درخت حوزه‌های تخصصی

This study attempted to examine the extent to which university instructors contributed as obstacles or facilitators to developing critical thinking skills in undergraduate, graduate, and doctorate students. To this end, six university classes, two classes from each of the above-mentioned programs, were selected randomly from the Department of Foreign Languages and Linguistics in a State University. The corpus of the study was collected via video recordings during a semester. Vygotsky’s (1978) sociocultural theory was utilized to interpret the data. The results revealed that instructors in BA and one of MA classes were facilitators of critical thinking skills, while those in the other MA class and both Ph.D. classes acted more as obstacles to such skills. This finding contradicted the expectations of the researcher who, based on Fisher’s (2005) arguments, believed that thinking skills should be more developed at tertiary levels by instructors, particularly as one moves from bachelor to master and doctoral levels, which are more about frontiers of knowledge. The implications of the study pointed to the vital role of the university instructors in promoting thinking skills by decreasing interruptions, increasing wait-time, asking referential questions, and using selective repair.

Previous studies have shown that autonomy support (AS) can foster a person’s motivation and facilitate motor learning. However, the effects of AS on observational motor learning are not well understood. The present study investigated this issue by manipulating to-be-observed-model. Forty-eight male students were assigned into autonomy, yoked, and no-demonstration control groups. Three male Baseball coaches acted as models A, B, and C. Model A was instructor of students of AU group and acted as a model with high social status for AU group. Models B and C were not familiar for all participants and acted as low social status models. Participants were asked to perform a Baseball-pitch into a target during pretest (10 trials), acquisition phase (5 blocks of 10 trials), and retention test (10 trials). Prior to each acquisition block, the participants of AU and YO groups observed a model three times. Participants of AU group were free to choose model A, B, or C for any single observation. Participants in YO group were matched with those in AU group. Movement outcome, movement form, self-efficacy (SE), perceived learning effect (PLE), and perceived model attractiveness (PMA) were measured as dependent variables. Results showed that AS, relative to yoked and control conditions, led to better movement outcome during acquisition and retention. Action observation enhanced movement form during acquisition and retention. AS increased SE, PLE, and PMA compared with yoked and control conditions. Results provide support for the OPTIMAL theory and indicate that AS facilitates observational motor learning.