Abstract

In order to deal with the constantly and rapidly changing conditions of life, a decision-making capacity is needed. Critical thinking can help effectively in this, and that is why it is an ability that modern education seeks to cultivate. In Informatics-related education, critical thinking is essential. Consequently, in Informatics textbooks it is expected that the cultivation of the critical thinking skills will be promoted. This research is aimed to determine whether this is the case in the Informatics textbook of the A-class of the Greek General Lyceum and for this reason, the content of this textbook was examined. The method that has been used is the Content Analysis, which is an established method for analysis of texts in social sciences. The present research has revealed that in the text the promotion of the cultivation of critical thinking skills is insufficient and in such a way that these skills are not treated equally. These findings should be taken into account during educational use of the textbook.

Keywords

References

• Aggelidakis, N., Michailidis, A., Blatsios, X., Pesselinas, G., Papadakis, S., Pavlidis, … Tzortbatzakis, A. (2010). Applications of informatics. Athens: Diophantos.
• Aliakbari, M., & Sadeghdaghighi, A. (2013). Teachers’ perception of the barriers to critical thinking. Procedia-Social and Behavioral Sciences, 70, 1-5.
• American Library Association (1989). Presidential Committee on Information Literacy. Final Report. Retrieved from http://www.ala.org/acrl/publications/whitepapers/presidential [19 December 2016]
• Aybek, B., & Aslan, S. (2016). An analysis of the units" I'm learning my past" and" the place where we live" in the social studies textbook related to critical thinking standards. Eurasian Journal of Educational Research, 65, 35-54.
• Bassham, G., Irwin, W., Nardine, H., & Wallace, J. (2011). Critical thinking. a student’s introduction. New York: King’s College.
• Berelson, B. (1952). Content analysis in communications research. New York: Hafner Press.
• Bowell, T., & Kemp, G. (2005). Critical thinking: A concise guide. London, England: Routledge.
• Brookfield, S. (2013). Teaching for critical thinking. International Journal of Adult Vocational Education and Technology, 4(1), 1-15.
• Creswell, J. W., & Clark, V. P. (2007). Designing and conducting mixed methods research. London: SAGE.
• Dagiene, V., & Stupuriene, G. (2016). Informatics concepts and computational thinking in K-12 education: A Lithuanian perspective. Journal of Information Processing, 24(4), 732-739.
• Ennis, R. H. (1985). A logical basis for measuring critical thinking skills. Educational Leadership, 43(2), 44-48.
• Errington, A., & Bubna-Litic, D. (2015). Management by textbook: The role of textbooks in developing critical thinking. Journal of Management Education, 39(6), 774-800.
• Facione, P. A. (1990). Executive summary of critical thinking: a statement of expert consensus for purposes of educational assessment and instruction, including all tables, findings and recommendations of The Delphi Report. California: California Academic Press.
• Futschek, G. (2006). Algorithmic thinking: the key for understanding computer science. In International conference on informatics in secondary schools-evolution and perspectives (pp. 159-168). Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg.
• Gelder, T. V. (2005). Teaching critical thinking: Some lessons from cognitive science. College Teaching, 53(1), 41-48.
• Halpern, D. F. (1998). Teaching critical thinking for transfer across domains: Disposition, skills, structure training, and metacognitive monitoring. American Psychologist, 53(4), 449-455.
• Hellenic Pedagogical Institute (2009). Interdisciplinary Committee on Educational Autonomy of the Lyceum and Dialogue on Education: Curriculums. Retrieved from http://www.pi-schools.gr/paideia_dialogos/analitika-programata.pdf. [1 Januray 2015]
• Holsti, O. R. (1969). Content analysis for the social sciences and humanities. Reading. MA: Addison-Wesley.
• Huntemann, N., & Morgan, M. (2001). Mass media and identity development. In Handbook of children and the media (pp. 309-322). London, England: Sage Publications, Inc.
• Kennedy, I. G., Latham, G., & Jacinto, H. (2016). The Literature Review. In Education Skills for 21st Century Teachers (pp. 11-20). Springer, Cham.
• Kennedy, M., Fisher, M. B., & Ennis, R. H. (1991). Critical thinking: Literature review and needed research. In Educational values and cognitive instruction: Implications for reform (pp. 11-40. Hillsdale, New Jersey: Lawrence Erlbaum & Associates.
• Kohlbacher, M. (2009, September). The perceived effects of business process management. In Science and Technology for Humanity (TIC-STH), 2009 IEEE Toronto International Conference (pp. 399-402). IEEE.
• Krippendorff, K. (2004). Content analysis: An introduction to its methodology. Sage.
• Kules, B. (2016, October). Computational thinking is critical thinking: Connecting to university discourse, goals, and learning outcomes. In Proceedings of the 79th ASIS&T Annual Meeting: Creating Knowledge, Enhancing Lives through Information & Technology (p. 92). American Society for Information Science.
• Lai, E. R. (2011). Critical thinking: A literature review. Pearson's Research Reports, 6, 40-41.
• Lewis, A., & Smith, D. (1993). Defining higher order thinking. Theory into Practice, 32(3), 131-137.
• Manzo, K. K., & Trotter, A. (2007). Houghton-Harcourt Deal Seen ad Yielding Big 3 of Textbooks. Toronto: Education Week.
• Matthews, R., & Lally, J. (2010). The thinking teacher's toolkit: critical thinking, thinking skills and global perspectives. NY: A&C Black.
• Mayring, P. (2014). Qualitative content analysis: theoretical foundation, basic procedures and software solution. Klagenfurt: Primary Publication.
• Moon, J. (2008). Critical thinking. An Exploration of theory and practice. Madison Avenue: Routledge Taylor & Francis Group.
• Paul, R. (1992). Critical thinking: What, why, and how. New directions for community colleges, 77, 3-24.
• Paul, R., & Elder, L. (2006). Critical thinking competency standards. Dillon Beach, CA: Foundation for Critical Thinking.
• Rechenberg, P. (1999). Introduction to Informatics. A complete presentation. (P. Drepaniotis, Trans). Athens: Klidarithmos.
• Rustermeyer, R. (1992). Practical-methodical steps of the content analysis. Münster: Aschendorff
• Selby, C., & Woollard, J. (2014). Refining an understanding of computational thinking. Retrieved from http://eprints.soton.ac.uk/id/eprint/372410 [10 May 2017].
• Snyder, L. G., & Snyder, M. J. (2008). Teaching critical thinking and problem solving skills. The Journal of Research in Business Education, 50(2), 90-99.
• Sternberg, R. J. (1986). Critical Thinking: Its Nature, Measurement, and Improvement.
• Thompson, C. (2011). Critical thinking across the curriculum: Process over output. International Journal of Humanities and Social Science, 1(9), 1-7.
• Voskoglou, M. G., & Buckley, S. (2012). Problem solving and computational thinking in a learning environment. Egyptian Computer Science Journal 36(4), 28-46.
• Weber, R., Ph. (1986). Basic content analysis. Beverly Hills: Sage Publications.
• Weert, T. V., & Anderson, J. (2002). Information and communication technologies in education. a curriculum for schools and programme of teacher development. France: UNESCO.
• Willingham, D. T. (2007). Critical thinking. American Educator, 31(3), 8-19.
• Wing, J. M. (2006). Computational thinking. Communications of the ACM, 49(3), 33-35.
• Zhang, Y., & Wildemuth, B. M. (2016). Qualitative analysis of content. In (Ed.) Barbara, M.W. Applications of social research methods to questions in information and library science (pp. 318-329). Santa Barbara: Libraries Unlimited.

License

This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.