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Asia-Pacific Forum
on Science Learning and Teaching, Volume 13, Issue 2, Article 12 (Dec., 2012) |
A cross-sectional, descriptive and comparative study was used.
The convenience sample consisted of two groups that involved in-service and pre-service chemistry teachers from Shaanxi province in China. The first group of participants comprised of 95 chemistry teachers, with a mean age of 30.4 years, who were being trained in Shaanxi Normal University for advanced learning in winter 2007. They work in middle school and are full of working experience. The second group of participants consisted of 61 full-time junior students from Shaanxi Normal University, with a mean age of 22.7 years. These students major in chemistry education and majority of them will be teachers after graduation.
The California Critical Thinking Disposition Inventory (CCTDI), revised into Chinese by Luo and Yang in 2001, was used to measure students' critical thinking disposition. Through both test and test-retest, the CCTDI test designers found it comparable with the English CCTDI in its validity and reliability, whose Cronbacha coefficient is 0.86 and split-half coefficient 0.79. The correlation coefficient among seven subscales indicates CCTDI posses a good internal consistency and reliability. One subscale is independent with the others. The revised CCTDI was analyzed in terms of factor load, we found majority of factor loads reach to 0.4. This showed the revised CCTDI has good construct validity. Simultaneously, it showed a good congruent validity after making NEO-PI-R questionnaire and CCTDI investigation statistics.
The Chinese version California Critical Thinking Skills Test' (CCTST) Pearson r = 0.63, p < 0.01; r/2 = (0.75-0.8), p < 0.05, which shows a good reliability and good construct validity. Luo and Yang also examined content validity, test-retest reliability, internal consistency reliability and construct validity. There are also 34 questions (1 point for 1 question) in the CCTST. According to answer's right or wrong, who obtains high points indicates he owns high critical thinking skills.
Anonymity was ensured, and informed consent was obtained from all participants. In November 2007, the researchers distributed the questionnaires (CCTDI and CCTST) to the In-service teachers in classroom after class. Teachers participating in the study were provided with a verbal explanation of study. Then the same questionnaires were distributed to the Pre-service teachers in the same month. In order to ensure a high return rate, this was done in the classroom too. Both groups present in the study were given 60 minutes to complete two questionnaires. The collected data were analyzed with SPSS software (ver.12.0)
