Rustamova shaxnoza ilxomovna shaping creative and critical thinking skills through the english literature

1.3. Teaching for Critical Thinking and Creative Thinking and assessment of Critical Thinking

Until recently, college students were expected to develop critical thinking skills by attending classes, listening to lectures and participating in class discussions, taking tests, and completing regular course assignments. However, a number of studies have shown that more specific teaching of critical thinking skills is needed to improve students' thinking skills. However, research findings on the most effective teaching methods for improving students' critical thinking skills are inconclusive. McMillan analyzed 27 studies examining the effects of various courses and programs on critical thinking skills in college students and found that the results did not support the use of specific curriculum or course settings to develop critical thinking. Macmillan cautioned against generalizing these results to all methods or courses, weak study design, lack of good tools to compare interventions being evaluated, and lack of a common definition and theory of critical thinking. Halpern suggested that existing assessment tools could help solve the problem of determining the effectiveness of different models of critical thinking. It is clear that more research is needed to determine which educational experiences yield the greatest gains in critical thinking [18; 53].
The renewed focus on critical thinking, along with an increased interest in developing higher order thinking skills for all students of all abilities and levels of education, has led to several different approaches to teaching critical thinking skills. One of them was the development of specialized courses in critical thinking. This strategy has been widely used at the higher education level, especially in states such as California, where teaching and assessing critical thinking skills is a national requirement. The second approach focuses on discipline-specific activities to improve students' critical thinking skills. Specialized magazines in each field focus on learning, including articles on developing key specific critical thinking skills. The history teacher, the "Education" column of the "Perspectives" magazine, and the OAH's history magazine contain widely read proposals for improving education, including the teaching of critical thinking in history, proposals and models presented. Another instructional strategy avoids concrete models and plans, while emphasizing the creation of an environment in the classroom that encourages critical thinking, including in-depth coverage of issues, difficult questions and student assignments, and supporting oral or written statements, emphasizing reasons and evidence for support.
In addition to the three approaches above, the supplemental curriculum includes strategies or models that incorporate critical thinking throughout the curriculum. One such attempt, Richard Paul's Critical Thinking Model, is used as an experimental method in this study. Obviously, there are many different models and methods that can help students improve their critical thinking skills [44]. While each has its proponents, little empirical research has been done to determine if one approach works better than another in improving students' critical thinking skills and dispositions.
Creative learning requirements include: curriculum reform, teacher professional development, student development, and learning reform. The types of creative learning include: inclusive creative learning, integrated creative learning, complementary creative learning, and formative creative learning. Creative thinking education is a process in which teachers apply all sorts of methods or strategies to stimulate the creativity and thinking abilities of students in the learning process based on theories and principles of developing creativity and thinking. Its characteristics are: focus on the thinking ability of students, democratic and open learning environment, relaxed learning environment, attitude towards voluntary learning, high level of cognitive development, focus on affective learning, attention to individual differences and effective development of potential. Stages of teaching creative thinking: organizing a problem situation, providing an opportunity to think, finding a solution to the problem, evaluating and applying.
Assessment remains a major challenge in developing programs to improve students' critical thinking skills. It is difficult to develop suitable training models until the concept is defined and evaluated. Despite the lack of a comprehensive theory of critical thinking, various efforts have been made to develop assessment tools. Three main approaches to assessing critical thinking are commonly used:

1. 
   commercially available standardized tests of general knowledge,
   
2. 
   assessments developed by a researcher or teacher teaching and
   
3. 
   teaching students to evaluate their own thinking.
   

