DEVELOPMENT OF CRITICAL THINKING OF HIGHER EDUCATION STUDENTS LEARNING IN TEAMS

Modern society expects that higher education students are able to work in a team, show professional competencies and the ability of critically reflecting on the surrounding world. However, an analysis of the practical activity of higher education students shows that a great majority of them are not capable of using these qualities in practice at the beginning of their professional career, and have no experience in realizing such competencies even during their learning process. Frequently, higher education graduates are not sufficiently prepared for real professional endeavours, having a weak motivation to effectively interact within a team, to reflect on their mistakes and shortcomings, etc. At the same time, many researchers believe that critical thinking in students arises spontaneously in the course of the educational process, and it reaches its highest level during professional activity only after many years of experience. Nevertheless, practice and investigations do not confirm a direct correlation between a specialist’s work experience and the level of development of his/her critical thinking. Therefore, the search for technologies making possible an aim oriented and planned development of critically thinking skills in students at early stages of their professional preparation undoubtedly becomes an essential task that should be accomplished by the professional education system.

In this connection, a need appears in the higher professional education system to create conditions for the development of critical thinking abilities within the structure of universal and professional competencies by using various forms of collective training.

The problem of choosing an optimal form of collective training has always been an object of close attention by researchers of different scientific schools. In spite of this fact, the questions concerning the interrelation between the development of a special way of thinking (critical thinking) in higher education students and the collective organization of activities (which is widely used in management) have been poorly studied so far.

The authors of the present research suggest an idea according to which critical thinking appears as a result of the interaction between teacher and student, and most fully reveals itself when students are involved in teamwork, where active thinking process is created by means of special learning, problem solving, and trainings.

Theoretical justification jointly with quantitative and qualitative data obtained as a result of the experimental work carried out by the authors confirm the efficiency of team learning which contributes to develop critical thinking skills in higher education students.