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13yflK 378
B.M. Ibraeva, A.N. Kalizhanova,,
Private institution "Academy Bolashak" (Karaganda, Kazakhstan)
Introduction of New Forms of Assessment of Critical Thinking Skills
Several years ago, the cooperation between British Council and Kazakhstan resulted in the courses of professional development of Kazakhstani teachers (In Kazakhstan). Lots of experts were participating in sponsored by Kazakhstani government program on the approaches and methods of critical thinking (Zair-Bek, 2003) to teach learners to think critically. It was considered as a revolution in the whole educational process in Kazakhstan. According to Halpern, an ideal critical thinker, who is eager to plan ahead rather than to judge in a rush, achieve goals, solve problems, correct mistakes, and be flexible, became a new target of modern education (Khalpern, 2000).
According to Paul and Elder, people, who possess critical thinking skills, raise substantial problems with clarity and precision, collect, evaluate, and interpret relevant information, make well-reasoned conclusions, think open-mindedly, assess their assumptions, and communicate effectively (Paul and Elder, 2014). Paul and Elder identify some universal intellectual values, such as clarity, accuracy, consistency, relevance, reasoning, precision, depth, breadth, and fairness (Paul and Elder, 2014), which transcend subject matter divisions and help in decision-making through each stage of life. Students can practice such values and lay the groundwork for using critical thinking in their day-to-day experiences. In particular, while considering which university to attend, critical thinkers will not simply do what their parents recommend. In contrast, the choice
of a high school will be based on a careful research of an educational market, examining their disposition and learning abilities, financial benefits and drawbacks, and social merits. In short, critical thinkers will consider only sound arguments that are more likely to lead to the right decision.
Because critical thinking leads to conscious consideration of ideas and sound decision-making, students can understand the surrounding environment and succeed in a rapidly evolving society. Thus, when teachers consciously reinforce critical thinking in the classroom, it becomes ingrained in students' habits either inside or out
Академия «Болашак»
of school. Therefore, critical thinking becomes a readily available tool for approaching information and can be recognized as a self-directed, self-disciplined, self-monitored and self-corrective thinking (Paul and Elder, 2014).
Now, turning to the issue of a revolutionary educational model, Kazakhstani English classes have been turned into the playground for integration of critical thinking with traditional forms of teaching. At the same time, the problems of assessment of critical thinking skills evoke. In fact, it is still not clear how to evaluate students regarding critical thinking development.
© Ibraeva B.M., Kalizhanova A.N., 2017
БАЯН
МУКУШЕВНА ИБРАЕВА
кандидат филологических наук, профессор, заведующая кафедрой иностранных языков и межкультурной коммуникации Частного учреждения «Академии "Болашак"» (г. Караганда, Республика Казахстан). Сфера научных интересов: лингвистика, методика обучения иностранным языкам, межкультурная коммуникация. Автор 36 публикаций
АННА
НИКОЛАЕВНА
КАЛИЖАНОВА
бакалавр педагогики, преподаватель кафедры иностранных языков и межкультурной коммуникации Частного учреждения «Академии "Болашак"» (г Караганда, Республика Казахстан). Сфера научных интересов: языкознание, прикладная лингвистика, преподавание иностранных языков, критическое мышление, межкультурная коммуникация. Автор 5 публикации
Рассматривается педагогический опыт внедрения новых форм и способов оценки критического мышления слушателей языковых курсов, изучающих деловой английский язык с применением методов и приемов критического мышления на уроках английского языка. Приводятся результаты исследования, в котором было установлено, что при применении технологии критического мышления на уроках английского языка подход ко всем видам оценки деятельности студентов должен соответствовать выбранной методологии. Показано, что критическое мышление не существует отдельно от дисциплины, которая изучается при помощи стратегий этого мыслительного процесса. Ведь развивая предметные компетенции, учащиеся развивают и свою способность мыслить критически, если добывание знаний происходит в соответствии с требованиями по развитию самого критического мышления. Эксперимент, который проходил в одной крупной информационно-коммуникационной компании, продемонстрировал существенное повышение уровня владения английским языка в группах, где на всех стадиях обучения и его оценивания использовались методы и приемы критического мышления.
