Effectiveness of Teaching through Brainstorming on the Students' Critical Thinking and Motivation
INTRODUCTION Students should improve their creative and critical thinking skills to make good decisions and solve complex problems of society to cope with amazing developments in the third millennium. They must enhance their research skills, problem solving and search morale. It is clear that to achieve these goals, a heavy responsibility is on the shoulders of educational institutions, especially education. These centers on the one hand, are responsible for teaching and equipping the students with their required information. On the other hand, they must provide Corresponding Author: Ph_alizadeh@yahoo.com DOI: http:/dx.doi.org/10.20286/ajps 0502154 To cite this article: HajiAlizadeh, K. Khorasani Anari, Z. (2016) Effectiveness of Teaching through Brainstorming on the Students' Critical Thinking and Motivation. Academic Journal of Psychological Studies, 5 (2) 183 192. HajAlizadeh and Khorasani Anari. 2016 184 April, 2016 the situation, which help develop and foster innovative and proper and directional use of talents and abilities. One of the fundamental characteristics of human is consciousness about his behavior and having thinking force. In other words, one can be aware of his/her behavior and use his/her thinking force in dealing with different issues and affairs. Interest in intellectual skills is a phenomenon that is rooted in the history of education. However, unfortunately, educational institutions by ignoring this principle, have turned their attention to transferring data and scientific facts. However, in the face of new issues, the use of stereotypical thoughts stereotypical thoughts and conventional and traditional methods is not useful. Therefore, the emphasis on active teaching methods should be a priority in educational systems to facilitate the students' talents and characteristics flaunting. Among active teaching techniques such as problem solving, brainstorming, pre arranged pattern, heuristics, brainstorming method is one of the most popular active teaching methods. This method was introduced in the early 1930s by Alex Osborn. He defines the term brainstorming as: a collective technique, in which a group tries to find a solution to a specific problem by gathering all ideas the members of the group spontaneously contribute. The main purpose of the brainstorming method is that the process of producing the answers is separate from the process of evaluating them. Since, the evaluation often suppresses the production of a variety of responses and hinders creativity. Brainstorming method is one of the most effective methods in promoting creativity and critical thinking of students. Many researchers have confirmed the relationship between creativity and critical thinking and have stated that brainstorming method affects these two components 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, Critical thinking is a metacognitive strategy and a complex skill, which needs great mind processes and judgment based on the evidence. Accordingly, identification and articulation of issues, observation and judgment about an issue, data collection, organization and analysis of information and conclusion, all are the activities that occur in critical thinking 12, Students, who have developed critical thinking and apply it, are able to think independently, recognize the limits of their knowledge, understand the subjects with more depth, more long lasting and even at more useful level and obtain higher results and scores of quizzes. These factors in turn will lead to improved academic performance 12, In addition, one of the success factors that should pay special attention to it, regard to the knowledge seekers and students, is academic motivation. In the complex age of information and communications that human knowledge changes for the second, more productivity belongs to those environments that develop and Effectiveness of Teaching through Brainstorming on the Students' Critical Thinking 185 April, 2016 encourage the ability to think independently and cooperatively. This refers to critical and self directed learners who have enough ability and motivation to meditate and participate and enjoy enough motivation to continue learning throughout the life Motivation is the most important prerequisite for learning. Motivation is the heart of learning. Motivation is the human movement incentive and trigger, guidance, advantageous and behavior stabilizer until the desired goal is achieved. Psychologists have noted the necessity of considering motivation in education, because of its effective communication with new learning, skills, strategies and behaviors and one of the basic structures that they have provided to explain the motivation is academic achievement motivation Academic achievement motivation refers to behaviors that are conducive to learning and progress. Given the foregoing, the present study examines the effectiveness of teaching brainstorming on the students' critical thinking and academic motivation. METHODOLOGY Since this study aims to evaluate the effectiveness of teaching through brainstorming on critical thinking and academic motivation of fifth grade students, the study is based on a quasi experimental and pretest posttest with control group is used. The study sample includes all fifth grade male students in District 1 of Bandar Abbas, who had been studying in the academic year 2015 2016. According to the project design, and using Cochran formula, of a total of 255 subjects as the population, 150 subjects are considered as research sample. Therefore, the sample consists of 150 secondary school male students in Bandar Abbas. Among the total of fifth grade students, using cluster sampling, first of all schools in the District 1 of Bandar Abbas city, two schools, and of the two schools, 4 classes are selected. Then, two classes are selected as the experimental group, and two classes are selected as the control group. The following questionnaires are used for data collection. Critical Thinking Inventory The main form of the critical thinking test is made by Ricketts. The scale has 33 items and includes three subscales. The first part consists of 11 questions to assess the scale of creativity. The second part contains 9 questions about the scale of development and the third part consists of 13 questions to measure commitment that the subject answers it based on the 5 point scale. The test score is obtained from the sum of the achieved scores in 3 subscale. The interpretation of the scores is that, the score between 33 and 66 indicates poor critical thinking, the score between 66 and 99 represents average critical thinking and the score HajAlizadeh and Khorasani Anari. 2016 186 April, 2016 above 99 indicates strong critical thinking. The reliability of the questionnaire by Cronbach's alpha coefficient for the total sample has been reported 0.94, for female subjects 0.95 and for male subjects 0.92. Academic Motivation Inventory This scale was made by Valrand et al to measure academic motivation based on self determination theory of Ryan and Deci, which has six subscales, including knowledge motivation, performance motivation, excitation experience, external regulation, internal regulation and identical regulation. The questionnaire contains 28 items. The questionnaire responses are set on a seven point Likert scale ranging from strongly disagree (0) to strongly agree Bahrani 18 has evaluated the reliability of the test using test retest method and Cronbach's alpha. In the retest method in the interval of two weeks, the coefficient of 0.73 was obtained. In addition, the alpha coefficient calculated for the entire questionnaire is equivalent to 0.88. Furthermore, the analysis of the academic motivation scale could demonstrate the three dimensions of internal motivation, external motivation and no motivation with especial value higher than one. Therefore, the reliability and validity are confirmed. Introduction of an Intervention Program and its Implementation In order to implement mathematics education through the method of brainstorming, a teaching package is designed based on the following steps: 1) First, some parts of the mathematics book are chosen to teach through brainstorming method, which consist of different parts, such as addition and subtraction of complex numbers, patterns, introducing billion, fractions larger than units, fractions multiply and divide, mixed numbers, percentage proportion, equal and symmetrical proportions. 2) In each session, a discussion is designed and delivered based on the principle of brainstorming, apart from the fifth and tenth sessions, which are hold to review taught concepts and establishment of brainstorming method. 3) Provision of brainstorming and grouping rules Teacher Activity Installation of brainstorming rules on the class board that these rules are: Criticizing the correct or wrong ideas of individuals is prohibited, because it slows the process of the activity and leads the individuals to criticism instead of thinking. Judgment and evaluation about members' ideas and thought is prohibited at stages of brainstorming, because time is wasted and members' attention is attracted to the performance. The quantity of ideas must be greater to have more creative ideas. The members can change the views of other members, assimilate and integrate them and make a new idea. Effectiveness of Teaching through Brainstorming on the Students' Critical Thinking 187 April, 2016 Irrational and illogical as well as innovative and fresh ideas must be taken into account. Ideas identification is free, because untapped and new ideas are obtained. Grouping Students and Choosing the Leader and Secretaries Students Activity: Considering the rules of brainstorming Collaborating with the teacher and the group leader and secretary Expression of Ideas Teacher activity: Guiding students to express opinions and ideas Participation in the groups and encouraging students to present more ideas St