Development and Assessment of Critically-thinker EFL Readers’ Reading Ability: Asynchronous Web-based Collaborative Approach vs. QAR Instructional Approach

Purpose: Today, the concept of critical thinking is no longer limited to teaching individual critical thinking skills since man has been known as a social being, who is affecting his environment and is affected by the environment. According to Davies (۲۰۱۵), critical thinking develops through three-levels of critical thinking movement, criticality movement, and critical pedagogy movement. Relying on his model, the present study was defined to develop and assess a proper tool for evaluating the ۳D model and then was implemented in the language learning community. Method: ۲۴۳ English language learners (۸۹ learners in pilot group, ۵۱ in control group, ۵۳ in QAR group and ۵۰ in AWC group) were asked to take part in the process of data gathering. In this mixed-method study, the interviewees’ responses were gathered and after coding the extracted factors using MaxQDA, an instrument was designed to evaluate main factors of critical thinking. In order to evaluate the validity and reliability of the designed Critical Thinker Inventory (CTI), along with the experts’ opinion, the confirmatory factory analysis was conducted using SEM-PLS as an MTMM technique (Koch, Eid, & Lochner, ۲۰۱۸). Result: The results of the analysis confirmed all six factors of argumentation, judgment, disposition, action, social cognition, and creativity. CR and AVE obtained from the results confirmed validity and reliability of the questionnaire. The results of SEM-PLS model analysis also represented that the proposed model has good FIT indices. In the second phase, the analysis of learners’ perceptions represented that participants in AWC outperformed participants in QAR and Control groups. Discussion: A closer look at the causes of such differences - according to the participants’ opinions - showed that the main causes of differences in performance are rooted in the nature of the course, exercises used in the course, strategies applied, and assessment techniques.

Keywords:

۳D critical thinking , criticality , critical pedagogy , QAR , AWC