How to Promote Learners’ Critical Thinking in Content-based History Instruction

Development of a Teaching Method through Design Experiment

Abstract

This paper focuses on ‘generating questions’ as a method to promote learners’ critical thinking in content-based Japanese language instruction in history. It studies through design experiment: 1) the learning environment in which learners' thoughts could be stimulated; and 2) the way to elicit deeper questions. The research so far has been conducted on the hypothesis that making learners conscious of generating questions after the lecture would cause changes in their studying attitudes and improve the quality of their questions (Koyama 2014, 2015, 2017). However, the mean value of self-estimates regarding studying attitude, as well as the rate of deeper questions being asked, were lower than the author's expectation. In this paper, by noticing that generating questions is an elaboration strategy, the instructional design was changed regarding (1) and (2) based on the expertise of learning strategy study (i.e. Shinogaya 2012, Yuzawa 2009). As a result, the mean values of self-estimates were raised in all questions at post-inquiry and the deepest questions (‘applied questions’) were produced for the first time. Besides, the mean length of questions was extended to over five times that of past research.