promoting critical thinking in the classroom

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How To Promote Critical Thinking In Your Classroom

Promoting Thinking

November 25, 2006, by The Critical Thinking Co. Staff

Modeling of critical thinking skills by instructors is crucial for teaching critical thinking successfully. By making your own thought processes explicit in class - explaining your reasoning, evaluating evidence for a claim, probing the credibility of a source, or even describing what has puzzled or confused you - you provide a powerful example to students, particularly if you invite them to join in; e.g., "Can you see where we're headed with this?" "I can't think of other explanations; can you?" "This idea/principle struck me as difficult or confusing at first, but here's how I figured it out." You can encourage students to emulate this by using them in demonstrations, asking them to "think out loud" in order for classmates to observe how they reason through a problem.

Develop the habit of asking questions that require students to think critically, and tell students that you really expect them to give answers! In particular, Socratic questioning encourages students to develop and clarify their thinking: e.g., "Would your answer hold in all cases?" "How would you respond to a counter-example or counter-argument?" "Explain how you arrived at that answer?"

This is another skill that students can learn from your example, and can use in working with each other. Providing regular opportunities for pair or small group discussions after major points or demonstrations during lectures is also important: this allows students to process the new material, connect it to previously learned topics, and practice asking questions that promote further critical thinking. Obviously, conveying genuine respect for student input is essential. Communicating the message that you value and support student contributions and efforts to think critically increases confidence, and motivates students to continue building their thinking skills. An essential component of this process is the creation of a climate where students feel comfortable with exploring the process of reasoning through a problem without being "punished" for getting the wrong answer.

Researchers have found consistently that interaction among students, in the form of well-structured group discussions plays a central role in stimulating critical thinking. Discussing course material and its applications allows students to formulate and test hypotheses, practice asking thought-provoking questions, hear other perspectives, analyze claims, evaluate evidence, and explain and justify their reasoning. As they become more sophisticated and fluent in thinking critically, students can observe and critique each others' reasoning skills.

Classroom Q&A

With larry ferlazzo.

In this EdWeek blog, an experiment in knowledge-gathering, Ferlazzo will address readers’ questions on classroom management, ELL instruction, lesson planning, and other issues facing teachers. Send your questions to [email protected]. Read more from this blog.

Integrating Critical Thinking Into the Classroom

(This is the second post in a three-part series. You can see Part One here .)

The new question-of-the-week is:

What is critical thinking and how can we integrate it into the classroom?

Part One ‘s guests were Dara Laws Savage, Patrick Brown, Meg Riordan, Ph.D., and Dr. PJ Caposey. Dara, Patrick, and Meg were also guests on my 10-minute BAM! Radio Show . You can also find a list of, and links to, previous shows here.

Today, Dr. Kulvarn Atwal, Elena Quagliarello, Dr. Donna Wilson, and Diane Dahl share their recommendations.

‘Learning Conversations’

Dr. Kulvarn Atwal is currently the executive head teacher of two large primary schools in the London borough of Redbridge. Dr. Atwal is the author of The Thinking School: Developing a Dynamic Learning Community , published by John Catt Educational. Follow him on Twitter @Thinkingschool2 :

In many classrooms I visit, students’ primary focus is on what they are expected to do and how it will be measured. It seems that we are becoming successful at producing students who are able to jump through hoops and pass tests. But are we producing children that are positive about teaching and learning and can think critically and creatively? Consider your classroom environment and the extent to which you employ strategies that develop students’ critical-thinking skills and their self-esteem as learners.

Development of self-esteem

One of the most significant factors that impacts students’ engagement and achievement in learning in your classroom is their self-esteem. In this context, self-esteem can be viewed to be the difference between how they perceive themselves as a learner (perceived self) and what they consider to be the ideal learner (ideal self). This ideal self may reflect the child that is associated or seen to be the smartest in the class. Your aim must be to raise students’ self-esteem. To do this, you have to demonstrate that effort, not ability, leads to success. Your language and interactions in the classroom, therefore, have to be aspirational—that if children persist with something, they will achieve.

Use of evaluative praise

Ensure that when you are praising students, you are making explicit links to a child’s critical thinking and/or development. This will enable them to build their understanding of what factors are supporting them in their learning. For example, often when we give feedback to students, we may simply say, “Well done” or “Good answer.” However, are the students actually aware of what they did well or what was good about their answer? Make sure you make explicit what the student has done well and where that links to prior learning. How do you value students’ critical thinking—do you praise their thinking and demonstrate how it helps them improve their learning?

Learning conversations to encourage deeper thinking

We often feel as teachers that we have to provide feedback to every students’ response, but this can limit children’s thinking. Encourage students in your class to engage in learning conversations with each other. Give as many opportunities as possible to students to build on the responses of others. Facilitate chains of dialogue by inviting students to give feedback to each other. The teacher’s role is, therefore, to facilitate this dialogue and select each individual student to give feedback to others. It may also mean that you do not always need to respond at all to a student’s answer.

Teacher modelling own thinking

We cannot expect students to develop critical-thinking skills if we aren’t modeling those thinking skills for them. Share your creativity, imagination, and thinking skills with the students and you will nurture creative, imaginative critical thinkers. Model the language you want students to learn and think about. Share what you feel about the learning activities your students are participating in as well as the thinking you are engaging in. Your own thinking and learning will add to the discussions in the classroom and encourage students to share their own thinking.

Metacognitive questioning

Consider the extent to which your questioning encourages students to think about their thinking, and therefore, learn about learning! Through asking metacognitive questions, you will enable your students to have a better understanding of the learning process, as well as their own self-reflections as learners. Example questions may include:

Why did you choose to do it that way?
When you find something tricky, what helps you?
How do you know when you have really learned something?

‘Adventures of Discovery’

Elena Quagliarello is the senior editor of education for Scholastic News , a current events magazine for students in grades 3–6. She graduated from Rutgers University, where she studied English and earned her master’s degree in elementary education. She is a certified K–12 teacher and previously taught middle school English/language arts for five years:

Critical thinking blasts through the surface level of a topic. It reaches beyond the who and the what and launches students on a learning journey that ultimately unlocks a deeper level of understanding. Teaching students how to think critically helps them turn information into knowledge and knowledge into wisdom. In the classroom, critical thinking teaches students how to ask and answer the questions needed to read the world. Whether it’s a story, news article, photo, video, advertisement, or another form of media, students can use the following critical-thinking strategies to dig beyond the surface and uncover a wealth of knowledge.

A Layered Learning Approach

Begin by having students read a story, article, or analyze a piece of media. Then have them excavate and explore its various layers of meaning. First, ask students to think about the literal meaning of what they just read. For example, if students read an article about the desegregation of public schools during the 1950s, they should be able to answer questions such as: Who was involved? What happened? Where did it happen? Which details are important? This is the first layer of critical thinking: reading comprehension. Do students understand the passage at its most basic level?

Ask the Tough Questions

The next layer delves deeper and starts to uncover the author’s purpose and craft. Teach students to ask the tough questions: What information is included? What or who is left out? How does word choice influence the reader? What perspective is represented? What values or people are marginalized? These questions force students to critically analyze the choices behind the final product. In today’s age of fast-paced, easily accessible information, it is essential to teach students how to critically examine the information they consume. The goal is to equip students with the mindset to ask these questions on their own.

Strike Gold

The deepest layer of critical thinking comes from having students take a step back to think about the big picture. This level of thinking is no longer focused on the text itself but rather its real-world implications. Students explore questions such as: Why does this matter? What lesson have I learned? How can this lesson be applied to other situations? Students truly engage in critical thinking when they are able to reflect on their thinking and apply their knowledge to a new situation. This step has the power to transform knowledge into wisdom.

Adventures of Discovery

There are vast ways to spark critical thinking in the classroom. Here are a few other ideas:

Critical Expressionism: In this expanded response to reading from a critical stance, students are encouraged to respond through forms of artistic interpretations, dramatizations, singing, sketching, designing projects, or other multimodal responses. For example, students might read an article and then create a podcast about it or read a story and then act it out.
Transmediations: This activity requires students to take an article or story and transform it into something new. For example, they might turn a news article into a cartoon or turn a story into a poem. Alternatively, students may rewrite a story by changing some of its elements, such as the setting or time period.
Words Into Action: In this type of activity, students are encouraged to take action and bring about change. Students might read an article about endangered orangutans and the effects of habitat loss caused by deforestation and be inspired to check the labels on products for palm oil. They might then write a letter asking companies how they make sure the palm oil they use doesn’t hurt rain forests.
Socratic Seminars: In this student-led discussion strategy, students pose thought-provoking questions to each other about a topic. They listen closely to each other’s comments and think critically about different perspectives.
Classroom Debates: Aside from sparking a lively conversation, classroom debates naturally embed critical-thinking skills by asking students to formulate and support their own opinions and consider and respond to opposing viewpoints.

Critical thinking has the power to launch students on unforgettable learning experiences while helping them develop new habits of thought, reflection, and inquiry. Developing these skills prepares students to examine issues of power and promote transformative change in the world around them.

