The Practical Development of Report Writing Education to Foster Critical Thinking

2015 Fiscal Year Final Research Report

• Project/Area Number: 25350290
• Research Category: Grant-in-Aid for Scientific Research (C)
• Allocation Type: Multi-year Fund
• Section: 一般
• Research Field: Educational technology
• Research Institution: Yamaguchi Prefectural University
• Principal Investigator: IKEDA FUMIKO 山口県立大学, 国際文化学部, 准教授 (10275430)
• Co-Investigator(Kenkyū-buntansha): AZETSU Tadahiro 山口県立大学, 情報化推進室, 准教授 (70285451) ; KAWASHIMA Keiji 九州大学, 基幹教育院, 教授 (50224770)
• Project Period (FY): 2013-04-01 – 2016-03-31
• Keywords: 批判的思考 / 論証型レポート / 批判的思考態度 / グループ学習 / アクティブラーニング / メタ認知

Outline of Final Research Achievements

This report focuses on the similarity between critical thinking and the argumentative report, and presents research conducted in a Japanese academic writing class aimed to foster critical thinking attitudes. In this class, group learning is regularly employed in various ways, including information collection concerning the report subject, group discussion, presentation, and making a report outline. Moreover, peer reviews after writing the report are performed, and this process is also important. In the group discussion, active learning techniques such as think-pair-share, jigsaw-method, poster-tour, etc. are used.
At the end of the semester, we confirmed that students’ critical thinking attitudes increased by measuring them before and after the class. In addition, from the results of student interviews after the class, it can be suggested that social activities accompanied with the metacognition are important.

Free Research Field

日本語学