Chlldren’s Self-Directed Critical Thinking

Fourth- and fifth-grade children were assigned either to the experimental or control condition on the basis of a critical thinking test score. All 39 children were given a problem to solve in an individual interview setting. Children in the experiment group participated subsequently in eight small-group discussions in which they learned and applied “self-directed critical thinking” skills. After the small group discussions, all the children were again tested individually on a problem comparable to the first. Children in the experimental group were significantly higher than those in the control group when scored for (a) application of the thinking skills, (b) amount of relevant information used to solve the problem, and (c) quality of answer.