‘Quote Analysis’

Dr. Donna Wilson is a psychologist and the author of 20 books, including Developing Growth Mindsets , Teaching Students to Drive Their Brains , and Five Big Ideas for Effective Teaching (2 nd Edition). She is an international speaker who has worked in Asia, the Middle East, Australia, Europe, Jamaica, and throughout the U.S. and Canada. Dr. Wilson can be reached at [email protected] ; visit her website at www.brainsmart.org .

Diane Dahl has been a teacher for 13 years, having taught grades 2-4 throughout her career. Mrs. Dahl currently teaches 3rd and 4th grade GT-ELAR/SS in Lovejoy ISD in Fairview, Texas. Follow her on Twitter at @DahlD, and visit her website at www.fortheloveofteaching.net :

A growing body of research over the past several decades indicates that teaching students how to be better thinkers is a great way to support them to be more successful at school and beyond. In the book, Teaching Students to Drive Their Brains , Dr. Wilson shares research and many motivational strategies, activities, and lesson ideas that assist students to think at higher levels. Five key strategies from the book are as follows:

Facilitate conversation about why it is important to think critically at school and in other contexts of life. Ideally, every student will have a contribution to make to the discussion over time.
Begin teaching thinking skills early in the school year and as a daily part of class.
As this instruction begins, introduce students to the concept of brain plasticity and how their brilliant brains change during thinking and learning. This can be highly motivational for students who do not yet believe they are good thinkers!
Explicitly teach students how to use the thinking skills.
Facilitate student understanding of how the thinking skills they are learning relate to their lives at school and in other contexts.

Below are two lessons that support critical thinking, which can be defined as the objective analysis and evaluation of an issue in order to form a judgment.

Mrs. Dahl prepares her 3rd and 4th grade classes for a year of critical thinking using quote analysis .

During Native American studies, her 4 th grade analyzes a Tuscarora quote: “Man has responsibility, not power.” Since students already know how the Native Americans’ land had been stolen, it doesn’t take much for them to make the logical leaps. Critical-thought prompts take their thinking even deeper, especially at the beginning of the year when many need scaffolding. Some prompts include:

… from the point of view of the Native Americans?
… from the point of view of the settlers?
How do you think your life might change over time as a result?
Can you relate this quote to anything else in history?

Analyzing a topic from occupational points of view is an incredibly powerful critical-thinking tool. After learning about the Mexican-American War, Mrs. Dahl’s students worked in groups to choose an occupation with which to analyze the war. The chosen occupations were: anthropologist, mathematician, historian, archaeologist, cartographer, and economist. Then each individual within each group chose a different critical-thinking skill to focus on. Finally, they worked together to decide how their occupation would view the war using each skill.

For example, here is what each student in the economist group wrote:

When U.S.A. invaded Mexico for land and won, Mexico ended up losing income from the settlements of Jose de Escandon. The U.S.A. thought that they were gaining possible tradable land, while Mexico thought that they were losing precious land and resources.
Whenever Texas joined the states, their GDP skyrocketed. Then they went to war and spent money on supplies. When the war was resolving, Texas sold some of their land to New Mexico for $10 million. This allowed Texas to pay off their debt to the U.S., improving their relationship.
A detail that converged into the Mexican-American War was that Mexico and the U.S. disagreed on the Texas border. With the resulting treaty, Texas ended up gaining more land and economic resources.
Texas gained land from Mexico since both countries disagreed on borders. Texas sold land to New Mexico, which made Texas more economically structured and allowed them to pay off their debt.

This was the first time that students had ever used the occupations technique. Mrs. Dahl was astonished at how many times the kids used these critical skills in other areas moving forward.

Thanks to Dr. Auwal, Elena, Dr. Wilson, and Diane for their contributions!

Please feel free to leave a comment with your reactions to the topic or directly to anything that has been said in this post.

Consider contributing a question to be answered in a future post. You can send one to me at [email protected] . When you send it in, let me know if I can use your real name if it’s selected or if you’d prefer remaining anonymous and have a pseudonym in mind.

You can also contact me on Twitter at @Larryferlazzo .

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Strategies to Increase Critical Thinking Skills in students

Matthew Joseph October 2, 2019 Blog , Engage Better , Lesson Plan Better , Personalize Student Learning Better

In This Post:

The importance of helping students increase critical thinking skills.
Ways to promote the essential skills needed to analyze and evaluate.
Strategies to incorporate critical thinking into your instruction.

We ask our teachers to be “future-ready” or say that we are teaching “for jobs that don’t exist yet.” These are powerful statements. At the same time, they give teachers the impression that we have to drastically change what we are doing .

So how do we plan education for an unknown job market or unknown needs?

My answer: We can’t predict the jobs, but whatever they are, students will need to think critically to do them. So, our job is to teach our students HOW to think, not WHAT to think.

Helping Students Become Critical Thinkers

My answer is rooted in the call to empower our students to be critical thinkers. I believe that to be critical thinkers, educators need to provide students with the strategies they need. And we need to ask more than just surface-level questions.

Questions to students must motivate them to dig up background knowledge. They should inspire them to make connections to real-world scenarios. These make the learning more memorable and meaningful.

Critical thinking is a general term. I believe this term means that students effectively identify, analyze, and evaluate content or skills. In this process, they (the students) will discover and present convincing reasons in support of their answers or thinking.

You can look up critical thinking and get many definitions like this one from Wikipedia: “ Critical thinking consists of a mental process of analyzing or evaluating information, particularly statements or propositions that people have offered as true. ”

Essential Skills for Critical Thinking

In my current role as director of curriculum and instruction, I work to promote the use of 21st-century tools and, more importantly, thinking skills. Some essential skills that are the basis for critical thinking are:

Communication and Information skills
Thinking and Problem-Solving skills
Interpersonal and Self- Directional skills
Collaboration skills

These four bullets are skills students are going to need in any field and in all levels of education. Hence my answer to the question. We need to teach our students to think critically and for themselves.

One of the goals of education is to prepare students to learn through discovery . Providing opportunities to practice being critical thinkers will assist students in analyzing others’ thinking and examining the logic of others.

Understanding others is an essential skill in collaboration and in everyday life. Critical thinking will allow students to do more than just memorize knowledge.

Ask Questions

So how do we do this? One recommendation is for educators to work in-depth questioning strategies into a lesson launch.

Ask thoughtful questions to allow for answers with sound reasoning. Then, word conversations and communication to shape students’ thinking. Quick answers often result in very few words and no eye contact, which are skills we don’t want to promote.

When you are asking students questions and they provide a solution, try some of these to promote further thinking:

Could you elaborate further on that point?
Will you express that point in another way?
Can you give me an illustration?
Would you give me an example?
Will you you provide more details?
Could you be more specific?
Do we need to consider another point of view?
Is there another way to look at this question?

Utilizing critical thinking skills could be seen as a change in the paradigm of teaching and learning. Engagement in education will enhance the collaboration among teachers and students. It will also provide a way for students to succeed even if the school system had to start over.

[scroll down to keep reading]

Promoting critical thinking into all aspects of instruction.

Engagement, application, and collaboration are skills that withstand the test of time. I also promote the integration of critical thinking into every aspect of instruction.

In my experience, I’ve found a few ways to make this happen.

Begin lessons/units with a probing question: It shouldn’t be a question you can answer with a ‘yes’ or a ‘no.’ These questions should inspire discovery learning and problem-solving.

Encourage Creativity: I have seen teachers prepare projects before they give it to their students many times. For example, designing snowmen or other “creative” projects. By doing the design work or by cutting all the circles out beforehand, it removes creativity options.

It may help the classroom run more smoothly if every child’s material is already cut out, but then every student’s project looks the same. Students don’t have to think on their own or problem solve.

Not having everything “glue ready” in advance is a good thing. Instead, give students all the supplies needed to create a snowman, and let them do it on their own.

Giving independence will allow students to become critical thinkers because they will have to create their own product with the supplies you give them. This might be an elementary example, but it’s one we can relate to any grade level or project.

Try not to jump to help too fast – let the students work through a productive struggle .

Build in opportunities for students to find connections in learning. Encouraging students to make connections to a real-life situation and identify patterns is a great way to practice their critical thinking skills. The use of real-world scenarios will increase rigor, relevance, and critical thinking.

A few other techniques to encourage critical thinking are:

Use analogies
Promote interaction among students
Ask open-ended questions
Allow reflection time
Use real-life problems
Allow for thinking practice

Critical thinking prepares students to think for themselves for the rest of their lives. I also believe critical thinkers are less likely to go along with the crowd because they think for themselves.

About Matthew X. Joseph, Ed.D.

Dr. Matthew X. Joseph has been a school and district leader in many capacities in public education over his 25 years in the field. Experiences such as the Director of Digital Learning and Innovation in Milford Public Schools (MA), elementary school principal in Natick, MA and Attleboro, MA, classroom teacher, and district professional development specialist have provided Matt incredible insights on how to best support teaching and learning. This experience has led to nationally publishing articles and opportunities to speak at multiple state and national events. He is the author of Power of Us: Creating Collaborative Schools and co-author of Modern Mentoring , Reimagining Teacher Mentorship (Due out, fall 2019). His master’s degree is in special education and his Ed.D. in Educational Leadership from Boston College.

