标题：Why Critical Thinking Skills Interventions Fail: Role Of Teacher Interventionist And Implementation Fidelity For Critical Thinking (CT) Skills Provision In Education
摘要：Critical thinking skills are most sought after learning outcomes for students at all education levels and especially for teachers in 21st century. Practical efforts for teaching CT skills e.g. intervention studies for students have shown inconclusive results on the effectiveness of such interventions. This research paper determines the reasons behind an ineffective CT skills intervention by identifying the impact and role of teacher as an interventionist, and the rigor of intervention implementation. Where not only teacher impacts the implementation process of a critical thinking skills intervention- via curriculum and instruction in the classroom. But also the fidelity of implementation and teacher’s role as constructionist of learning environment was found crucial for the success or failure of the CT skills interventions. The research setting was a teacher education university in Lahore where participants included two groups of students (experimental and control) and one teacher. Teacher’s role was studied during the implementation phase using quantitative tools questionnaire, structured observations and interviews of the participants. Data findings showed that classroom learning environment was non-significantly predicting students gain in CT skills in all the aspects of learning environment; teaching presence, social presence, and cognitive presence. Rather it was negatively associated with students’ scores on critical thinking skills. The major themes from observational and interview data clearly indicated the importance of teacher’s role in constructing classroom learning environment towards teaching critical thinking skills, on implementation of intervention and construction of learning environment. These findings explain why critical thinking skills are hard to teach and produces useful data for interested audiences where future research might focus to improve intervention outcomes.
关键词：critical thinking skills interventions;teacher interventionist;intervention implementation fidelity;curriculum and instruction;learning environment