Ключевые слова: диагностический контроль, промежуточный контроль, итоговый контроль, критическое мышление, оценка критического мышления, тестирование, методы и формы критического мышления.
This article describes the pedagogical experience of the introduction of new types of diagnostic, formative, and summative assessments of critical thinking skills of students of Business English Course. The research work reveals the impact of the strategies of critical thinking skills on the progress regarding the knowledge of the subject where such policies are implied. At the same time, the study emphasizes the impossibility of critical thinking development without the subject. On the contrary, the deeper the awareness of the topic the stronger the ability to think critically on conditions the critical approach was used throughout the whole educational process. Finally, in case, such a critical pathway is chosen, all types of assessment, such as diagnostic, formative, and summative, should be held with critical thinking strategies as well. The experiment, which was held in IT Company, illustrated a significant growth of level of English language in groups where critical thinking approach was applied to all stages of the educational process.
Key words: diagnostic, formative, summative assessments, critical thinking skills, assessment of critical thinking skills.
Firstly, Bloom's taxonomy (Bloom et al., 1956), a valuable and widely used tool that describes different levels of thinking, lays a foundation for identifying standard criteria for assessment. Six levels, such as knowledge, comprehension, application, analysis, synthesis, and evaluation, according to Bloom, can define the core criteria for critical thinking assessment.
Secondly, in 1938, a famous Russian psychologist, Lev Vygotsky, points out an importance of a collaborative learning (Vygotsky, 1991) for better acquiring of information. In Vygotsky's viewpoint,
such approach assists in bringing up a person, who will contribute to society, respect others, listen carefully and rely on relevant sources of information. Vygotsky's definition of a perfect human being coincides with the definition of a critical thinker (Zair-Bek, 2003); therefore, each step of the educational process should be implemented in a mutual collaboration.
Moreover, students should get a chance to define their criteria for assessment, choose interesting topics, identify personal attitude toward various issues, and raise important issues. In parallel, the
role of a teacher leads to the role of a coordinator of the working process as well as an active learner, whereas a student can become a master holding an educational process.
For some educators, the principal focus of teaching and learning process is the lesson delivery. For others, however, the delivery is just a reflection of how well lessons are planned and where to improve. Some argue that assessment is the most important element of teaching because it measures an effectiveness of both planning and delivery. Nevertheless, critical thinking is clearly understood to be infused in each of all aspects of a lesson. Contrary to the limited effectiveness of lecturing, critical thinking pretends to be one of numerous teaching methods that prevail in the middle and senior classes of the global community. An attempt to apply critical thinking methodologies is a great opportunity to change the state of things and to shift the responsibility of a students' learning to students themselves. In some schools, teachers have already been working collaboratively to change teaching practices and foster critical thinking.
For the practical part of the study regarding the assessment of critical thinking skills, lesson planning, lesson delivery, and evaluation were included in the research. The experiment was held in one of the biggest multinational IT Company within half a year with the company's employees: supporters, developers, and testing engineers, who have English lesson as a benefit for working overtime. All of them need English for building a successful career, because a B1-level individual, according to CEFR (2006), can participate in well-paid and long-term foreign projects. Twice a year, all programmers take part in Unified Assessment where their professional skills are evaluated. It is an international exam, which is held in English, so, all workers
should speak English fluently and comprehensively understand all questions. Another necessary procedure is an English assessment, according to which people either increase or decrease their English level, which immediately appears in their professional portfolio. Hence, all employees are highly motivated and willing to progress.