Visit Matthew’s Blog

Promoting Critical Thinking in the Classroom: Strategies and Activities

ritical thinking is a valuable skill that empowers students to analyze information, think deeply, and make reasoned judgments. By promoting critical thinking in the classroom, educators can foster intellectual curiosity, enhance problem-solving abilities, and prepare students for success in an ever-evolving world. This article explores effective strategies and engaging activities to promote critical thinking among students.

1. Ask Thought-Provoking Questions

Encourage critical thinking by asking open-ended and thought-provoking questions that stimulate students' analytical thinking. For example, in a history class, instead of asking "When did World War II start?" you could ask "What were the underlying causes of World War II and how did they contribute to its outbreak?" This prompts students to go beyond simple factual recall and encourages them to analyze historical events, evaluate multiple factors, and develop a deeper understanding of the topic. Instead of seeking one correct answer, focus on guiding students to explore different perspectives, evaluate evidence, and justify their reasoning. Engage students in discussions that require them to analyze, compare, and synthesize information.

2. Provide Real-World Examples

Connect classroom learning to real-world applications by providing relevant examples and case studies. By presenting authentic scenarios, students can apply critical thinking skills to analyze and solve complex problems. Encourage students to think critically about the implications of their decisions and consider the broader impact of their choices.

3. Foster Collaboration and Debate

Promote collaborative learning environments where students can engage in respectful debates and discussions. Encourage students to express diverse opinions, support their arguments with evidence, and listen actively to others' viewpoints. Through collaborative activities, students can learn to evaluate different perspectives, challenge assumptions, and develop their critical thinking skills.

4. Encourage Reflection and Metacognition

Provide opportunities for students to reflect on their thinking processes and metacognition. Ask students to evaluate their own problem-solving strategies, analyze their decision-making processes, and assess the effectiveness of their critical thinking skills. By promoting self-awareness and reflection, students can enhance their critical thinking abilities and become more independent learners.

5. Incorporate Problem-Based Learning

Integrate problem-based learning activities that require students to apply critical thinking skills to solve complex problems. For example, in a science class, present a real-world scenario where students need to design an experiment to test the effectiveness of different fertilizers on plant growth. This activity prompts students to analyze information about fertilizers, evaluate different options, and develop a well-reasoned experimental design. By engaging in hands-on problem-solving experiences like this, students can develop their critical thinking abilities while also building their content knowledge.

Promoting critical thinking in the classroom is essential for developing students' analytical skills, problem-solving abilities, and intellectual curiosity. By incorporating strategies such as asking thought-provoking questions, providing real-world examples, fostering collaboration and debate, encouraging reflection and metacognition, and incorporating problem-based learning, educators can create an environment that nurtures critical thinking skills. By equipping students with this valuable skill set, we empower them to navigate complex challenges and become lifelong learners.

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Critical Thinking in the Classroom: A Guide for Teachers

In the ever-evolving landscape of education, teaching students the skill of critical thinking has become a priority. This powerful tool empowers students to evaluate information, make reasoned judgments, and approach problems from a fresh perspective. In this article, we’ll explore the significance of critical thinking and provide effective strategies to nurture this skill in your students.

Why is Fostering Critical Thinking Important?

Strategies to cultivate critical thinking, real-world example, concluding thoughts.

Critical thinking is a key skill that goes far beyond the four walls of a classroom. It equips students to better understand and interact with the world around them. Here are some reasons why fostering critical thinking is important:

Making Informed Decisions: Critical thinking enables students to evaluate the pros and cons of a situation, helping them make informed and rational decisions.
Developing Analytical Skills: Critical thinking involves analyzing information from different angles, which enhances analytical skills.
Promoting Independence: Critical thinking fosters independence by encouraging students to form their own opinions based on their analysis, rather than relying on others.

Creating an environment that encourages critical thinking can be accomplished in various ways. Here are some effective strategies:

Socratic Questioning: This method involves asking thought-provoking questions that encourage students to think deeply about a topic. For example, instead of asking, “What is the capital of France?” you might ask, “Why do you think Paris became the capital of France?”
Debates and Discussions: Debates and open-ended discussions allow students to explore different viewpoints and challenge their own beliefs. For example, a debate on a current event can engage students in critical analysis of the situation.
Teaching Metacognition: Teaching students to think about their own thinking can enhance their critical thinking skills. This can be achieved through activities such as reflective writing or journaling.
Problem-Solving Activities: As with developing problem-solving skills , activities that require students to find solutions to complex problems can also foster critical thinking.

As a school leader, I’ve seen the transformative power of critical thinking. During a school competition, I observed a team of students tasked with proposing a solution to reduce our school’s environmental impact. Instead of jumping to obvious solutions, they critically evaluated multiple options, considering the feasibility, cost, and potential impact of each. They ultimately proposed a comprehensive plan that involved water conservation, waste reduction, and energy efficiency measures. This demonstrated their ability to critically analyze a problem and develop an effective solution.

Critical thinking is an essential skill for students in the 21st century. It equips them to understand and navigate the world in a thoughtful and informed manner. As a teacher, incorporating strategies to foster critical thinking in your classroom can make a lasting impact on your students’ educational journey and life beyond school.

1. What is critical thinking? Critical thinking is the ability to analyze information objectively and make a reasoned judgment.

2. Why is critical thinking important for students? Critical thinking helps students make informed decisions, develop analytical skills, and promotes independence.

3. What are some strategies to cultivate critical thinking in students? Strategies can include Socratic questioning, debates and discussions, teaching metacognition, and problem-solving activities.

4. How can I assess my students’ critical thinking skills? You can assess critical thinking skills through essays, presentations, discussions, and problem-solving tasks that require thoughtful analysis.

5. Can critical thinking be taught? Yes, critical thinking can be taught and nurtured through specific teaching strategies and a supportive learning environment.

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How to Promote Critical Thinking in the Classroom

By elearning inside, february 05, 2024.

Promoting critical thinking is an essential goal in education, equipping students with problem-solving skills that extend beyond the classroom. In this article, we’ll explore practical strategies for teachers and schools to foster critical thinking among students.

Fostering a Growth Mindset

Encouraging a growth mindset is fundamental to promoting critical thinking. Teachers can cultivate this mindset by praising effort rather than innate abilities.

When students understand that their abilities can be developed through dedication and hard work, they are more likely to embrace challenges and think critically to overcome obstacles.

Questioning Techniques

One of the most effective ways to promote critical thinking is through questioning. Teachers can employ various questioning techniques to stimulate thought, such as Socratic questioning.

By asking open-ended questions that require students to think deeply, analyze, and evaluate, teachers can guide students to explore complex issues and construct well-reasoned responses.

Real-World Problem Solving

Incorporating real-world problem-solving scenarios into the curriculum can provide students with practical opportunities to apply critical thinking. These problems can range from scientific experiments to ethical dilemmas, encouraging students to assess situations, weigh evidence, and make informed decisions.

Encouraging group collaboration on these tasks can further enhance critical thinking by promoting different perspectives and solutions.

Creating a Physical Environment that Supports Critical Thinking

Classroom design and furniture also play a role in promoting critical thinking. A flexible classroom setup allows for collaborative learning and group discussions, encouraging students to engage in critical dialogue.

By providing comfortable seating options and ensuring that the classroom layout is adaptable, teachers can foster a more dynamic learning environment conducive to critical thinking.

Encouraging Divergent Thinking

Divergent thinking is a vital component of critical thinking, as it involves generating multiple solutions to a problem. Teachers can encourage this by using brainstorming techniques, mind maps, or role-playing exercises.

By allowing students to explore various angles and creative solutions, educators nurture their capacity for innovative problem-solving.

Analyzing Multiple Perspectives

Critical thinking is not limited to one perspective; it involves considering multiple viewpoints. Teachers can introduce debates, case studies, or simulations where students must analyze and argue from different angles.

Encouraging students to appreciate different viewpoints and make informed judgments fosters a more well-rounded and critical thinker.

Scaffolding Critical Thinking

To ensure that students of all ages can develop critical thinking skills, educators can scaffold the learning process. This involves providing support and gradually increasing the complexity of tasks.

For instance, younger students may begin by identifying problems, while older students progress to proposing solutions and evaluating their effectiveness.

Metacognition and Self-Reflection

Metacognition is the practice of thinking about thinking. It encourages students to assess their thought processes and strategies. Teachers can promote metacognition by encouraging students to self-reflect on their learning experiences.

When students consider how they approach problems and what strategies work best for them, they can refine their critical thinking skills.

Interdisciplinary Learning

Breaking down the barriers between subjects can also promote critical thinking. Interdisciplinary learning allows students to make connections between different fields of knowledge, encouraging them to draw on a wider range of information and skills to address problems.

Teachers can collaborate to create lesson plans that bridge the gaps between subjects, promoting a more holistic approach to critical thinking.

Feedback and Assessment

Effective feedback and assessment play a significant role in promoting critical thinking. Constructive feedback helps students understand where they can improve and refine their thinking.

Moreover, formative assessment strategies can help educators gauge students’ critical thinking abilities and adjust their teaching accordingly.

