Strengthening critical thinking through reading strategies

1
Strengthening critical thinking through reading strategies for students in higher education
in Monteria.
Fortalecimiento del pensamiento crítico a través de estrategias de lectura para estudiantes
de educación superior en Montería.
Artículo de Investigación
Research method
Qualitative and quantitative approaches were used in this investigation. According to Monje
(2011) Quantitative research deals with quantitative data collection that has to be measured by
empirical concepts derived from theoretical concepts that are constructed by conceptual
hypothesis while qualitative research is defined by Sampieri, R et al (2006) as an inductive
contextualized process in a natural setting. In this type of investigation is relevant to establish a
close relationship between its participants subtracting their experiences and beliefs to the
detriment of the use of a predetermined measurement instrument.
Besides, a pretest, a semi-structured interview and a pedagogical strategy connected to reading

and critical thinking (CT) skills were taken into account during the development of this research
task for data collection. According to Oakley (1998) “semi-structured interviews are those in-depth
interviews where the respondents have to answer preset open-ended questions and thus are widely
employed by different healthcare professionals in their research. Semi-structured, in-depth interviews are
utilized extensively as interviewing format possibly with an individual or sometimes even with a group”.
The pretest was administered at the beginning of the semester to determine students´ critical
thinking skills in relation to reading comprehension. It was composed of 50 questions.
The semi-structured interview was made up of 10 questions connected to reading and critical
thinking. Students were interviewed before the pedagogical strategy was applied. The purpose of
this technique was to recognize students´ knowledge about critical thinking and its relation to
reading.
The reading comprehension on critical thinking ability in English tested the CT abilities;
Interpretation, Analysis, Evaluation, Inference, Explanation and Self-regulation linked to Facione
(2007) ´s classification of critical thinking skills
This pedagogical strategy was administrated in five phases and developed in a sequential way.
The details of the 5 reading comprehension strategies are listed below:
 The first strategy is to reflect and read infographics related to politics.
 The second strategy is to solve questions based on a specialized reading linked to human
rights.
 The third strategy is to solve riddles.
 The fourth strategy is a giving opinion passage.
 The fifth strategy is to analyze a video clip called ‘History of a signboard”.
lida.pinto@upb.edu.co;maria.garciac@upb.edu.co;dalis.vergara@upb.edu.co;dayan.guzmanb@u
pb.edu.co;nlwong@um.edu.my;
[TÍTULO DEL DOCUMENTO] | [Subtítulo del documento]
2
Respondents were required either to choose an answer from multiple-choice questions or

answer questions based on the reading comprehension. Two hours were allocated for each strategy.
The aforementioned strategies were designed by the researchers taking as a point of reference texts,
videos and infographics that already existed.
Population and sample

The population of this study was selected through a probabilistic procedure and was
administrated to first year students aged 15-20 who were attending Language and Culture courses,
4 hours per week at Language Centre from the faculties of Social Communication, Law and
Psychology Programs, in the first semester of 2018. Among the 68 questionnaire distributed, the
valid ones were 17 samples (10 male and 7 female students), corresponded to 25% of the whole
population.
Data analysis
Data analysis was done by using the Student’s t-test or ANOVA test with the purpose of
comparing means. Besides, a linear correlation was utilized for the study of associations between
quantitative variables. (Pearson's linear correlation coefficient (r), coefficient (B) and p-value). In
addition, the content analysis technique was used to analyze the data (semi-structured interview).
Bardin (2011), Klipendorf (2013) allude that the analysis of content is the analysis of the
manifest and latent messages of a body of communiqués.
.
Results
The results obtained were presented below, after applying the 5 strategies designed to
strengthen critical thinking in the selected population.
Three performance levels defined by the researchers were used for this analysis, taking into
account the educational evaluation policies at national level: High: scores between 4.0 and 5.0;
medium scores between 2.0 and 3.99 and low scores between 1.0 and 1.99.
The first strategy consists of reflecting and reading of an infographics related to politics.
Students solved questions related to critical thinking skills (Facione,2007)
Strategy 1. Infographics workshop
Graphic II. Results strategy 1.
3
INTERPRE EXPLICAT
LOW 6%
ION
MEDIUM 18%
HIGH 76%
LOW 12%
ANALYSIS TATION
MEDIUM 35%
HIGH 53%
LOW 12%
MEDIUM 12%
HIGH 76%
0% 50% 100%
Source: self-elaboration
Graphic III. Results strategy 1.

EVALUATI
LOW
INFERENC GULATIO REFLECTI
6%
ON
ON
MEDIUM 29%
HIGH 65%
AUTORRE
LOW 6%
MEDIUM 18%
N
HIGH 76%
LOW 12%
MEDIUM 18%
E
HIGH 71%
0% 50% 100%
Results described in graphics II and III show that a high performance prevails in different skills.
This means that when multimodal texts as infographics are presented to students, they showed a
great interest. This was evidenced in the high percentages (above the medium score), they obtained
in their critical reading level. The other results are also above the medium score.
Strategy 2 Specialized texts workshop
In strategy 2, a reading comprehension related to human rights was applied to the participants.
Students solved questions based on critical thinking skills, too.
Graphic IV. Results strategy 2.
4
ANALYSI INTERPR EXPLICAT

LOW 17.6%
ETATION ION
MEDIUM 23.5%
HIGH 58.8%
LOW 11.8%
MEDIUM 35.3%
HIGH 52.9%
LOW 11.8%
MEDIUM 29.4%
S
HIGH 58.8%
0.0% 20.0%40.0%60.0%80.0%
Graphic V. Results strategy 2.