At last, the three-staged experiment started. The first stage involved working on the program of general business English that was chosen due to the results of a survey showed that the majority of workers wanted such a program with a critical thinking approach. In particular, 85% of future learners longed for social functions of holding a meeting or negotiations, estimating the cost of future projects, managing time and people, handling conflicts at work, searching for the information, and preparing for Unified Assessment. Furthermore, 60% chose to be involved in the future experiment, whereas 40% voted for the traditional way based on mechanical memorization and grammar exercises.
Also, the potential students wrote an essay reflecting on their preference whether to work in a team or be a solo player. The major part of future students recognized teamwork as the most efficient, so, with the hope of collaborative approach, four groups, of eleven people each, were formed. Students were assigned to A1/A2-level groups due to their current English level. Two A2 and one A1 group were involved in the unique program with several methodologies to develop critical thinking based on the collaborative techniques, such as Six Thinking Hats, Socratic Seminars, Academic Conversation, Project Based Learning, and Service Learning for the whole period of teaching.
Usually, teacher talking time (TTT) takes 85% of the entire lesson and minimizes student talking time (STT). Critical thinking techniques turn a traditional teacher-centered
class into a student-centered one. The role of a teacher is to facilitate an educational process, find relevant materials, guide conversations, choose topics for discussion, model the form of thinking, handle students' questions, turn a classroom into a reflection zone, organize peer work, and adjust the context to students' needs and interests.
If we include critical thinking methodologies in the lessons, then the assessment must also be consistent with the used methods. Therefore, we cannot rate critical thinking skills through traditional tools because they do not capture what happen in the classroom. IT students learned how to acquire essential for their work skills such as academic conversation, visioning, active problem solving, leadership, and respectful disagreement. So, we decided to adapt diagnostic, formative and summative assessment by the timeframes and deadlines.
As for Diagnostic Assessment (Fisher, 2016a), Academic Questioning was taken. It included the investigation of students' awareness of topics, guiding the conversation, and creating the atmosphere of resourcefulness and reflection, making notes during the question-answer session to identify if students need elaboration or clarification (Fisher, 2016b). All the issues were classified in line with Bloom's Taxonomy (Bloom et al., 1956) and demonstrated the level of possessing of target critical thinking skills of English students. In particular, students did not have any problems asking direct questions whereas only a few could design so-called 'thick' questions.
Formative Assessment (Davis, 2015) can be used at any stage of the lesson to assess ongoing students' progress. It allows teachers to adjust lesson plans to students' actual performance. Formative assessment is "embedded in the strategies the teacher uses to deliver the experience. It can be challenging
to estimate several parts of experience simultaneously, and that is when tools like rubrics or learning maps are useful" (Davis, 2015). So, students should have created and elaborated such rubrics themselves due to the collaborative learning.
Consequently, the learners with their teacher developed four criteria for evaluating of critical thinking skills, such as outstanding, excellent, satisfactory and non-satisfactory, taking students' participation as a key point. After that, a 'non-satisfactory' criterion was removed from the list of features not to decrease the level of students' motivation.
Outstanding level of participation required offering a careful analysis, without prompting, moving the conversation forward, demonstrating in-depth knowledge of the text and the question, coming to the seminar with notes and a marked/annotated text, active listening to the colleagues and asking for clarification.
Excellent level of participation required the same options as for outstanding with the only difference -no moving the conversation forward -that indicated the inability of the participant to create something new.
Satisfactory level required offering some analysis but purposing to prompt from the seminar leader and others, demonstrating a general knowledge of the text and the question, less-preparedness with only a few notes and no marked text, listening carefully but not asking for clarification and relying more on others' opinion.
Finally, the non-satisfactory level required a participant's little remarks, attendance of seminars, and incomprehension without any marked text and homework, inattentive listening to others and absence of their work.