In summary, cultivating critical thinking within educational settings is a complex task that necessitates fostering a growth mentality, utilizing efficient questioning methods, advocating for real-life problem resolution, and supporting diverse thought processes.

Moreover, it entails emphasizing metacognition, appreciating numerous viewpoints, integrating interdisciplinary education, and offering evaluation and feedback. By adopting these pragmatic strategies, teachers can enable students to develop critical thinking skills, equipping them to face future obstacles effectively.

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10 Innovative Strategies for Promoting Critical Thinking in the Classroom

Are you looking for innovative ways to promote critical thinking skills in your classroom? As an educator, you know the importance of developing strong critical thinking skills in your students. In today’s complex and ever-changing world, critical thinking is a vital skill that can make the difference between success and failure.

Critical Thinking Lessons and Activities

Now you may be wondering how to promote critical thinking in the classroom or how to develop critical thinking skills in the students. Well, to help you out, we’ve put together 10 surprising strategies to promote critical thinking skills in your classroom, complete with real-world examples and actionable strategies.

Strategies for Promoting Critical Thinking in the Classroom

These strategies are designed to promote active learning, inquiry-based learning, and Bloom’s Taxonomy levels of analysis, evaluation, and interpretation. Here they are:

1. Collaborative Learning

Collaborative learning is an effective way to promote critical thinking skills in your classroom. By encouraging your students to work together to solve complex problems, you can help them develop skills in analysis, evaluation, and interpretation.

For example, you could divide your students into small groups and give them a problem to solve. Each group can then present their solution to the class and the class can evaluate and critique each solution. This not only encourages critical thinking, but it also promotes teamwork and communication skills.

If you are looking for examples of critical thinking in the classroom, then read our article 11 activities that promote critical thinking skills in the classroom .

2. Questioning

Asking open-ended questions is another effective way to promote critical thinking skills in your classroom. Open-ended questions encourage your students to think deeply about a topic and consider different perspectives.

Read our article: 10 Best Educational Games for Kids That will Shape Their Future

For example, if you’re teaching a lesson on climate change, you could ask your students questions such as “What are the causes of climate change?” and “What are the potential consequences of climate change?” These questions encourage your students to analyze information and think critically about the topic.

3. Active Listening

Encouraging active listening is another way to promote critical thinking skills in your classroom. When students actively listen to each other, they consider different perspectives and analyze information more deeply.

Think Like a Detective – A Kid’s Guide to Critical Thinking

For example, you could ask your students to work in pairs and have each student share their opinion on a topic. The other student must actively listen and ask follow-up questions to better understand their partner’s perspective. This activity promotes critical thinking skills such as analysis, evaluation, and interpretation.

4. Case Studies

Using case studies is another effective way to promote critical thinking skills in your classroom. Case studies allow your students to apply critical thinking skills to real-world situations.

For example, if you’re teaching a lesson on business ethics , you could present a case study on a company that faced an ethical dilemma. Your students can then analyze the case study and identify potential solutions. This activity promotes critical thinking skills such as analysis, evaluation, and interpretation.

Organizing debates is another effective way to promote critical thinking skills in your classroom. Debates encourage your students to analyze and evaluate different viewpoints on a topic.

For example, if you’re teaching a lesson on gun control, you could organize a debate where half of the class argues for gun control and the other half argues against it. This activity promotes critical thinking skills such as analysis, evaluation, and interpretation.

Read our article: Engaging STEM Activities for Elementary, Middle and High School Students

6. Mind Mapping

Using mind mapping is another effective way to promote critical thinking skills in your classroom. Mind mapping allows your students to organize and analyze complex information.

For example, if you’re teaching a lesson on the solar system, you could have your students create a mind map of the different planets and their characteristics. This activity promotes critical thinking skills such as analysis, evaluation, and interpretation.

7. Gamification

Using game-based learning is another effective way to promote critical thinking skills in your classroom. Game-based learning engages your students and promotes critical thinking skills such as problem-solving, analysis, and evaluation.

For example, you could use an online game that requires your students to solve math problems. This activity promotes critical thinking skills such as problem-solving, analysis, and evaluation.

8. Problem-Based Learning

Using problem-based learning is another effective way to promote critical thinking skills in your classroom. Problem-based learning requires your students to solve real-world problems using critical thinking skills such as analysis, evaluation, and interpretation.

For example, you could present your students with a real-world problem, such as designing a sustainable community. Your students can then work in groups to research and propose solutions to the problem. This activity promotes critical thinking skills such as problem-solving, analysis, evaluation, and interpretation.

9. Reflection

Encouraging reflection is another way to promote critical thinking skills in your classroom. When students reflect on their learning experiences, they can identify areas where they need to improve and develop critical thinking skills.

For example, you could have your students keep a learning journal where they reflect on their learning experiences and identify areas where they need to improve. This activity promotes critical thinking skills such as analysis, evaluation, and interpretation.

10. Real-World Applications

Using real-world applications is another effective way to promote critical thinking skills in your classroom. When students can see how the skills they are learning can be applied in the real world, they are more motivated to learn and develop critical thinking skills.

For example, if you’re teaching a lesson on fractions, you could show your students how fractions are used in cooking recipes. This activity promotes critical thinking skills such as analysis, evaluation, and interpretation.

In conclusion, critical thinking skills are essential for success in today’s complex and ever-changing world. As an educator, you can promote critical thinking skills in your classroom by using these 10 surprising ways. Collaborative learning, questioning, active listening, case studies, debates, mind mapping, gamification, problem-based learning, reflection, and real-world applications are all effective ways to promote critical thinking skills. By incorporating these strategies into your teaching, you can help your students develop the critical thinking skills they need to succeed in the 21st century.

Thinking Classrooms: How To Promote Critical Thinking In Class

The Thinking Classroom is an approach to teaching that prioritizes the development of students’ critical thinking skills. In this type of classroom, the teacher acts as a facilitator rather than a traditional lecturer. Students are encouraged to actively engage with the material and collaborate with their peers.

The key to a Thinking Classroom is to focus on the process of learning rather than simply the acquisition of knowledge. This means that teachers must create opportunities for students to think critically, solve problems, and reflect on their learning.

We’ve rounded up the 14 practices of a Thinking Classroom below.

What are the 14 Practices of a Thinking Classroom?

The fourteen principles of a Thinking Classroom are designed to promote a classroom environment that encourages critical thinking, problem-solving, and collaboration.

Here’s a summary of each principle to help teachers create an engaging and effective learning environment:

1. Classroom Culture of Thinking

Create a classroom culture that values thinking, learning, and intellectual development. Start with thinking tasks that are separate from your curriculum. This eases the transition to everyday thinking classroom activities. It’s hard for students to think deeper and for longer periods, so this transition should be gradual. You can start with non-curricular tasks as an ice breaker at the beginning of the school year.

2. Opportunities to Think in Groups

Provide opportunities for students to think and engage in meaningful group learning experiences. The Thinking Classroom practices emphasize “visibly random groups” that change frequently. This reduces social anxiety in the group and decreases communication barriers.

3. Vertical and Non-permanant Workspaces

You may have noticed that the traditional method of having students sit at their desks and take notes is only sometimes the best way to promote active thinking in your classroom. Recent research has shown that students are more engaged and productive when standing and working on vertical non-permanent surfaces (VNPSs) like whiteboards, blackboards, or windows. The fact that the surface is non-permanent encourages risk-taking and experimentation, while the vertical orientation prevents students from disengaging.

4. Room Layout

Research has shown that traditional, front-facing classrooms promote passive learning. At the same time, a more flexible, de-fronted setup—where students are free to face any direction—can be much more effective in promoting active thinking and engagement. So when designing your classroom layout, it’s essential to consider how the physical space can support the learning you want to see.

5. Answer Questions that Promote Thinking

You answer hundreds of questions each day in class. But not all of the questions encourage your students to keep thinking. Here are the common types:

Proximity questions: Questions students ask because you’re close by and convenient.
Stop-thinking questions: Questions students ask so they can mark a task complete. (i.e., Is this right?)
Keep-thinking questions: Questions that help them along, so they can continue working through a task.

Answer only questions that keep students thinking.

6. Give Tasks in the Right Manner

Give tasks early in class while students are standing around a teacher. Give verbal tasks, and avoid visual cues that promote passive learning. This differs from the traditional manner of giving examples from the textbook or a worksheet.

7. Homework

Stop giving homework and instead give students opportunities to check their understanding. Make it optional so students can freely engage with authentic practice.

8. Promote Student Autonomy

As step 5 outlines, don’t solve problems for students. Let them struggle so they build confidence in their independence. This may mean asking a peer for help or looking around the room for a hint. When students are on their own, they take ownership of their learning.

9. Give Support So Students Can Learn at Their Own Pace

Encourage students to learn at their own pace by creating hints, extensions, and practice that meets them where they are in their learning. This is different from the typical guided practice that occurs in most classrooms.

10. Consolidate Lessons

Consolidation is crucial to help students combine different parts of a task or activity and ultimately form a more comprehensive understanding of the concept taught. Traditionally, teachers have relied on methods like showing, telling, or explaining to help students achieve their learning objectives.

