THE DEVELOPMENT OF CRITICAL THINKING: WRITING A TERM PAPER VIA FRAME ANALYSIS

Abstract

The paper examines the experience of using the technology of critical thinking through reading and writing, supplemented by a frame analysis when organizing students’ independent work – writing a term paper. By frame we mean one of the ways of representing a concept, which, in turn, appears as a mental representation of the picture of the world recorded in the individual’s psyche. Frame analysis is considered as one of the ways to develop students’ critical thinking. The paper focuses on clarifying the correlation between four key concepts: critical thinking, cognitive theory, constructivism as a learning theory, and frame analysis. The connection between critical thinking and students’ independent work is examined. A detailed description of the three-stage model is presented as a technological basis for critical thinking, which is essential and fundamental while writing a term paper. This model reflects the stages of challenge, comprehension and reflection. At the stage of challenge, students need to familiarize themselves with a certain number of information sources to get a general idea of the topic of the term paper. At this step, which consists in updating knowledge on a certain topic and determining directions for its further study, the use of such a technique as “clusters” is offered. At the stage of comprehension, students process new information, comparing it with the existing one and, thus, master a new structure of knowledge. At this point, the “Logbook” method is proposed. Moreover, frame analysis involves working on the key concept/concepts of a specific topic of the term paper. At the stage of reflection, the received data are interpreted and described, that is, a term paper is created directly. Students in the form of an essay briefly outline the essence of the topic, formulate conclusions and express their points of view on the subject of their researches.