The purpose of this study was to determine effects of discussion activities about TV commercials on improvement in young children's critical thinking. To use TV commercials with educational elements as instructional media for five-year-olds to perform...
The purpose of this study was to determine effects of discussion activities about TV commercials on improvement in young children's critical thinking. To use TV commercials with educational elements as instructional media for five-year-olds to perform discussion activities to improve critical thinking and test its effectiveness, the following questions were set.
Question 1. How do discussion activities about TV commercials affect young children's skills of critical thinking?
1-1. How do discussion activities about TV commercials affect recognition of different viewpoints as young children's skill of critical thinking?
1-2. How do discussion activities about TV commercials affect thinking verification as young children's skill of critical thinking?
1-3. How do discussion activities about TV commercials affect determination for giving a reason as young children's skill of critical thinking?
1-4. How do discussion activities about TV commercials affect outcome prediction as young children's skill of critical thinking?
1-5. How do discussion activities about TV commercials affect application of criteria for others to the self as young children's skill of critical thinking?
This study was conducted with 40 children of five at two classes of a private kindergarten in Seoul. One class was an experimental group to which discussion activities about TV commercials were applied, and the other was the control group to which general pre-school education activities were applied. The experiment was performed in 18 sessions, 3 a week, for 6 weeks.
Kim's(2002) Critical Thinking Scale was used to measure five skills of critical thinking : thinking verification, determination for giving a reason, recognition of different viewpoints, outcome prediction, and application of criteria for others to the self. The experiment was carried out by using contents of TV commercials, which were tested for face validity by three early childhood education experts. For data processing, a statistical processing package, an SPSS 15.0 program, was used for analysis by t-test.
The results of this study can be summarized as follows :
First, after analyzing the post-test to see if discussion activities about TV commercials were effective in recognition of different viewpoints as a skill of critical thinking, children in the experimental group (M=3.00) were found to be improved as compared with those in the control group (M=2.05) (t=8.32, p<.001).
Second, as for effectiveness of discussion activities about TV commercials in thinking verification as a skill of critical thinking, children in the experimental group (M=2.97) were found to be improved as compared with those in the control group (M=1.90) (t=6.61, p<.001).
Third, as for effectiveness of discussion activities about TV commercials in determination for giving a reason as a skill of critical thinking, children in the experimental group (M=2.95) were found to be improved as compared with those in the control group (M=1.60) (t=8.42, p<.001).
Fourth, as for effectiveness of discussion activities about TV commercials in outcome prediction as a skill of critical thinking, children in the experimental group (M=2.90) were found to be improved as compared with those in the control group (M=1.77) (t=6.92, p<.001).
Fifth, as for effectiveness of discussion activities about TV commercials in application of criteria for others to the self as a skill of critical thinking, children in the experimental group (M=2.62) were found to be improved as compared with those in the control group (M=1.15) (t=10.17, p<.001).
As could be seen above, discussion activities about TV commercials were generally found to be effective significantly in critical thinking. Therefore, it can be said that discussion activities about TV commercials are positive teaching-learning methodology to improve critical thinking.