In a thinking classroom, consolidation takes a different approach. Instead of relying on teacher-led instruction, consolidation works upward from the basic foundation of a concept. By drawing on the student work produced during their thinking on a common set of tasks, teachers can help students develop a deeper understanding of the concept.

To facilitate this process, teachers should provide open-ended questions, encourage peer-to-peer discussions, or engage in activities that allow students to explore and experiment with the concept taught.

11. Give Students Autonomy Over Notes

Only one in five students review their notes again after taking them in class. Give students the option of choosing which notes to take while learning. They are more likely to refer back to notes later.

12. Evaluate Values That Matter Most

If you want your students to participate, take risks, and persevere in the classroom, you should incorporate these values into evaluations. Assessment should go beyond curriculum knowledge.

13. Bring Students into Formative Assessment

Your students need to understand where they are and where they need to be with their learning. This means that they need to be a partner in formative assessment . Like students taking the lead over homework, they need to take the lead on owning their success in formative assessment.

14. Assessment Needs to Connect to an Outcome

Use assessments that measure and value thinking and understanding, not just rote memorization. This may look like standards-based grading. Students need to understand what they know and don’t know after they complete an assessment.

By implementing these principles, teachers can create a dynamic and engaging classroom that promotes deep learning and helps students develop the critical thinking and problem-solving skills they need to succeed in school and beyond.

TeacherMade helps teachers infuse technology into their Thinking Classrooms.

TeacherMade does more than convert PDFs into online activities. Teachers use TeacherMade to promote critical thinking skills. You can incorporate the Thinking Classroom practices with TeacherMade:

Every TeacherMade assignment is a non-permanent surface. Students can complete assignments again and again until they have reached mastery.
Create a culture of practice rather than homework and worksheets. With TeacherMade, you can choose to grade or not grade assignments. Students can complete practice as many times as they need.
TeacherMade supports asynchronous learning so that students can learn at their own pace.
Students are more involved with formative assessment when they receive instant feedback via auto-grading.
You can leave feedback, hints, and notes so that students fully understand their assessment results.

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Two elementary students talking in class

4 Strategies for Sparking Critical Thinking in Young Students

Fostering investigative conversation in grades K–2 isn’t easy, but it can be a great vehicle to promote critical thinking.

In the middle of class, a kindergartner spotted an ant and asked the teacher, “Why do ants come into the classroom?” Fairly quickly, educational consultant Cecilia Cabrera Martirena writes , students started sharing their theories: Maybe the ants were cold, or looking for food, or lonely.

Their teacher started a KWL chart to organize what students already knew, what they wanted to know, and, later, what they had learned. “As many of the learners didn’t read or write yet, the KWL was created with drawings and one or two words,” Cabrera Martirena writes. “Then, as a group, they decided how they could gather information to answer that first question, and some possible research routes were designed.”

As early elementary teachers know, young learners are able to engage in critical thinking and participate in nuanced conversations, with appropriate supports. What can teachers do to foster these discussions? Elementary teacher Jennifer Orr considered a few ideas in an article for ASCD .

“An interesting question and the discussion that follows can open up paths of critical thinking for students at any age,” Orr says. “With a few thoughtful prompts and a lot of noticing and modeling, we as educators can help young students engage in these types of academic conversations in ways that deepen their learning and develop their critical thinking skills.”

While this may not be an “easy process,” Orr writes—for the kids or the teacher—the payoff is students who from a young age are able to communicate new ideas and questions; listen and truly hear the thoughts of others; respectfully agree, disagree, or build off of their peers’ opinions; and revise their thinking.

4 Strategies for Kick-Starting Powerful Conversations

1. Encourage Friendly Debate: For many elementary-aged children, it doesn’t take much provoking for them to share their opinions, especially if they disagree with each other. Working with open-ended prompts that “engage their interest and pique their curiosity” is one key to sparking organic engagement, Orr writes. Look for prompts that allow them to take a stance, arguing for or against something they feel strongly about.

For example, Orr says, you could try telling first graders that a square is a rectangle to start a debate. Early childhood educator Sarah Griffin proposes some great math talk questions that can yield similar results:

How many crayons can fit in a box?
Which takes more snow to build: one igloo or 20 snowballs?
Estimate how many tissues are in a box.
How many books can you fit in your backpack?
Which would take less time: cleaning your room or reading a book?
Which would you rather use to measure a Christmas tree: a roll of ribbon or a candy cane? Why?

Using pictures can inspire interesting math discussions as well, writes K–6 math coach Kristen Acosta . Explore counting, addition, and subtraction by introducing kids to pictures “that have missing pieces or spaces” or “pictures where the objects are scattered.” For example, try showing students a photo of a carton of eggs with a few eggs missing. Ask questions like, “what do you notice?” and “what do you wonder?” and see how opinions differ.

2. Put Your Students in the Question: Centering students’ viewpoints in a question or discussion prompt can foster deeper thinking, Orr writes. During a unit in which kids learned about ladybugs, she asked her third graders, “What are four living and four nonliving things you would need and want if you were designing your own ecosystem?” This not only required students to analyze the components of an ecosystem but also made the lesson personal by inviting them to dream one up from scratch.

Educator Todd Finley has a list of interesting writing prompts for different grades that can instead be used to kick off classroom discussions. Examples for early elementary students include:

Which is better, giant muscles or incredible speed? Why?
What’s the most beautiful person, place, or thing you’ve ever seen? Share what makes that person, place, or thing so special.
What TV or movie characters do you wish were real? Why?
Describe a routine that you often or always do (in the morning, when you get home, Friday nights, before a game, etc.).
What are examples of things you want versus things you need?

3. Open Several Doors: While some students take to classroom discussions like a duck to water, others may prefer to stay on dry land. Offering low-stakes opportunities for students to dip a toe into the conversation can be a great way to ensure that everyone in the room can be heard. Try introducing hand signals that indicate agreement, disagreement, and more. Since everyone can indicate their opinion silently, this supports students who are reluctant to speak, and can help get the conversation started.

Similarly, elementary school teacher Raquel Linares uses participation cards —a set of different colored index cards, each labeled with a phrase like “I agree,” “I disagree,” or “I don’t know how to respond.” “We use them to assess students’ understanding, but we also use them to give students a voice,” Linares says. “We obviously cannot have 24 scholars speaking at the same time, but we want everyone to feel their ideas matter. Even if I am very shy and I don’t feel comfortable, my voice is still heard.” Once the students have held up the appropriate card, the discussion gets going.

4. Provide Discussion Sentence Starters: Young students often want to add their contribution without connecting it to what their peers have said, writes district-level literacy leader Gwen Blumberg . Keeping an ear out for what students are saying to each other is an important starting point when trying to “lift the level of talk” in your classroom. Are kids “putting thoughts into words and able to keep a conversation going?” she asks.

Introducing sentence starters like “I agree…” or “I feel differently…” can help demonstrate for students how they can connect what their classmate is saying to what they would like to say, which grows the conversation, Blumberg says. Phrases like “I’d like to add…” help students “build a bridge from someone else’s idea to their own.”

Additionally, “noticing and naming the positive things students are doing, both in their conversation skills and in the thinking they are demonstrating,” Orr writes, can shine a light for the class on what success looks like. Celebrating when students use these sentence stems correctly, for example, helps reinforce these behaviors.

“Students’ ability to clearly communicate with others in conversation is a critical literacy skill,” Blumberg writes, and teachers in grades K–2 can get students started on the path to developing this skill by harnessing their natural curiosity and modeling conversation moves.

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How To Promote Critical Thinking In Your Classroom

Promoting Thinking

November 25, 2006, by The Critical Thinking Co. Staff

5 Easy Strategies for Developing Critical Thinkers

We’re excited to have Sydney from Love, Laugh, Teach guest posting for us today! Her post includes helpful insight and advice for developing critical thinkers in the classroom. As teachers, we all know how important critical thinking is, but sometimes it feels like an abstract concept to teach. Read on to learn Sydney’s suggestions!

It should always be a teacher's goal to promote critical thinking in the classroom. This guest post on Minds in Bloom shares five easy strategies for developing critical thinkers -- and they're not tricky! Click through to get ideas for teaching students to think critically in the classroom.

Developing critical thinkers in the classroom is essential to creating a classroom full of excited and motivated learners. What exactly is a “critical thinker”? Critical thinkers don’t just think clearly or rationally; they use skillful analyzing, assessing, and reconstructing to make decisions every day. When we develop critical thinkers, this happens seamlessly. According to Educational Psychologist Dr. Linda Elder, “Critical thinking is self-guided, self-disciplined thinking which attempts to reason at the highest level of quality in a fair-minded way. People who think critically consistently attempt to live rationally, reasonably, empathically…”

Students who master their critical thinking skills will be able to differentiate between which influences will shape their personality and which influences will not. But how do we develop critical thinkers in the classroom? All you need are a few simple strategies to develop critical thinkers in your classroom.