For formative assessment, the strategies, such as Socratic Seminar (Socratic Seminars, 2016) and Six Thinking Hats (Bono, 1985), were chosen. This stage mostly happened throughout the entire
course almost every English class where some interesting topics based on real texts were considered. Ongoing assessment, as well as the whole process of studying, was our students' favorite because it provided many chances to speak. All documents were given students as homework assignments with final task to compose as many questions as possible, analyze the text, identify the main idea, and raise a problem based on the facts written in the book.
Frankly speaking, there were some problems at the initial stage of the experiment. Firstly, any seminar turned into debates, and much effort was applied to avoid or handle any possible conflicts. Secondly, almost all of IT students had a problem with listening to others attentively. It took time for employees to respect their colleagues' opinion and stop criticizing alternative viewpoints. Moreover, busy programmers did not want to complete their homework due to the lack of quality time. However, having started to participate in seminars, students became willing to contribute more, so the problem of homework was fixed.
At the same time, in a traditional group, people chose to read in class what significantly limited their talking time. Furthermore, traditional students did not want to participate in various disputes based on the information from the texts as well as be involved in role-play activities and writing reflective essays. On the contrary, they enjoyed doing grammatical tests and exercises during the whole class.
Summative Assessment (Strategic Goals, 2011) requires the promotion of critical thinking as a way to create a portfolio with all students' works and projects. According to Paulson and Meyer, assessing students through their portfolios differs from traditional evaluation. Portfolio assessment makes any teacher observe students regarding their ability to take risks,
develop creative solutions, and make judgments about their performances (Portfolio assessment, 2015). Students' reflection and productive habits of mind lead to professional growth and development in relationship to fundamental aspirations and assumptions. Portfolio presents an application of critical processes, a degree of completeness, correctness, and appropriateness of products and processes (Portfolio assessment, 2015). In short, reflection is what students need to make constant progress.
Thus, IT students filled feedback forms evaluating themselves and their teachers, summarizing their performance and concluding if to prolong the collaboration with their teacher or not justifying their choice. At the same time, at the end of the lesson, students provided their feedbacks and recommendations if to improve, change, or remove something regarding the educational process. So, students had plenty opportunities to write reflexive essays after reading texts or dialogs. Moreover, reflecting articles have been drafted from the side of various characters, expressing the opinions of heroes with the help of Bloom's Taxonomy (Bloom et al., 1984) that was used to explain the structure of written and oral answers.
Due to the project-based learning (Project-Based Learning, 2016), the students participated in the contest of presentations on a future and useful for humanity inventions. Based on certain tasks, such as producing a Tablet PC able to roll out in the pocket and fit the pockets of different sizes, presentations were created. Learners presented their intellectual products to their peers, who were evaluating a procedure of turning a raw idea into its fruition due to certain criteria. In the end, the best presentation was elected, and every voter explained and justified his or her choice.
Another project required to develop an interactive test of critical thinking skills to simplify the work of busy teachers with data processing and aligning. Such console application was written in Java Programming language (Farrell, 2015) and aimed to facilitate understanding and usage of the test. The final version of Java test was very functional despite its simplicity.
The summative assessment of English course demonstrated the improvement of speaking skills of employees in controlled groups. Almost all A2-level students gained B1. Their active vocabulary increased, but the fear of public speaking disappeared. Moreover, they stopped being afraid of writing due to the thorough understanding of the structure.
New examination sheets were composed and adjusted to parameters of critical thinking as well. English assessment became more focused and oriented to the degree of creativity, evaluation and analyzing. As for people from the grammar-oriented group, they could not demonstrate such an impressive result due to a problem with an instant idea what to speak or write after receiving the topic. According to the company's rules, they will have to take the same course one more time until they raise their level.
Summing up, the experiment was recognized as successful and justified the removal of obligatory memorization from the educational process. Furthermore, the usage of new technologies allowed improving necessary skills in the entertaining and friendly atmosphere. Therefore, critical thinking (Zair-Bek, 2003) integration into the educational process, where all stages are implemented through the collaborative learning, can be recognized as beneficial and inevitably lead to the future progress of the whole generation.
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