A preliminary investigation into critical thinking of in-service and pre-service middle school chemistry teachers in Shaanxi province of China

The notion of critical thinking has received a great deal of attention in recent years (Ennis, 1987; Tony, Christine, Rebecca, John & Jennifer, 2001). There has been much debate on the question 'what is critical thinking?' There is no universally agreed upon definition of critical thinking (Brookfield, 1987; Cassel & Congleton, 1993; Daly 2001; Thurmond, 2001; Yeh, 2002; 8-Tiwari, Avery & Lai, 2003). The definition of critical thinking varies because of its abstract characteristics. Watson and Glaser (1980) defined critical thinking as a combination of attitude, knowledge and skill. Attitude is an ability to recognize the existence of problems and an acceptance of the general need for evidence in support of what is asserted to be true. Knowledge is a combination of accurate inferences, abstractions and generalized knowledge that connotes the accuracy of various conclusions that are logically determined.

Facione (2007) mentioned that critical thinking skills CTS and CTD critical thinking disposition are two separate things in people. The California Critical Thinking Disposition Inventory (CCTDI) was set to test the students' critical thinking disposition. It includes seven subscales such as: The Truth-seeking scale (the T-scale), the Open-mindedness scale (the O-scale), the Analyticity scale (the A-scale), the Systematicity scale (the S-scale), the CT Self-Confidence (the C-scale), the Inquisitiveness scale (the I-scale) and the Maturity scale (the M-scale).Skill is the ability to apply and use attitude and knowledge (Shin, Lee, Ha & Kim, 2006). A critical thinking skill is the ability to think critically. The California Critical Thinking Skills Test (CCTST) was developed by Facione & Facione(1994) to test the people' CTS. It contains five subscales including analysis, evaluation, inference, deductive reasoning and inductive reasoning.

It is widely held that developing critical thinking is one of the goals of science education (Sharon, 2002). Che (2002) examined the importance of critical thinking and an account of the project of teaching critical thinking was given. Paul et al. (2003) reported on the design and evaluation of a project aimed at fostering the critical thinking abilities and dispositions of students. The research combining critical thinking with subject teaching was very common, including nursing, writing, reading, philosophy, accounting, statistics, information and mathematics, also involving art, literature, economy, environment sanitation, electronic, investigating, media and library retrieving (Richard & Linda, 2004). Especially, there has so much research on the nursing education of critical thinking (Asako & Marcia, 2004; Tibari, Avery & Lai, 2003; Shin, Lee, Ha & Kim, 2006; Colucciello 1997). Researchers also pointed critical thinking is very important to chemistry education (Leonard, 1996; Maria, 2003; Theresa, 2004; Zhou & Shen, 2010; Zhou & Guo, 2010).

Many papers have reported how to cultivate people' critical thinking. Through reading course, science course and history course, the students' critical thinking ability can be improved (Ron & Randy, 1995). Richard (2005) pointed that students' critical thinking ability could be improved if the teacher adopted proper teaching method, model and selected appropriate content. Other researches indicated it is helpful to cultivate the critical thinking by emphasizing the teaching model of solving-problem and critical thinking (Stacy D. et al., 2003). Zhou and Guo (2010) pointed inquiry-based chemical experiment can promote the pre-service teachers' critical thinking skills. Also the critical thinking can be developed by ask-based learning in chemistry experiment teaching (Zhou & Shen, 2010).

Nowadays many researchers are increasingly concerned about the teachers' quality. Such as many papers report the imaginative and activity thinking of the teachers (Ronald, 2008; Panagiotis, Eleni & Pertti, 2009). Also others pay attention to the teachers' critical thinking (Grosser & Lombard, 2008; Lorenzo, 2009; Bruce Torff, 2006). Teachers' beliefs about critical thinking have been the focus of a growing body of literature in teacher education (Torff, 2005; Torff & Warburton, 2005; Zohar & Dori, 2003), researches indicate that beliefs about critical thinking influence how teachers interact with learners and organize classroom tasks (Fang, 1996; Putman & Borko, 2000). However, in China, few researches concern about the teachers' critical thinking. Thus, the main goal of this study was to investigate the development of critical thinking of middle school chemistry teachers in China, and so as to provide evidence for establishing teachers' standard. The aim of the present study is : to investigate the critical thinking skills (CTS) and critical thinking dispositions (CTD) of pre-service and in-service chemistry teachers from Shaanxi province of China; to compare the critical thinking of in-service and pre-service teachers in Shaanxi province of China.