This study suggests the remodelling approach as an efficient way of improving children's critical thinking, by applying it to children's picture-book reading activities and analyzing its results and process changes. This study consists of two parts: &...
This study suggests the remodelling approach as an efficient way of improving children's critical thinking, by applying it to children's picture-book reading activities and analyzing its results and process changes. This study consists of two parts: <study 1> suggests remodeled lesson plans and <study 2> analyzes the results and process changes after the reading activities based on the remodeled lesson plans.
The subjects of <study 1> are to know what the remodelled lesson plans for picture-book reading activities based on the remodelling approach is, and how properly the 3 types of critical thinking strategies, affective strategies, cognitive strategies-macro-abilities, cognitive strategies-macro-skills are ditributed in the remodelled lesson plans.
To this end, in <study 1> 24 original lesson plans were chosen and redesigned, applying the remodelling approach, and strategies in remodelled lesson plans were divided into three representative types according to 3 types of critical thinking strategies, affective strategies, cognitive strategies-macro-abilities, cognitive strategies-macro-skills. Then the three types of critical thinking strategies shown in the 24 remodelled lesson plans were evaluated for how much they contribute to the improvement of children's balanced critical thinking. This was to ensure that the remodeled lesson plans used in this study ditibuted the three types of critical thinking strategies of affective strategies, cognitive strategies-macro-abilities, cognitive strategies-macro-skills comprehensively.
The subjects of <study 2> are to know the results and process changes after the remodelling approach has been adopted in picture-book reading activities. The detailed subjects are as follows.
First, what changes in each critical thinking element have been after the remodelling approach has been introduced to picture-book reading activities? Second, what changes have been in types of the teachers' question during the process of reading activities applying the remodeling approach? Third, what changes have been in children's utterance shown in the process of picture-book reading activities adopting the remodelling approach? Fourth, what changes have been in interaction children with teacher during the process of picture- book reading activities adopting the remodelling approach?
In <study 2>, 24 children aged 5 from H Kindergarden in S-Gu, Seoul have been selected to serve as the experimental group and 22 children of the same age from K Kindergarden in S-Gu, Seoul to serve as the control group. The children participated in 24 picture-book reading activities during the time of 15 weeks. The experimental group conducted reading activities based on the remodelled lesson plans and the control group were given the original lesson plans.
The results showed that among the critical thinking elements purpose, implications, inferences had a significant difference. The changes during the process of applying the remodelling approach in picture-book reading activities were as follows.
Firstly, the type of the most frequent question presented by the teachers adopting the remodelling approach was conflicting system question, followed by one-system question and no-system question in order. Among the conflicting-system questions, reviewed from the perspective of the five Socratic questioning types, the questions asking for reasons and evidence were most numerous, followed by questions seeking clarification, questions about a question, questions exploring alternative views, questions testing implications and consequences in order.
Secondly, the number of children producing utterance in the experimental group showed a stable increase from the 19th session. In regards to children's response to other children's utterance, the largest part was to response another children's views and in the case that clarifies another child's utterance on the basis of their responses the children responded most frequently to reasons and evidence, implications and consequences. In each session, the number of episodes showing children producing responses to other children's utterance increased steadily from the 14th to 22th sessions.
Lastly, the ratio the teacher to children in utterance was in the range from 1:1 to 1:4, and overall the proportion of children's utterance was considered to be on the rise. As for the pattern of interaction, this study finds that the initial stage of teacher-dominating-pattern gradually changed into a pattern in which interactions between children were more promoted. Added to that, when the teacher showed interactions by asking questions for questions, the pattern of dialogues between the teacher and a child like a teacher after a child, after a teacher, after a child, after a teacher, after a child, was spotted after 18th session. This would prove that teachers also became more active to an extent that she engaged in asking in-depth questions not in suggesting in their lesson plans.
To sum up, the children's picture-book reading activity based on the remodelling approach had a positive effect on children's critical thinking. In addition, the interactions between children became more evident by each session of book reading, the proportion of children's utterance in one session increased, and the teacher showed to use the question-for-question answering pattern. As can be seen from the above, it seems that the picture-book reading activity adopting the remodelling approach is one of the efficient tools to draw children's critical thinking and active involvements.