ANALYSI INTERPR EXPLICAT
LOW 17.6%
ETATION ION
MEDIUM 23.5%
HIGH 58.8%
LOW 11.8%
MEDIUM 35.3%
HIGH 52.9%
LOW 11.8%
MEDIUM 29.4%
S
HIGH 58.8%
0.0% 20.0%40.0%60.0%80.0%100.0%
Source: self-elaboration.
Graphics IV and V revealed that in this activity, results were also above the medium score,
highlighting the evaluation and reflection skill in which students obtained a high level. The other
results are also above the medium score.
Strategy 3 Problematic situations: Riddle
Graphic VI. Results strategy 3
5
EVALUATI
LOW
EXPLICATI INFERENC REFLECTI
17.6%
ON
ON
MEDIUM 35.3%
HIGH 47.1%
LOW 11.8%
MEDIUM 29.4%
E
HIGH 58.8%
LOW 5.9%
ON
MEDIUM 5.9%
HIGH 88.2%
ANALYSIS
LOW 5.9%
MEDIUM 11.8%
HIGH 82.4%
0.0% 20.0% 40.0% 60.0% 80.0% 100.0%
In this activity, students were put into playing logical skills to solve riddles in a successful way.
In this sense, results revealed a high development of analysis and explanation skills. In this
exercise, evaluation and reflection skills were below the medium score (See graphic VI).
Strategy 4 Opinion article.
Graphic VII. Results Strateg 4
LOW 5.9%
ANALYSI INTERPR EXPLICA
ETATION TION
MEDIUM 17.6%
HIGH 76.5%
LOW 5.9%
MEDIUM 17.6%
HIGH 76.5%
LOW 11.8%
MEDIUM 11.8%
S
HIGH 76.5%
0.0% 20.0% 40.0% 60.0% 80.0%100.0%
Graphic VIII. Results strategy 4.
6
EVALUATION
INFERENCE REFLECTION
LOW 5.9%
MEDIUM 11.8%
HIGH 82.4%
LOW 11.8%
MEDIUM 23.5%
HIGH 64.7%
0.0% 20.0% 40.0% 60.0% 80.0% 100.0%
In the development of this activity, it showed a higher performance in the evaluation and
reflection skill whereas the average score obtained in the skills of analysis, interpretation and
explanation. (See graphics VII and VIII).
Strategy 5: Video Analysis “History of a signboard”
Graphic IX Results strategy 5

INTERPRE EXPLICAT
LOW 5.9%
ION
MEDIM 17.6%
HIGH 76.5%
LOW 0.0%
ANALYSIS TATION
MEDIM 11.8%
HIGH 88.2%
LOW 11.8%
MEDIM 11.8%
HIGH 76.5%
0.0% 50.0% 100.0%
7
INFERENC AUTORRE REFLECTIO

EVALUATI
LOW 11.8%
ON
MEDIM 58.8%
GULATION N HIGH 29.4%
LOW 17.6%
MEDIM 29.4%
HIGH 52.9%
LOW 0.0%
MEDIM 11.8%
E
HIGH 88.2%
0.0%20.0%40.0%60.0%80.0%
100.0%
A higher performance in interpretation and inference skills were determined because of this
activity. This indicated that learners presented a higher motivation when working with audio-visual
texts. Analysis and explanation skills also showed a good performance even though the results
were lower than the ones obtained in Strategy 4.
Table 1. Correlation matrix

Correlation matrix based on some critical thinking skills
Pearson`s correlation 0,814

