Professional Documents
Culture Documents
5.0 INTRODUCTION
In this chapter, the findings from the collected data are being discussed based
on the three research questions posed in the study. This chapter presents the
summary, discussions of the findings, recommendations and conclusion of the study.
The objective of the discussion is to investigate whether the objectives of this study
were achieved from the collection of data using the survey research. This chapter
also aims to suggest the recommendation needed for future researches.
5.1
This study aims to answer the three research questions posed, namely;
i.
ii.
What are the respondents inclinations in their habits of mind when they are
facing life issues, problems, and questions?
iii.
How do the respondents perceive their own thinking abilities when they face
issues, problems, and questions that they wish to answer?
5.2
Research Question One: What do respondents understand about the meaning and
the importance of critical thinking?
This
study
initially
assumed
that
the
respondents
could
give
the
comprehensible meaning and the importance of critical thinking in their life after four
years learning in the education course. It is significant to discover whether the
graduates from education major, especially in Bachelor of Education (TESL) have
clear concept of critical thinking after learning in the education course. This is mainly
due to the emphasis of critical thinking skills in tertiary education through the
instructional programmes and approaches, especially designed for teacher education
(Nagappan, 2001). According to Nagappan, in teaching critical and creative thinking
towards prospective teachers, direct instruction of thinking through non-curricular
texts and the use of methods to promote thinking in the content lessons were taken
by teacher educators. This might be the reason why the respondents could present
satisfactory understanding of the concept of critical thinking in the survey
questionnaire.
A study by Kaddoura (2013) explored the perceived definition of critical
thinking from the new graduate nurses based on the first critical nursing experience.
It was found that three major themes were identified by the researcher, which are
multi-perspective thinking, analytical activities and decision-making process. Almost
the same themes emerged in this study, however, the themes in the findings were
identified by referring to the proposed definition by Facione which is used for the
purposes of educational assessment and instructional. For example, multiperspective thinking and the analytical activities could be explained with the process
of examining ideas, in which is included under the skills of analysis by the expert
consensus.
5.3
Research Question 2: What are the respondents inclinations in their habits of mind
3
5.4
Research Question 3: How do the respondents perceive their own thinking abilities
5
when they face issues, problems, and questions that they wish to answer?
5.5
Recommendations
5.5.1
The findings in this study can benefit the prospective teachers to enhance
their critical thinking skills during the learning process in the duration of eight
semesters. Besides that, it is important for the respondents and the participants of the
study to reflect on their thinking process to improve their critical thinking conceptions,
dispositions, and perceptions on their own thinking abilities. It is important for the
prospective teachers to always reflect their own process of thinking to enable them to
make reasonable and rationale judgment, not only for the sake of their personal and
professional development, but also in their life. It is important for them to improve
themselves by gaining information and knowledge about critical thinking and allow
themselves to adopt thinking critically in many aspects of their life.
It is also important for the students of higher learning institutions to be
included with the teaching of critical thinking. Direct instruction may be suggested to
lessen the misconceptions about critical thinking. The application of critical thinking in
their assessments and evaluation should also be increased to ensure that they
benefit extensively in the application of critical thinking.
5.5.1
This study did not use California Critical Thinking Disposition Inventory
(CCTDI) that indicates more precise findings of the study of critical thinking
dispositions. CCTDI should be used as the means to collect data for critical thinking
dispositions in the future research if other researchers are interested in investigate
the area of study. Besides that, a more detailed research should be conducted to
investigate the understanding of critical thinking concept among students in Malaysia
higher education institutions, especially in education major, so that more extensive
and comprehensive literature can be offered in the critical thinking area of studies in
Malaysian context.
7
5.6
Conclusion