The Development of Chinese Doctoral Students' Disciplinary Critical Thinking During Thesis Writing

Abstract

For decades, research has devoted considerable attention to describing critical thinking for general purposes. However, there lacks a systematic examination of critical thinking skills used for research purposes in specific disciplines. On the other hand, while critical thinking has long been emphasized as one of the central learning outcomes of higher education, it remains unclear how doctoral students develop critical thinking in a curriculum that does not include explicit instruction of it.

Acknowledging the research gaps, this study addresses two main issues: (a) what critical thinking skills are needed to fulfill a doctoral study in a specific discipline and (b) how a doctoral student develops critical thinking competence during the researching and writing process. Using a case study approach, the study gathered data from multiple sources, i.e. textual data of doctoral thesis drafts, interviews with participants, comments from supervisors and other academics, and interviews with supervisors, to adequately capture the complexity of the two issues. Case participants were three mainland Chinese doctoral students who had just submitted their theses for examination at Hong Kong universities.

In-depth within-case analysis has revealed unique profiles of critical thinking usage by the three participants. Compared with the existing taxonomies of critical thinking skills for general purposes (Facione, 1990; Norris & Ennis, 1989), the case participants’ profiles of critical thinking usage showed the need to think critically to fulfill discipline-specific research goals. A comparative analysis across cases has highlighted differences in the use of critical thinking skills among the three participants, and has pointed to several factors that might have influenced their critical thinking use – disciplinary knowledge construction pattern, disciplinary knowledge/knower structure, research paradigm, type of thesis, and experiences of participating in the community of practice.

To explain the development of critical thinking at the doctoral level, the study employs the Legitimate Peripheral Participation theory as the analytic framework. The three participants gained development through engaging in academic activities in the community of practice and the broader learning community. The activities include reading the literature, receiving supervisor/advisor comments, communicating or collaborating with other scholars, participating in workshops and seminars, communicating with fellow doctoral students, and writing up thesis/research articles. A comparison across cases has highlighted how legitimate peripheral participation was realized differently across disciplines, which can be attributed to different epistemological systems, discipline knowledge structures and cultural phenomena of disciplines.

The study extends the current understanding of critical thinking by establishing taxonomies of disciplinary critical thinking skills for research purposes. Also, it provides insights for higher institutions, doctoral students’ supervisors and doctoral students to better exploit the facilitative role of legitimate peripheral participation.