In conventional Chinese language (CL) teaching, teachers tend to place emphasis on teaching reading and writing skills through rote learning. As such learning process hinges on mechanical memory. This often results in students not finding the learning of CL interesting and engaging.
With greater emphasis on developing 21st Century Competencies (21CC), the CL teachers at Bukit View Secondary feel strongly that developing students’ critical thinking abilities will have a profound impact on students’ speaking, reading and writing skills.
In collaboration with Educational Technology Division, the team identified learning gaps in reading comprehension at Secondary One and adopted Problem-based learning (PBL) approach empowered with ICT for designing learning as researches have shown that PBL is an effective pedagogical approach to developing learners’ critical thinking (Chung & Chow, 2004; Hung, et al., 2008; Iwaoke & Rhee, 2010; Neo & Neo, 2005).
A curriculum intervention was designed to facilitate students on learning how to conduct problem analysis with scaffolds, assuming ownership to explore and solve the prescribed problem, and collaborating with peers to co-construct and revise ideas. Redesign for Assessing Critical Thinking (ReACT), an e-PBL portal was harnessed and integrated as part of the curriculum intervention.
During intervention, students worked in pairs to unpack the issues, analyse the characters and issues in the passage, and formulate ideas and recommendations through the five defined PBL process (identify, explore, analyse, apply and evaluate). The PBL process, influenced by the work of Lynch & Wolcott (2001), and supported with cognitive scaffolds (include Cognitive Research Trust Thinking strategies) were embedded within ReACT portal.
After two cycles of curriculum intervention, findings revealed an improvement in various aspects of comprehension ability and critical thinking skills. Students were able to analyse problems critically and identify issues from diverse perspectives. They were able to articulate their thinking and arguments with a certain degree of depth. They were also more engaged as they owned their learning.
Findings from this study suggested the necessity for CL teachers to look beyond the current way of lesson delivery. Furthermore, there exists value pondering about the intended student outcomes especially in the spirit of nurturing the younger generation to become confident and effective communicators who are ready to take on the world.
