in the argumentative dialogue, and prompts them to contribute what they already know to the exchange. The Type 2 approach is considered to offer the most productive path to cognitive development (Piaget, 1971, 1973), as students are able to contradict the opinions of their peers during group work. In a broader sense, Extract B 135

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illustrates the explicitly social aspect of group work that is regarded as strongly influential in the enhancement of students’ critical thinking (Anderson et al., 2001). As noted above, when examined through a social constructivist lens, the Type 2 students demonstrated highly structured scaffolds to support and strengthen their argumentative discourse. They were likelier than their wholeclass counterparts in Extract A to draw on evidence from their peers’ contrasting opinions instead of ignoring opposing perspectives and echoing only favoured ideas. In principle, this evidence can also be seen as validation of Kuhn’s (2015) conclusion that dialogues are a desirable vehicle for the cultivation of critical thinking. In particular, based on a thematic review of the scholarship on argumentation, Kuhn (2015) contended that the discussion structure in which students are most likely to enjoy the benefit of intellectual collaboration is the ‘argument-counterargument-rebuttal’ structure. That structure, which is manifested in Extract B (see lines 3–16), has also been identified as a building block of mutual engagement in cognitive collaboration (Littleton, 2011). Finally, Extract C shows how the Type 3 students worked together to address the issue statement with the teacher’s participation. At the beginning of the extract, student 3 takes the initiative to express his opinion (i.e. ‘low socio-economic status triggers [domestic violence] in Hong Kong’ [line 2]), but is subsequently challenged by student 4, who offers a counterargument followed by a rebuttal (i.e. ‘I disagree. Rich people also have family problems’ [line 3]). It is also worth noting that student 2 is capable of distinguishing opinion from formal evidence (‘…we cannot just give opinions’ [line 4]), whilst student 4 demonstrates the ability to suggest alternative points of view (i.e. ‘I think these [e.g. heavy work pressure in Hong Kong] are the reasons [line 6]), thereby reflecting their solid grasp of K1 and K3 in Kuhn’s model. Of particular note is that the pattern of argumentative dialogue exhibited in Extract C (i.e. argument → differentiation of opinion from evidence → alternative viewpoint → counterargument → rebuttal) [lines 2–6] not only reveals the way in which the students came to realise and appreciate the differing perspectives of others, but also demonstrates the developmental trajectory of reflective scepticism and evidence-based justification (Barron, 2003). In the middle of the discussion, the atmosphere becomes tense after student 3 vigorously challenges student 4′s suppositions (lines 7–9). At this point, the highlight of the excerpt is the teacher’s intervention to alleviate that tension and encourage the students to adopt different perspectives to analyse the issue in a more critical manner (e.g. ‘[the father] has a bad temper, and that should be [taken as] the main cause’ [lines 20–21]; K4 in Kuhn’s model). This extract thus shows that, under the teacher’s guidance, the Type 3 students became capable of substantiating their counter-arguments with unequivocal evidence (i.e. from the cartoons [lines 18–19]) and demonstrated a stronger desire to evaluate the validity of one another’s arguments (lines 18–21 and 23–26). 2.2. Analysis of focus-group interviews Owing to space limitations, the parts of the interview transcripts with significant pedagogical implications are relegated to Appendices IV and V in Supplementary materials, but are briefly discussed here. With regard to the first research question, responses from both the student and teacher participants suggest that group work led to more desirable results than whole-class instruction in terms of nurturing students’ critical thinking dispositions. With respect to self-confidence, for instance, the Type 1 students highlighted the embarrassment and anxiety induced by being singled out to participate in classroom activities, whilst their Type 2 and Type 3 counterparts adopted a more confident and positive tone when reflecting on their learning experiences, conveying recognition of both the individual roles and mutual help embedded in group work learning. Turning to the teachers’ perspective, those who taught the traditional class reported a limited learning impact, confined student participation and little improvement in classroom atmosphere, which in turn arguably discouraged development of the dispositional aspects (e.g. truth-seeking, analyticity and inquisitiveness) of critical thinking. In contrast, the teachers of the group work classes reported more encouraging results. Not only had they observed group work to exert favourable effects on students’ understanding of critical thinking, but they were also thrilled to witness improvements