Instructional Strategy for Critical Thinking Disposition: Preparing Prospective Elementary Teachers in the Twenty-first Century

AbstractApplying active learning to promote students' critical thinking disposition is one of a current educationalgoal. However, it is very rare to find the research that explores the critical thinking disposition, particularlyfor the students who are prospective elementary school science teachers. This study aims to investigatethe effects of collaborative inquiry learning on the critical thinking disposition. A quasi-experimentaldesign with a pre-test/post-test control group was used. The total of 149 students of primary schoolteacher education programs participated in this study. They were divided into two groups, namely theexperimental group who received treatment with the collaborative inquiry learning strategy (experiment)and the control group received treatment with the conventional strategy. The critical thinking dispositiondata were obtained through the critical thinking disposition inventory test and analyzed by using pairedt test. The findings of this study indicate that the students in the experimental class who were exposed tocollaborative inquiry learning obtained higher critical thinking disposition scores than the students in thecontrol class. The findings of this study reveal that collaborative inquiry learning can be an effectivestrategy to improve critical thinking disposition.