EXPLANATION 1
Value p 0

INFERENCE 1
Value p 0
EVALUATION 1
Value p 0

ANALYSIS 1
Value p 0
In table 1 the multivariate analysis that was done among the explanation, inference, evaluation
and analysis skills showed a high correspondence (positive correlation) due to the fact that
8
correlation coefficients respectively are 0.814 and 0.671 (values between -1 and 1). That is to say,
that the results obtained are closed to 1 and that is why a high correspondence is obtained here.
Interview Results
In this section, results from the questions related to critical thinking and reading comprehension
will be shown.
One of those questions was: When you presented the test “Saber 11” how did you feel?
Most of students said that they felt well and they added that it was an interesting test. Other group
replied that it was difficult to answer the questions because they were confusing. Others added that
they obtained low results in this test.
Another question included in this interview was about the major difficulty they had when
presenting the test “Saber 11”. 33% of students commented that vocabulary was challenging and it
was difficult to understand the texts included in this evaluation. 11.1% said they had complication
when interpreting. 16.6% of students considered reading comprehension as a complex process
while 5.5% said they do not like to read due to the fact that they find academic texts difficult to
understand. Furthermore, one of the participants in this study, assured that he/she has problems
when doing textual analysis.
When replying to the question what do you need to develop critical thinking? Some
undergraduate students (27.7%) considered that they should have some previous knowledge to
comprehend a text, to reflect and to self-regulate. Others (33.3%) declared that interpretation and
analysis processes are necessary to question reality. 11.1% of participants believed that
argumentation is relevant when expressing opinions. Few of them (5.5% think that vocabulary
within a text is significant to understand the global sense of the text.
Conclusion
According to the theory of critical thinking development, critical thinking is assumed as the
result of the interaction of cognitive abilities that constitute the basis for thinking logically and
making judgments of reliable value.
The aforementioned results corroborated that the skills that elaborate analysis, interpretations,
inferences, explanations, reflections, evaluations and self-regulation in concrete situations can be
strengthen through reading strategies, as the ones applied in this research; privileging opinion
articles reading because of the high students ´performance ( 75%). This percentage is related to the
results obtained from the application of strategy N° 4 (opinion article). This activity obtained the
highest average among the critical thinking skills. It has an extreme relation with the conception
that an opinion article is analytic, interpretative and evaluative, letting that an individual enters the
field of personal opinion and the frequent subjective interpretation of realities (Lopez, 2013).
This leads to validate this type of text as an effective tool in the formation of a critical reader,
since it allows an individual to be informed and updated on issues of national and international
realities. In the same sense, it permits to construct his/her world vision and to take a position in
front of facts and situations that he or she should face in the context where he/ she participates,
9
forming him/her as an analytical, critical and participatory subject. Nowadays, this type of text has
a relevant role, especially in the political field. That is the reason why an infographics or
multimodal text about the peace process was chosen to work with the participants of this study,
considering it is a subject that has generated controversy in our country. What was mentioned
before could be observed on graphic X.
Graphic XI. Percentages obtained with the application of five strategies.
STRATEGY 1
70%
ESTRATEGY 5 ESTRATEGY 2
67% 64%
69%
75%
ESTRATEGY 4 ESTRATEGY 3
Source : self-elaboration.
On the other hand, the strategy that had a lower performance was the one in which specialized
texts were used. This is why, it is deducted that it is fundamental to increase ( from the different
subjects offered in each semester by the university programs , reading and writing specialized texts
in different areas of knowledge. It does not matter if they have relation with students’careers or
not).
After studying the results in the programs of Law and Psychology, it was identified that the
critical thinking skill score was below average, was self-regulation. Therefore, it could be said that
it requires more work due to the fact that a metacognitive process should be done and learners still
have difficulties in mastering this procedure. Nevertheless, within this context, it could be
highlighted according to Lipman´s approach (Lipman, 1995), that no cognitive ability is by itself,
better than another, it is the context that determines it. Therefore, it is proposed to encourage from
each of the courses that students do an active construction of knowledge by applying the set of
didactic strategies, based on the efficient practice of reading that are suggested in this research
study.
Based on the multivariate analysis it can be affirmed that it is reliable because of the values
(p) to correlate (explanation with inference and evaluation with analysis) are lower than the level
of significance of 5%. This indicates that the correlation coefficients are significant with 95%
confidence. This study leads to think that professors as well as the University should be conscious
10
about students ´ requirements to strengthen each one of critical thinking skills by using different
types of texts that could be employed in the course development that are part of the curriculum of
the different programs.
Where is your semi structured interview data? how it was done and what was the findings? If
you have done it, the findings of interview can be used to support your discussion and argument.

Strengthening critical thinking through reading strategies

Hochgeladen von

Dokumentinformationen

Originaltitel

Copyright

Verfügbare Formate

Dieses Dokument teilen

Dokument teilen oder einbetten

Freigabeoptionen

Stufen Sie dieses Dokument als nützlich ein?

Sind diese Inhalte unangemessen?

Copyright:

Verfügbare Formate

Strengthening critical thinking through reading strategies

Hochgeladen von

Copyright:

Verfügbare Formate

1

Besides, a pretest, a semi-structured interview and a pedagogical strategy connected to reading

Respondents were required either to choose an answer from multiple-choice questions or

Population and sample

Strategy 1. Infographics workshop

Graphic II. Results strategy 1.

Graphic III. Results strategy 1.

Strategy 2 Specialized texts workshop

Graphic IV. Results strategy 2.

ANALYSI INTERPR EXPLICAT

Graphic V. Results strategy 2.

Strategy 3 Problematic situations: Riddle

Graphic VI. Results strategy 3

Strategy 4 Opinion article.

Graphic VII. Results Strateg 4

Graphic VIII. Results strategy 4.

0.0% 20.0% 40.0% 60.0% 80.0% 100.0%

Strategy 5: Video Analysis “History of a signboard”

Graphic IX Results strategy 5

INFERENC AUTORRE REFLECTIO

Table 1. Correlation matrix

Pearson`s correlation 0,814

Pearson`s correlation 0,814

Pearson`s correlation 0,671

Graphic XI. Percentages obtained with the application of five strategies.

Das könnte Ihnen auch gefallen