چكيده
Critical thinking which is a major concern among educators and psychologist is one of the most important thinking abilities that should be acquired by learners in school and universities (reed, 1998). This study investigated the relationship among critical thinking, autonomy, and perspective taking ability of Iranian reflective vs. impulsive EFL Learners. For this end, the research were conducted with the help of 180 B.A English Teaching students at Tehran, Payame Noor University, the level of English proficiency and homogeneity of them were tested through Nelson Homogeneity Test. One hundred and twenty six intermediate learners whose scores were one standard deviation above and one standard deviation below the mean score were selected as the participants of the study. Next session the researcher gave these 126 participants, Spratt, Humphreys, and Chan learner autonomy questionnaire (2002), Facione and Facione, critical thinking questionnaire (1989), Davis perspective taking ability questionnaires (1980), Kember Reflective Thinking questionnaire (2000) and Barrat Impulsiveness Scale, the reliability of questionnaires was calculated as well. Pearson Product correlation coefficient was used for data analysis. Findings indicated that while there is a significantly positive correlation between critical thinking and perspective taking among reflective learners, impulsive learners' critical thinking is independent from their perspective taking. Moreover, considering the observed correlation coefficients for each hypothesis, it can be concluded that the bond between autonomy and critical thinking is considerably stronger among the reflective than the impulsive ones. Similarly, the observed coefficient for the correlation between autonomy and perspective taking ability was higher for the reflective learners than the impulsive ones. Accordingly, it may be concluded that although the relationship between autonomy and critical thinking as well as autonomy and perspective taking ability is expected among all the learners of English as a foreign language, learners’ impulsivity and/or reflectivity may affect the strength of the relationship between their personality traits as a moderating variable. The implications are discussed in terms of the effectiveness of critical thinking in EFL contexts.
Key word: Critical Thinking, Autonomy, Perspective Taking Ability, Reflective Learners, Impulsive Learners.
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