Recently, the graduate school of ECNU announced the list of Graduate Training and Reform Projects in 2020. After layers of strict evaluation, a total of 11 liberal arts and science projects have been selected into the “Future Scientist and Outstanding Scholars Training Program” in 2020, which is an important talent support project for graduate training and reform. Doctoral student Mao Weijie of ICI, instructed by Professor Cui Yunhuo, was successfully selected and was subsidized by ECNU for 80, 000 RMB. Mao’s topic named “Research on the Performance Evaluation of Critical Thinking”. It is the first time that liberal arts students have received funding from the training program of ECNU.

▲ Doctoral Student Mao Weijie

ICI, ECNU

Mentor Group of the Project

▲ Professor Cui Yunhuo

Director of ICI, ECNU

▲ Associate professor Wang Tao

ICI, ECNU

▲ Associate professor Yin Yue

University of Illinois at Chicago

Brief Introduction of the Project

Critical thinking is not only an important interdisciplinary key competency in the 21st century, but also an international issue of curriculum reform. How to evaluate critical thinking has always been a hot issue in academic circles. However, most of the existing critical thinking evaluation tools are questionnaire scales, which ignores the application of critical thinking in the real situation.

Therefore, on the basis of clarifying the concept of critical thinking and analyzing the existing evaluation methods of critical thinking, this study attempts to develop a critical thinking performance evaluation tool suitable for senior high school students. The purpose is to improve the existing evaluation methods for school teachers and curriculum researchers, to provide a reference for evaluation design, and then promote the implementation of critical thinking education at the classroom level.

The construction period of the project is 2 years. According to the requirements of the project implementation and research tasks, ICI will cooperate with the mentor group to strengthen management, to promote doctoral students to delve into key frontier issues in the field of curriculum and instruction, and produce high-quality innovative achievements, to sum up the training experience, to establish and improve the long-term management mechanism of the “Future Scientist and Outstanding Scholars Training Program” for the comprehensive reform of graduate training in ICI.