Collaborative Learning With Basketball Games Enhance Students' Critical Thinking

Background/Purpose: Proponents of collaborative learning claim that the active exchange of ideas within small groups not only increases interest among the participants but also promotes critical thinking (Johnson & Johnson, 1986). The shared learning in a team gives students an opportunity to engage in discussion, take responsibility for their own learning, and thus become critical thinkers. This research was for understanding the difference between collaborative learning and direct teaching methods which affected students' critical thinking skill by using team discussion on basketball games. Therefore, the purpose of this study was to explore the critical thinking among high school students about basketball games were affected by different teaching methods.

Method: It was analyzed by the pre-test, post-test, and follow-up test. For the main target of this research, eighty-one senior students in high school who were selected from Taipei including 51 boys and 30 girls. Forty-one students were randomly assigned to a group of the Collaborative learning including 29 males and 12 girls, and forty students were randomly assigned to a group of Direct Teaching including 22 boys and 18 girls. The Critical Thinking Test-Level II was conducted after 1st week, 11th week, and 17th week in physical education classes. The statistic methods used in the research were three-way repeated measurement and independent sample two-way ANOVA.

Analysis/Results: The finding indicated that the students in the collaborative learning group had significantly higher assumptions, induction, and critical thinking in basketball games than the students in the direct teaching group in the post-test and follow-up test. In addition, comparing with the students in the Direct Teaching group, the students in the collaborative learning group had an increase significantly of assumptions, deduction, and critical thinking from the pre-test to the follow-up test after using team discussion during basketball games. The results revealed a significant relationship between the collaborative learning method and the students' critical thinking.

Conclusions: Such findings suggested the inadequacy of the explanation in which explained critical thinking about the hypothesis of the students' performance in the games espoused by past research studied. Although the students' critical thinking efficiency hypothesis is reasonable to explain basketball game performance, bit it would be too complex to be applied in the basketball game performance for examining this principle.