Each of them is discussed based on its application in this study [48; 69].
Commercially available standardized general tests of critical thinking typically measure several core tests based on multiple choice responses, aspects of critical thinking including interpretation, analysis, inference, suggestion recognition, credibility assessment, and detection of errors in reasoning. No one claimed to test all aspects of critical thinking. These tools have been carefully designed and tested for reliability and validity, and are all widely used to measure people's ability to think critically and critical thinking training. On the other hand, while they test how well students can reason from written material, they also test whether students can create clear, well-founded written or oral arguments using critical thinking skills when appropriate. Some researchers argue that multiple-choice tests are not reliable indicators of critical thinking ability because test-takers are not free to define their own questions or use their own assessment criteria.
Some researchers advocate using student responses, including essays, to adequately test critical thinking. As an alternative to multiple choice formats, several standardized general knowledge essay tests for critical thinking have been developed in an attempt to assess students' ability to build arguments and capture the open nature of critical thinking associated with problem solving. The Ennis-Weir Critical Thinking Essay, the best-known and most used example, requires students to read an essay about a daily problem that contains many thinking errors and make up their own answers. This standardized, commercially available test of general critical thinking skills provides advantages over a teacher-designed multiple-choice or essay test, including student-generated responses, with well-established validity and reliability, and nationally recognized benchmarks. On the other hand, while standardized essay tests provide recommended standards and criteria for grading essays, the time and cost involved in calculating open grades, and the experience required to evaluate them reliably, limit their use.
Other approaches are being explored to allow students to justify their responses and/or generate their own responses on commercially standardized common tests of critical thinking. Norris and Ennis emphasized the need to consider the reasons why a student gave a particular answer and offered multiple-choice questions that explore students' thinking. Norris suggested using verbal thought reports to evaluate multiple choice responses. Paul and Nosich advocated the inclusion of multiple-assessment questions that allow students to choose the most correct reasons from among the possible options. In addition, they suggested structuring test items in such a way that the list of possible answers could be assigned to any number of independent test items, and individual answers could be used several times or not used at all. These strategies eliminate guesswork as a factor influencing test scores. Although these and other researchers are testing various additions to the critical thinking assessment, standardized critical thinking tests that include these enhancements have not yet been commercialized.
Recent efforts have addressed the issue of critical thinking ability in the form of a standardized, commercially available test. Dispositions (otherwise called attitudes or intellectual traits) have been variously seen as integral to critical thinking, or as separate but overlapping concepts. The Ennis-Weir Critical Thinking Essay tests some critical thinking skills, but the focus on critical thinking is relatively recent. As Halpern argues, qualitative assessment should test both students' critical thinking skills and whether they can use those skills. The California Critical Thinking Skills Inventory tests seven subsets of critical thinking skills using a consensus theory model assessed by experts in the Delphi report and a disposition based on a six-point Likert scale [18; 453]
Each of the critical thinking tests is limited in its ability to adequately assess changes in students' critical thinking skills, but their careful design, standardized assessment, and widespread use make them good candidates for use in educational research projects.
The second approach to evaluate critical thinking is through tests designed by a researcher or teacher. Norris and Ennis provided examples and criteria for educators interested in developing assessment methods to test subject-specific critical thinking, administer tests, evaluate critical thinking programs, formative assessment, or grading. Although teacher-designed tests can and should be used in the classroom to assess critical thinking, their use in educational research projects to investigate the effectiveness of different methods or models of teaching critical thinking has important limitations. Tools designed for a particular experimental method or model of critical thinking may best capture its strengths, but the resulting variety of assessment tools and methods makes it difficult to compare educational research findings.
Perhaps the best way to assess students' critical thinking skills is to teach them to evaluate their own thinking. Paul wrote extensively on how to teach students to evaluate their work, and he argued that to the extent that students need feedback from the teacher, they cannot achieve a high level of critical thinking. Angelo and Cross also emphasized the importance of student self-assessment methods. This approach seems to be an integral part of critical thinking training and should be discussed more widely by researchers. Although it is suitable for classroom use, it requires a deep understanding of critical thinking and a lot of commitment on the part of the teacher and students. Moreover, this assessment method does not meet the requirements of rigorous educational research for many obvious reasons.
The recent emphasis on critical thinking calls for revisiting, changing or replacing current assessment methods. Scientists have continued to work on developing robust, valid estimators that test common constructs while ensuring the effectiveness of the estimator. Currently, no single approach is the best, and each has its own limitations and advantages.