Literature review: Using Knowledge Building to develop students’ affective dimensions of critical thinking in computer-supported collaborative learning

Abstract

Critical thinking is an important objective in education worldwide. After academic dialogue for decades, academics generally regard that individuals’ critical thinking performance mainly depends on their 2 key aspects: 1) cognitive dimensions of critical thinking (CDCT), which is generally called critical thinking skills, and 2) affective dimensions of critical thinking (ADCT), which is commonly called critical thinking dispositions. Regardless of the importance of ADCT, the research and development of ADCT are still rudimentary nowadays. Considering there is rich literature of computer-supported collaborative learning (CSCL) using the approach of knowledge building to develop students’ critical thinking, can the ideas of these publications help to throw the light on the research and development of ADCT? This paper thus reviews the literature to analyze how these studies contribute to the research field of ADCT and whether there are possible limitations. Regardless some limitations are found (e.g. unfound effective indicators of measuring ADCT, constraints of content analysis, no attempt to clarifying CDCT-ADCT relationships and the function of the sensitivity of towards critical thinking etc.), the CSCL literature of knowledge building does help to throw the light on the studies of ADCT by: 1) exploring the usefulness and possibilities of computer-supported collaborative learning (CSCL) to develop students' ADCT; 2) confirming motivation and habits of mind are both key natures of ADCT; and 3) opening the door of new research direction (e.g. shifting attention from: a) instruction to epistemic agency; b) ideas to activities; c) individual to the community) etc. In this regard, this reveals its contribution to the research field on investigating the theme of ADCT.