in students’ communication skills, confidence, open-mindedness, learning motivation and cooperation. To a certain extent, these improvements can be attributed to the interactive, supportive and cooperative nature of group work, as suggested by teachers’ positive comments on the classroom atmosphere. With regard to the second research question, teacher-supported group work elicited more positive reflections from the interviewees than self-directed group work. When asked whether the teaching method had heightened the competitive or cooperative atmosphere in their classrooms, the Type 2 students emphasised the latter, whilst their Type 3 counterparts said they had found group work to be both competitive and cooperative, as the presence of their teachers had motivated them to outperform the other groups. The Type 3 students also reported greater dispositional progress, which they credited to their teachers’ participation, encouragement and guidance, in the sense that they had become more comfortable in voicing their opinions (reflecting critical thinking self-confidence), more eager to engage in discussion (reflecting inquisitiveness) and more willing to explore different perspectives (reflecting open-mindedness). The improvements in the Type 2 students in these respects, by contrast, seems to have been mediocre, suggesting that teachers’ participation in group work indeed plays a key role in cultivating students’ critical thinking dispositions. 3. Discussion, implications and conclusion In their entirety, the results of this study help to fill the gaps in previous research (e.g. McMillan, 1987; Tsui, 1998; Wendland et al., 2015) by suggesting a specific strategy of collaborative group work that is tailor-made to foster students’ critical thinking dispositions. With respect to the first research question, the results illustrate that group work, in conjunction with a teaching intervention in which students are guided to question, defend and refute in group debates, has more positive implications for the development of critical thinking dispositions than whole-class instruction. The fairly consistent findings elicited from the classroom dialogues and focus-group interviews offer further empirical support for those results. With respect to the second research question, the current study shows that the role of teachers is constructive, provided that they act as supportive and experienced co-learners who 136

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can motivate and encourage students to think critically during group work. More specifically, the data elicited from the classroom dialogues indicate that the students supported by teacher guidance displayed higher levels of critical thinking confidence and were more eager to participate in collaborative tasks than their counterparts in the self-directed groups. In response to the inconclusive findings in the existing literature regarding teachers’ role in group work (e.g. Cohen, 1994; Meloth & Deering, 1999; Shuell, 1996), it is argued here that the teaching intervention used in this study proposed concrete measures for teachers to take to exert the desired impact on students’ joint discussions. More specifically, in-depth, fine-grained investigation of the excerpts presented in the ‘Results’ section reveals the advantages of the social aspect of group work and the teacher-supported condition. In Extracts B and C, in particular, the Type 2 and Type 3 students are seen to work collaboratively and to prompt their classmates to elaborate on and substantiate any seemingly unjustified opinions. They also attempt to draw evidence from their peers’ contrasting views and to engage more deeply in the collaborative discussion through the exchange of arguments and counterarguments (or rebuttals). In a constructivist sense, the dialogue transcripts exhibit the explicitly social aspect of group work, as the students displayed highly structured scaffolds to underpin their standpoints in the argumentative discourse. Indeed, this observation echoes s (1971, 1973); s (1971, 1973) social constructivist trajectory in which cognitive development in higher order thinking (i.e. critical training) is achieved through social conflicts by means of collaboration with co-learners. Regarding the advantages of the teacher-supported group work condition, it is notable that the Type 3 students (i.e. those in Extract C) demonstrated more components of critical thinking from Kuhn’s model than did their Type 2 counterparts. Not only were they more capable of distinguishing opinions from facts (K1), but they were also better able to present their own viewpoints with the support of proper evidence (K2 & K3). Moreover, the Type 3 students were also capable of embracing multiple perspectives and defending their positions in a friendly, yet informed manner (K4). In a broader sense, the role of the teacher really mattered here, as the teachers were able to guide the students towards open-mindedness and confidence in coping with different, sometimes even conflicting, opinions. As illustrated in Extract C, for instance, when one