#1 – Questioning Techniques

Questioning is an essential tool for developing critical thinking skills. This is the simplest and easiest strategy to start implementing in your classroom right now. Develop questions that require students to dig deeper. Ask open-ended questions instead of “yes” or “no” questions. For example, instead of asking students, “Is learning important?” ask, “WHY is learning important?” Open-ended questions give students an opportunity to examine their own knowledge on the topic in question. I like to ask my students “why” multiple times during a lesson to help them dig deeper. Sometimes they get frustrated, but by the time I’ve asked my last “why,” I can tell if a student understands the concept well or has barely skimmed the surface. When thinking of questions to ask, it’s helpful to take a look at Bloom’s Taxonomy .

#2 – Student-Led Discussions

Student-centered learning environments promote critical thinking skills by requiring students to reflect metacognitively. In a student-centered classroom, students rely more on their peers for answers to their questions than on the teacher. One activity I like to use in my classroom is a mystery game. In this game, students rely solely on their classmates to solve the mystery of who stole the Mona Lisa from La Louvre museum in Paris. Read more about it here ! It is amazing to see students engaged in their learning. They are so focused throughout the entire lesson, they barely even know I’m in the classroom. The whole group discussion at the end of the lesson is very powerful and an excellent way to get students collaborating.

#3 – Inquiry-Based Learning

We want our students to be interested in what they’re learning. Inquiry-based learning is an excellent strategy to get students involved in the learning process and to engage critical thinking skills. Inquiry-based learning is more than just asking what students want to learn; it’s about activating interest and curiosity. The first step in successful inquiry-based learning is to get students to develop questions they want answers to. We want our students to ask and answer higher-order thinking questions. To read more about inquiry-based learning, click here .

#4 – Collaboration

One of the most important aspects of critical thinking is the ability to ask questions and analyze the answers. When students collaborate with their peers, they take ownership of their work, which promotes independence and critical thinking. Give students time throughout your lessons to converse with peers and share ideas. Oftentimes, students will learn from each other, which can eliminate confusion and misunderstandings. Collaborating also expands students’ thinking by demonstrating that not everyone has the same thought process.

#5 – Problem-Based Learning

Problem-based learning, or PBL, is a strategy that encourages students to use critical thinking skills by providing a structure for discovery that helps students deepen their understanding. The steps are simple and can be repeated for each new topic:

Explore a specific issue or problem – Give students a problem and have them gather information to form a solution.
Research and brainstorm – Have students research their problem and brainstorm possible solutions. Consider and discuss every solution presented.
Develop a solution and present it to the class – Students learn from each other, and it’s a very powerful teaching tool.
Create a call-to-action and steps to be taken – Students should explain the steps that need to be taken in order to solve the problem.

Looking for more information on classroom strategies? Check out my most popular post on 5 Strategies for Differentiated Instruction in the Primary Classroom . Also, check out all the fun and engaging mystery games in my Teachers Pay Teachers store to develop critical thinkers in your classroom!

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Promoting critical thinking in the classroom: strategies for developing analytical skills.

Explore how to nurture critical thinking abilities in students and enhance their analytical skills with these proven strategies.

Empower your students with the tools to think critically and analyze information effectively.

In today's rapidly evolving educational landscape, fostering critical thinking skills in students is paramount to their success. By promoting critical thinking in the classroom, educators can equip students with the ability to question, evaluate, and analyze information independently. These skills not only deepen understanding but also prepare students to navigate complex challenges in the future.

Encourage students to ask thought-provoking questions that stimulate critical thinking. By fostering a classroom environment that values curiosity and inquiry, teachers can spark intellectual engagement and promote active learning.

Integrate real-world scenarios and problem-solving tasks into lessons to challenge students' analytical abilities. By presenting authentic challenges, educators can guide students in applying critical thinking skills to practical situations, enhancing their problem-solving proficiency.

Utilize collaborative learning activities that require students to analyze information collectively. Group discussions, debates, and projects encourage students to consider diverse perspectives, evaluate evidence, and construct well-reasoned arguments, fostering a culture of critical inquiry.

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Home › Resources › Promoting Critical Thinking in the Classroom

Promoting Critical Thinking in the Classroom

Description:.

There will be 4 panelists and each will have 10 minutes to talk. They will be asked to answer the questions below during their talk. Audience questions will follow.

Questions :

Challenging students to think logically and independently is not an easy task. Can you give an example in which a lecture, assignment, or some other activity was designed in a way that you felt truly encouraged students to reflect on the material at hand?
In your opinion, what are the most effective ways of holding a review session or moderating a classroom discussion to promote critical thinking?
Do you have any advice for evaluating whether you’re achieving your goal of promoting critical thought?
Are there any tips or best practices you’ve learned along the way that have helped your students actively reason?

Learning Goals:

After successfully completing this workshop you will be able to:.

identify various techniques employed to stimulate purposeful reflection in and out of the classroom.

Workshop Resources:

Powerpoint Slides (ND only)
Handout prepared by Jessica Collett (ND only)
Handout prepared by Patrick Clauss (ND only)
Handout prepared by Virginie Askildson (ND only)

In the Library:

Teaching for critical thinking: tools and techniques to help students question their assumptions. Brookfield, Stephen . [Kaneb Center • BF 441 .B795 2012]

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Open access
Published: 06 April 2023

Application of flipped classroom based on CDIO concept combined with mini-CEX evaluation model in the clinical teaching of orthopedic nursing

Xinyang Su 1 ,
Huaxiu Ning 1 ,
Fang Zhang 2 ,
Xiaoling Zhang 1 &
Hongmei Xu 3

BMC Medical Education volume 23 , Article number: 219 ( 2023 ) Cite this article

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After the COVID-19 epidemic, the state has paid more attention to the clinical teaching function of affiliated hospitals of colleges and universities. Strengthening the integration of medicine and education and improving the quality and effect of clinical practice teaching are critical challenges facing medical education. The difficulty of orthopedic teaching lies in the characteristics of a wide variety of diseases, strong professionalism, and relatively abstract characteristics, which affect the initiative, enthusiasm, and learning effect of nursing students. In this study, a flipped classroom teaching plan based on the CDIO (conceive–design–implement–operate) concept was constructed and practiced in the orthopedic nursing student training course to improve the effect of practical teaching, and it is convenient for teachers to implement more effective and targeted teaching in the flipped classroom of nursing education and even medical education in the future.

Fifty undergraduate nursing students who practiced in the Orthopedics Department of a tertiary hospital in June 2017 were enrolled in the control group, while 50 undergraduate nursing students who practiced in the same department in June 2018 were enrolled in the intervention group. The intervention group adopted the flipped classroom teaching mode of the CDIO concept, whereas the control group adopted the traditional teaching mode. After finishing the department practice task, the students in the two groups completed the evaluation of theory, operation skills, independent learning ability, and critical thinking ability. They completed the evaluation of clinical practice ability in eight dimensions, including four processes of nursing procedures, humanistic care ability, and evaluation of clinical teaching quality for two groups of teachers.

After teaching, the clinical practice ability, critical thinking ability, autonomous learning ability, theoretical and operational performance, and evaluation of clinical teaching quality in the intervention group were significantly higher than those in the control group (all p < 0.05).

The CDIO-based teaching mode can stimulate the independent learning ability and critical thinking ability of nursing interns, promote the organic combination of theory and practice, improve their ability to comprehensively use theoretical knowledge to analyze and solve practical problems, and improve teaching effectiveness.

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Clinical teaching is a critical phase in nursing education that involves the transition from theoretical knowledge to practice. Effective clinical teaching can help nursing students master professional skills, strengthen their professional knowledge, and improve their ability to perform nursing activities. It is also the final stage in the transition of nursing students’ professional roles [ 1 ]. In recent years, many clinical teaching researchers have investigated problem-based learning (PBL), case-based learning (CBL), team-based learning (TBL), and situational learning in clinical teaching, scenario simulation teaching, and other teaching methods. However, different teaching methods have their own merits and shortcomings regarding the teaching effectiveness of the practice link, but they have not achieved the integration of theory and practice [ 2 ].

Flipped classroom refers to a new teaching mode in which students learn diversified learning materials independently before class with the help of a certain information platform, complete homework in the form of “cooperative learning” and other forms in class, and at the same time, teachers answer questions and provide individualized help [ 3 ]. The American New Media Alliance noted that the flipped classroom readjusts the time inside and outside the classroom and transfers students’ learning decisions from teachers to students [ 4 ]. Valuable time in the classroom in this teaching mode allows students to focus more on active problem-based learning. Deshpande [ 5 ] carried out a flipped classroom in the teaching of doctor assistant education, and concluded that flipped classroom can improve students’ learning enthusiasm and academic performance, and shorten the class time.Khe Foon HEW and Chung Kwan LO [ 6 ] examined the findings of comparative articles through a meta-analysis to summarize the overall effects of teaching with the flipped classroom approach, suggesting that the flipped classroom approach in health profession education significantly improves student learning compared with traditional teaching methods. Zhong J [ 7 ] compared the effectiveness of blended learning between a flipped virtual classroom and a flipped physical classroom on students’ knowledge learning and discovered that in a flipped classroom with a blended learning process of histology, enhancing the quality of online learning boosts student satisfaction and improves knowledge learning. Based on the above research, it is found that in nursing education, most scholars study the impact of flipped classrooms on classroom teaching effects and believe that flipped classroom teaching can improve nursing students’ academic performance, autonomous learning ability, and classroom satisfaction.

