Background/Purpose: Problem-based learning (PBL) is a student-centered pedagogy, which guiding students' actively thinking courses. The main purpose of this study was to examine the effects of PBL integrate into Cooperative Learning of PE on the six grade students' critical thinking abilities in sport.
Method: A quasi-experimental design was used, and selected two classes of six grade students of Elementary School in Taiwan (n=66). Thirty-four (n=34) participants were categorized into the experimental group and accepted PBL integrating into Cooperative Learning in the classes. Thirty-two (n=32) participants were set as the control group, and the courses wasn't lead the students to find the question process. Furthermore students in both group wasn't just accepted 12 weeks courses but also administered critical thinking abilities in sport test before and after the intervention. The analysis of One-way ANOVA and Repeated measures were adopted.
Analysis/Results: The results showed that the students in the experimental group had significantly improvement in their critical thinking abilities in sport after the intervention of PBL integrate into Cooperative Learning program. The experimental group students' assumptions identification, deduction and interpretation were significantly higher than control group in the scale of post-test (F=13.99, 35.32, 19.35; Eta square= 0.18, 0.36, 0.27, p<.05). Especially the experimental group induction, deduction and interpretations post-test score were significantly and higher than pre-test (Wilks' Lambda=0.76, F=0.92, p<.05; Wilks' Lambda=0.65, F=17.33, p<.05; Wilks' Lambda=0.72, F=12.62, p<.05).
Conclusions: Students in the experimental group reported that PBL integrate into Cooperative Learning was an effective strategies to enhance their abilities of thinking.