The effect of in-class activities for removing the barriers to critical thinking on english preparatory school students' critical thinking and self-efficacy beliefs

The main goal of the present research is to be able to determine the English Language Preparatory School students' barriers to critical thinking, developing activities for the determined barriers, applying the activities, and as a result of this process, determining the overall effect of the process on these students' critical thinking and self-efficacy. Mixed model has been used in the study; experimental design was used to collect quantitative data and focus group discussion method was used to collect qualitative data. The quantitative data sample has been determined among İnönü University, English Language Preparatory School students, through cluster analysis, and it includes 23 participants from various departments including Molecular Biology and Genetics, English Language and Literature and Medicine. Moreover, the qualitative data sample is determined through voluntary basis among the classes included within the quantitative research. The sample includes 12 participants, 10 of them being among the participants that are also involved within the quantitative data sample. Within the study, to collect quantitative data, three scales have been used including "Scale for Barriers to Critical Thinking" developed by the researcher; "Critical Thinking Disposition Scale" translated and tested on validity and reliability by Kökdemir; and "General Self-Efficacy Scale" developed by Jarrusselam and Shwarzer and translated to Turkish by Yeşilay. Furthermore, following the experimental research process, focus group discussion is conducted with the participants in order to get their ideas on the process and result of the experimental process. Semi-structured interview questions, developed by the researcher, are used to complete this discussion. SPSS 15 software program is used to analyze the quantitative data. Descriptive Statistics; Wilcoxon, Mann Whitney-U, and Kendal and Spearman Tests are used for analyses to test the sub-goals. During the analyses, p value significance level is taken as 0.10. In addition to the SPSS software program used for the quantitative data, NVIVO 8.0 software program is used for the qualitative data in order to do "content analysis." The results of the study show that there is a decrease in the level of participants' barriers to critical thinking; there is an increase in their level of critical thinking disposition; and there is no change in their level of self-efficacy beliefs at the end of the 11 week writing lesson activities aiming to remove the barriers of the participants to critical thinking.