Therefore, to promote nursing students to internalize systematic professional knowledge in their hearts and externalize it in practice to improve their clinical practice ability and comprehensive quality, it is urgent to explore and construct a novel teaching method.CDIO (conceive–design–implement–operate) is an engineering education model developed in 2000 by four universities, including the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the Royal Swedish Institute of Technology. It is an advanced engineering education model that allows nursing students to learn and acquire competencies in an active, hands-on, and organically linked way among courses [ 8 , 9 ]. On the subject of teaching, this model emphasizes "student-centered” students participate in the conception, design, implementation, and operation of the project and transform the theoretical knowledge they have learned into a tool for solving problems. Several studies have revealed that the CDIO teaching mode is conducive to improving the clinical practice ability and comprehensive quality of nursing students, enhancing the interaction between teachers and students, improving the teaching effect, and playing a certain role in promoting the informatization and optimization reform of teaching methods. Currently, it is widely used in the field of applied talent training [ 10 ].

With the transformation of the global medical model, the demand for health is increasing, and higher burdens of responsibility are also placed on medical personnel. The ability and quality of nurses are directly related to the quality of clinical care and patient safety. Recently, cultivating and evaluating the clinical ability of nursing staff have become hotspots in the nursing field [ 11 ]. Therefore, an objective and comprehensive evaluation method with high reliability and validity is vital for medical education research. Mini-clinical evaluation exercise (mini-CEX), an assessment method for evaluating the comprehensive clinical ability of medical students, has been widely used in the field of multidisciplinary medical education in China and abroad. It has gradually emerged in the field of nursing [ 12 , 13 ].

At present, several studies have reported the application of the CDIO model, flipped classroom, and mini-CEX in nursing education. Wang Bei [ 14 ] discussed the effect of the CDIO model on improving special nursing training oriented to the nursing needs of the new coronary pneumonia disease. The results demonstrated that using the CDIO teaching model to carry out special nursing training on the new coronary pneumonia disease is conducive to the nursing staff to better master specialized nursing training skills and related knowledge, comprehensively improving their comprehensive nursing ability. Liu Mei [ 15 ] and other scholars discussed the application of a team-based teaching method combined with a flipped classroom in the training of orthopedic nurses, and the results depict that the teaching mode can effectively improve the core competencies of orthopedic nurses such as understanding and application of theoretical knowledge, teamwork, critical thinking and scientific research. Li Ruyue [ 16 ] researched the application effect of the improved Nursing Mini-CEX in the standardized training of new surgical nurses and found that teachers can find their weaknesses in clinical teaching or work by using Nursing Mini-CEX to evaluate the whole process of assessing nurses and giving real-time feedback. In the link between self-supervision, self-reflection, absorbing the bright spots in the assessment of nurses’ work, adjusting the teaching plan, and further improving the quality of clinical teaching, students can improve the comprehensive ability of surgical clinical nursing, test the actual clinical processing ability in different situations, deeply understand and improve nursing work, and cultivate strong professional ethics and communication skills.However, no study has reported the application of a CDIO concept-based flipped classroom combined with mini-CEX evaluation model in the teaching of orthopedic nursing students. The author employed the CDIO model in the design of the orthopedic nursing student training course, constructed a flipped classroom based on the CDIO concept and combined the mini-CEX evaluation model, realized the“three-in-one”training mode of knowledge, ability, and quality, promoted continuous improvement in teaching quality, to provide a reference for practical teaching in teaching hospitals.

Materials and methods

Study design.

A prospective controlled experimental design was used in this study.

Participants

To facilitate the implementation of the course, convenience sampling was used to select the 2017 and 2018 undergraduate nursing students who practiced in the Orthopedics Department of a tertiary hospital as the research objects. Since there were 52 interns at each level, the sample size was 104. Four students did not participate in full clinical practice.Fifty undergraduate nursing students who practiced in the Orthopedics Department of a tertiary hospital in June 2017 were enrolled in the control group, including 6 males and 44 females; aged 20 to 22 (21.30 ± 0.60) years old; fifty undergraduate nursing students who practiced in the same department in June 2018 were enrolled in the intervention group, including 8 males and 42 females, aged 21 to 22 (21.45 ± 0.37) years old. All subjects gave informed consent. Inclusion criteria: (1)Orthopedic intern nursing students with a bachelor’s degree. (2)Informed consent and voluntary participation in this study. Exclusion criteria: Those who cannot fully participate in the clinical practice. There was no significant difference in the general data of the two groups of trainee nursing students (p > 0.05), which was comparable.

Training methods

Both groups had a four-week-long clinical practice, and all courses were completed in the orthopedic department.During the observation period, there were ten batches of nursing students, with five students in each batch. The teaching was completed in accordance with the nursing student practice syllabus, which included two parts: theory and skill operation. The two groups of teachers had the same qualifications, and the teaching nurse was responsible for the quality control of teaching.

Control group

The control group adopted the traditional teaching method. In the first week of admission, the teaching commenced on Monday. The teacher taught the theory on Tuesday and Wednesday, and the operation training was concentrated on Thursday and Friday. From the second to the fourth week, each teacher was responsible for one nursing student to conduct random teaching in the department. In the fourth week, the assessment and evaluation were completed three days before leaving the department.

Intervention group

As stated earlier, the author adopted the flipped classroom teaching method based on the CDIO concept, described as follows.

The first week of teaching was the same as that of the control group; the second to fourth weeks of orthopedic perioperative teaching adopted a flipped classroom teaching plan based on the CDIO concept, with a total of 36 class hours. The conception and design part was completed in the second week, and the implementation part was completed in the third week. The operation was completed in the fourth week, and the assessment and evaluation were completed three days before leaving the department. Specific allocations of class hours are presented in Table 1 .

Step one: form a teaching team

A teaching team consisting of one head nurse in charge of teaching, eight orthopedic teachers, and one non-orthopedic CDIO nursing expert was established. The head nurse organized teaching group members to study and master the CDIO outline and standards, the CDIO workshop manual, and other related theories and specific implementation methods (for no less than 20 hours) and consulted experts at any time on challenging problems in theoretical learning. In accordance with the requirements of Adult Nursing and the syllabus of practice, the teaching team formulated teaching objectives, led teaching plans, and prepared lessons uniformly.

Step two: setting teaching objectives

According to the internship training syllabus, referring to the CDIO talent training syllabus and standards [ 17 ], and combining with the characteristics of orthopaedic nursing teaching, the teaching objectives of the internship nursing students were set in three dimensions, namely knowledge objectives (mastering basic professional knowledge and related system processes, etc.), ability objectives (enhance professional basic skills, critical thinking ability and autonomous learning ability, etc.) and quality objectives(establish correct professional values and humanistic care spirit, etc.).Among them, the knowledge objectives correspond to the technical knowledge and reasoning of the CDIO syllabus, which corresponds to the personal ability, professional ability, and attitude of the CDIO syllabus, and the quality objectives correspond to the interpersonal skills of the CDIO syllabus: teamwork and communication.

Step three: develop a teaching plan

After two rounds of meetings, the teaching team discussed the flipped classroom nursing practice teaching plan based on the CDIO concept, divided the teaching into four stages, and determined the goals and outlines, as summarized in Table 1 .

Step four: implement the CDIO teaching model

Project conceive.

After analyzing the nursing work on orthopedic ailments, the teacher conceived the cases of common diseases and frequently occurring orthopedic diseases. Take the nursing program for patients with lumbar disc herniation as an example: Patient Zhang Moumou (male, 73 years old, 177 cm tall, and 80 kg in weight) complained of “low back pain with left lower limb numbness and pain for 2 months” and was admitted to the outpatient clinic As a responsible nurse: (1) Please systematically take the medical history based on the knowledge you have learned and judge what happened to the patient; (2) Select the systemic and specialist evaluation approach according to the condition and propose the inspection items that require further evaluation; (3) When making a nursing diagnosis, find the basis in the case; write out the targeted nursing measures related to the patient; and (4) Discuss the problems existing in the patient’s self-management and the current method and content of the patient’s discharge follow-up. Post the student case and task list two days before the class. The task list for this case is as follows: (1) Review and consolidate theoretical knowledge on the etiology and clinical manifestations of lumbar disc herniation; (2) Make a targeted nursing plan; (3) Design this case according to clinical work to execute two main scenario simulation learning projects of pre- and post-operative nursing. Nursing students independently previewed the course content with case questions, consulted relevant literature and databases, and completed the self-learning tasks in the form of WeChat group solitaire check-in.

Project design

Students freely formed unit teams,the team chose a team leader, and the team leader was responsible for the division of labor and coordination of the project. The pre-class team leader was responsible for allocating the four contents of case introduction, nursing procedure implementation, health education, and disease-related knowledge to each team member. Students sought theoretical basis or materials for solving case problems in their spare time during the internship, discussing in teams and perfecting specific project plans. While designing the project, the teacher assisted the team leader in assigning team members to be responsible for sorting out relevant knowledge points, designing and producing projects, demonstrating and revising projects, and instructing nursing students to integrate professional-related knowledge points into the design and experience the knowledge of each module. The difficulties and key points of this group were sorted out and designed to implement the scenario simulation implementation plan for this group. Teachers also organized a bedside nursing ward round demonstration at this stage.