student was rather over-eager in refuting a classmate’s opinion, resulting in a tense group atmosphere, it was the teacher who broke the silence, played down the tension and encouraged the group to continue the discussion. Further, when the teacher acknowledged one student’s informative remark in an affirmative tone, another student was motivated to contribute a thoughtful response to obtain similar recognition. Such demonstrations of the constructive role that teachers can play in group work echo the view of Meloth (1991) and Webb and Farivar (1994) that teacher participation is an important facilitator of cognitive development during collaborative learning and is particularly helpful in peer group discussions. In terms of research design, what differentiates this research from previous research is that it draws on qualitative data from students and teachers to offer a more holistic interpretation of the effects of a teaching intervention. Qualitative analysis of the classroom dialogues and focus-group interviews, which captured students’ and teachers’ observed interactions in the classroom and their self-reported perceptions of the different pedagogical settings in which the intervention was grounded, respectively, highlights the advantages of group work over whole-class teaching in cultivating critical thinking dispositions, as well as the significance of teacher participation in group work. Indeed, the classroom dialogues generated particularly important results for exploring the student-teacher communication that is associated with the development of such dispositions. They also offer evidence showing that within the context of Liberal Studies, collaborative group work can work in an authentic classroom environment and that students should be given opportunities to learn with teacher support. Hence, the present study arguably demonstrates the potential of contextualising collaborative group work in this manner for other subjects and education systems. However, a major limitation of this article is that, constrained by the scope of the study presented herein, a thorough examination of the notable lack of impact that teacher training exerted on students’ critical thinking dispositions (i.e. in the Type 1 classes) when that training was not combined with the pedagogical approach of group work is not feasible. However, significant findings are expected if further analysis is conducted in future research. Another research limitation is that the study was limited in scale, being restricted to just two schools. Also, the research design of the experimental group (i.e. division into two sub-groups) arguably reduced the sample size, thereby weakening the basis for statistical generalisation. Nevertheless, it can be argued that the design still allows for ‘naturalistic generalisation’ (Stake, 1978), that is, generalisation viewed as a product of human experiences to identify ‘the similarities of objects and issues’ (p. 6). In this article, we report empirically grounded results illustrating the effects of teacher participation in group work on the development of students’ critical thinking dispositions in an authentic classroom context. It can thus be regarded as a template for exploratory study (Yin, 1993). All things considered, it is reasonable to argue that there are several ways in which this study makes original contributions not only to the local context, but also to educational research in general. First of all, as the study was situated in the Hong Kong secondary school context in which group work is emerging as an increasingly important strategy by which to facilitate interactive and selfdirected learning amongst students (CDC & HKEAA, 2007; Fung, 2014), it can be regarded as pioneering research that echoes the paradigm shift from traditional whole class teaching to collaborative learning in the local education community. Second, the new perspective it offers on the development of critical thinking through small-group discussions is a timely response to the literature gap concerning the relationship between group work and critical thinking. There is no doubt that the goals of the latest education reforms in Hong Kong, which emphasise liberating students from the traditional, passive approach to learning, will be accomplished if such a collaborative learning culture is encouraged to thrive with proper support for teachers. In conclusion, this paper introduces the pedagogical advantages of group work in the context of growing demand for the teaching of critical thinking in Hong Kong secondary schools. Through systematic analysis of classroom dialogues and focus-group interviews, it not only illustrates the superiority of group work over whole-class instruction in enhancing students’ critical thinking dispositions, but also confirms the important role of teachers in facilitating student interaction in small-group discussions, thus explaining why the students in the teacher-supported group work condition in this research outperformed those in the self-directed condition. Therefore, 137

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