ENHANCING INTERACTIVITY IN GEOGRAPHY CLASS: FOSTERING CRITICAL THINKING SKILLS THROUGH TECHNOLOGY

Abstract

To develop students’ critical thinking abilities, teachers must lead students to engage in discussions and to reason within various points of view, while employing evidence to draw conclusions, make decisions or seek solutions. Computer mediates learning by providing students with visualizations of relevant subject content to facilitate their reflection on these experiences. The purpose of this study is to investigate how technology can enable students to develop critical thinking through technology-enhanced interactivity. A geography teacher and 62 grade seven students from two classes participated in the experiment. One class was taught using traditional methods whereas the instructional strategy of computer-mediated learning was adopted in the other. The findings showed that computer media designed for enhancing interactivity would facilitate teacher-pupil interaction and peer discussion, and consequently contributed to improve students’ comprehension of the geography curriculum content. In addition, the critical thinking ability of the high-achievement students was significantly improved. Key-words: computer-mediated learning; computer-assisted learning; critical thinking; geography education; interactivity.