Reflection on the barriers to critical thinking in the curriculum of secondary education

Subject Areas : Research in Curriculum Planning

وحیده علی پور ¹ , مریم سیف نراقی ² , عزت اله نادری ³ , علی شریعتمداری ⁴

1 - 1دانش آموخته دکترای برنامه ریزی درسی، واحد علوم و تحقیقات تهران، دانشگاه آزاد اسلامی. تهران. ایران
2 - استاد گروه علوم تربیتی، واحد علوم و تحقیقات تهران. دانشگاه آزاد اسلامی. تهران. ایران
3 - استاد گروه علوم تربیتی، واحد علوم و تحقیقات تهران. دانشگاه آزاد اسلامی. تهران. ایران
4 - استاد گروه علوم تربیتی، واحد علوم و تحقیقات تهران. دانشگاه آزاد اسلامی. تهران. ایران

Received: 2017-10-17 Accepted : 2017-10-17 Published : 2013-03-21

Keywords: quantitative research, Curriculum, critical thinking, Qualitative Research, Grounded theory,

Abstract :

The aim of this study is to investigate the factors that hinder critical thinking in the Iran high school curriculum. Both qualitative and quantitative research methods were exploited in this research. In the qualitative part, curriculum development experts participated through the deep interviews. 18 experts (educationalists) were chosen as the cases for study through biased sampling. For the quantitative episode, 97 curriculum development experts and 375 high school teachers in Tehran completed a questionnaire developed by the researchers. The qualitative results were concluded to a total of 27 primary concepts and seven main issues. The quantitative results were revealed that developing critical thinking in high school associated with some barriers, such as low attention paid to the skills of analysis, synthesis, ambiguity tolerance, risk taking, and accepting the opponent views.