Developing Greek Primary School Students’ Graph/Chart Interpretation and Reading Comprehension as Critical Thinking Skills

Abstract

Historically, the most prominent and influential concepts regarding Critical Thinking were advanced by Ennis (1987), Paul, Binker and Weil (1995), Lippman (1991), Siegel (1988) and Sternberg (1985a, b; 1987) among others. However, due to the great difficulty in defining and therefore in assessing Critical Thinking, these conceptualizations only revealed different and often contradictory aspects of Critical Thinking instead of leading to a coherent theory. These multiple conceptualizations reflected where emphasis was given each time and consequently led to different approaches for assessment – i.e. as logical fallacies (Dreyfus, & Jungwirth, 1980; Jungwirth, 1987; Jungwirth, & Dreyfus, 1990), as formal reasoning processes or skills (Blair, & Johnson, 1980; Lawson, 1982, 1985; Obed, 1997), as scientific reasoning in general (Friedler, Nachmias, & Linn, 1990) etc.