Development of a Community of Inquiry Model to Promote Higher-Order Thinking Skills of Student Teachers

Abstract

The purpose of this research and development was to develop and study the effect of using the community of inquiry model to promote higher-order thinking skills of student teachers. The research was divided into 2 phases. Phase 1 dealt with the development of the community of inquiry model to promote higher-order thinking skills of student teachers. The informants were 5 certified scholars, obtained through purposive sampling. Phase 2 dealt with the experimentation and the study of the results of using the community of inquiry model to promote higher-order thinking skills of student teachers. The population consisted of 282 third year Bachelor of Education Program students who were studying the Learning Measurement and Evaluation course in the academic year 2018 at the Faculty of Education, Phranakhon Si Ayutthaya Rajabhat University. The sample consisted of 87 social studies majors, physical education majors, and special education and the Thai Language Teaching majors, obtained through cluster random sampling. The research instruments were the community of inquiry model to promote higher-order thinking skills of student teachers, a rating scale and a higher-order thinking skills test. The statistics employed in the analysis of data were the mean, standard deviation and t-test for dependent samples. The research results were as follows: 

1. The community of inquiry model that had been developed to promote higher-order thinking skills of student teachers consisted of 6 components: background and importance of the problem, objectives, principles, steps of organizing for learning, media and learning sources, and measurement and evaluation. There were 5 steps of organizing for learning, known as the “3STA.” It comprised self-learning, social learning, knowledge sharing, teaching, and assessing. The community of inquiry model had the overall evaluation results of propriety at the highest level.

2. The results of using the community of inquiry model to promote higher-order thinking skills of student teachers revealed that after using the model the student teachers had higher scores of higher-order thinking skills than before using it, with statistical significance at the .05 level.