Project implementation

Students made project reports in teams. After the report was over, other group members and teachers discussed and commented on the report group to further improve the nursing plan. The team leader led the team members to simulate the overall nursing process, and the teacher guided the students to deepen their understanding and construction of theoretical knowledge and develop critical thinking ability through learning the dynamic changes of the disease during the simulation practice.The practical operations that need to be completed in the development of specialist diseases were completed under the guidance of teachers, who commented on and led nursing students to complete bedside practices to achieve the integration of knowledge points and clinical practices.

Project operation

After the assessment of each group, the teacher made comments, noted the strengths and weaknesses of the members of each group in the process of content arrangement and skill operation, and continuously improved the nursing students’ understanding of the teaching content.After the project, teachers completed the analysis of teaching quality and optimized the curriculum according to the assessment results of nursing students and their evaluation of teaching.

Observation indicators

Theory and operational assessment.

Nursing students completed the theory and operation examinations after practical teaching. Theoretical intervention questions were set by the instructor.The intervention papers were divided into two sets (A and B), and one set was randomly selected for the intervention. The intervention questions were divided into two parts, specialist theoretical knowledge and case analysis, each with 50 points, for a total of 100 points. Nursing skills assessment students randomly selected one of them, including axial turning technique, good limb placement technique for patients with spinal cord injury, the technique of using air pressure therapy apparatus, the technique of using CPM Joint rehabilitation machine, etc. The full score is 100 points.

Self-directed learning ability evaluation scale

In the fourth week, the assessment of Self-directed learning ability evaluation scale was conducted three days before leaving the department.The self-directed learning ability evaluation scale developed by Zhang Xiyan [ 18 ] was used, including learning motivation (8 items), self-management ability (11 items), learning cooperation ability (5 items), and information literacy (6 items).Each item was scored on a 5-point Likert scale, that is, from “completely inconsistent” to “completely consistent”, with 1 to 5 points. The total score is 150 points, and the higher the score, the stronger the autonomous learning ability. The scale Cronbach’s alpha coefficient was 0.822.

Critical thinking ability assessment scale

In the fourth week, the assessment of Critical Thinking Ability Assessment Scale was conducted three days before leaving the department.The Chinese version of the Critical Thinking Ability Assessment Scale translated by Meici [ 19 ] was used. It has seven dimensions, including finding the truth, open mind, analytical ability, and systematization ability, with 10 items for each dimension. A 6-level scoring was used, that is, from “strongly disagree” to “strongly agree,” with 1 to 6 points, respectively, and negative statements were scored in reverse, with a total score of 70 to 420 points. A total score of ≤ 210 indicates negative performance, 211–279 indicates neutral performance, 280–349 indicates positive performance, and ≥ 350 indicates strong critical thinking ability. The scale Cronbach’s alpha coefficient was 0.90.

Assessment of clinical practice ability

In the fourth week, the assessment of clinical practice ability was conducted three days before leaving the department.The mini-CEX scale used in this study was adapted from YiJing [ 20 ] in accordance with mini-CEX, with 1–3 points for not meeting the requirements, 4–6 points for meeting the requirements, and 7–-9 points for good. Nursing students completed their training after the completion of the specialist practice. The Cronbach’s alpha coefficient of the scale was 0.780, and the split-half reliability coefficient was 0.842, indicating good reliability.

Evaluation of teaching quality

In the fourth week,a teacher-student symposium and the evaluation of teaching quality were conducted the day before leaving the department.The teaching quality evaluation table was designed by Zhou Tong [ 21 ], including five aspects: teaching attitude, teaching content, teaching method, teaching effect, and teaching characteristics. A 5-point Likert scale was used. The higher the score, the better the teaching quality. Completed after completion of the specialist internship. The questionnaire has good reliability, the Cronbach’s alpha coefficient of the scale was 0.85.

Data analysis

SPSS 21.0 statistical software was used to analyze the data. Measurement data were expressed as mean ± standard deviation ( $\overline X \pm S$ ), and group t intervention was used for comparison between groups. Enumeration data were expressed as cases (%), and comparison was made using chi-squared intervention or Fisher’s exact intervention. p-value < 0.05 corresponded to a statistically significant difference.

The comparison of the theoretical and operational intervention scores of the two groups of nursing interns is shown in Table 2 .

Comparison of scores of independent learning ability and critical thinking ability of nursing interns in the two groups are shown in Table 3 .

Comparison of the clinical practice ability assessment of nursing interns in the two groups.The clinical nursing practice ability of the students in the intervention group was significantly better than that in the control group, and the difference was statistically significant (p < 0.05), as shown in Table 4 .

The teaching quality evaluation results of the two groups showed that the total score of teaching quality in the control group was 90.08 ± 2.34 points, and the total score of teaching quality in the intervention group was 96.34 ± 2.16 points, and the difference was statistically significant (t = − 13.900, p < 0.001).

The development and progress of medicine require medical talents to conduct sufficient practice accumulation. Although there are many simulation and simulation training methods, they cannot replace clinical practice, which is directly related to the level of future medical talents to treat diseases and save lives. After the new crown epidemic, the state paid more attention to the clinical teaching function of the affiliated hospitals of colleges and universities [ 22 ]. Strengthening the integration of medicine and education and improving the quality and effect of clinical practice teaching are critical challenges facing medical education. The difficulty of orthopedic teaching lies in the characteristics of a wide variety of diseases, strong professionalism, and relatively abstract characteristics, which affect the initiative, enthusiasm, and learning effect of nursing students [ 23 ].

The flipped classroom teaching method of CDIO teaching concept integrates teaching content with the process of teaching, learning, and doing. It changes the structure of the teaching classroom and makes nursing students the backbone of the teaching scene. In the teaching process, teachers guide nursing students to independently consult relevant materials for difficult nursing problems in typical cases [ 24 ]. Research has shown that CDIO involves the task designing and activity of clinical practice teaching. The design provides detailed guidance, which closely integrates the consolidation of specialized knowledge points and the cultivation of hands-on operation ability and finds problems during simulation, which is beneficial for nursing students to improve their independent learning ability and critical thinking ability in self-study and guidance. The results of this study showed that the scores of autonomous learning ability and critical thinking ability of nursing students in the intervention group were significantly higher than those in the control group after four weeks of training (both p < 0.001). This is consistent with Fan Xiaoying’s research results [ 25 ], who studied the application effect of CDIO combined with the CBL teaching method in internal medicine nursing teaching. This teaching method can significantly improve the critical thinking and autonomous learning abilities of interns.In the conception stage, the teacher first handed out the difficult points in the classroom case to the nursing students. The nursing students then learned relevant information independently through the micro-lecture videos and actively searched for relevant materials to further enrich their understanding of orthopedic nursing work. In the design process, nursing students, under the guidance of their teachers, relied on cases and exercised teamwork and critical thinking skills in group discussions. In the realization stage, the teachers took the actual disease perioperative nursing as an opportunity and used the scenario simulation teaching method to guide the nursing students to execute scenario drills under group cooperation to familiarize themselves with and find out the problems in the nursing work. At the same time, in teaching real cases, nursing students could learn the key points of pre- and post-operative nursing so that they could clearly understand that each link of perioperative nursing is an important factor in patients’ post-operative rehabilitation. In the operation link, teachers guided nursing students to master theories and skills in practice. At the same time, they learned to observe changes in the condition and think about possible complications in actual cases so that they no longer memorized various nursing procedures by rote and helped nursing students. In the process of construction and implementation, the teaching-related content was organically integrated. In this participatory, interactive, and experiential learning process, nursing students’ autonomous learning ability and learning enthusiasm were well mobilized, and their critical thinking ability was improved.Scholars used a Design Thinking (DT)-Conceive-Design-Implement-Operate (CDIO) engineering design framework in a fipped web programming course to develop students’ learning achievement and computational thinking (CT) abilities, and the results displayed that the students significantly improved their learning achievement and computational thinking ability [ 26 ].

In this study, nursing students were guided to participate in the whole process according to the process of“asking questions- conception- design- implementation -operation-summary.”First, teachers published cases, designed problems, guided nursing students to conceive, and designed clinical situations. Then, based on group collaboration and independent thinking, supplemented by the teacher answering questions, students put forward solutions to problems to complete data collection, situational exercises, and finally complete bedside practice. The results of the study showed that the scores of the theoretical knowledge assessment and operation skills assessment of nursing students in the intervention group were better than those in the control group, and the differences were statistically significant (p < 0.001),and this was consistent with the findings of related research [ 27 , 28 ]. The reason for the analysis is that in the CDIO model, the disease knowledge points with higher morbidity are first selected, and second, the difficulty of item setting is in line with the fundamental level. In this model, after learning the practical content, students complete the project task book as needed, check the relevant content again, and discuss the tasks with the group members to realize the digestion and absorption of the learning content and summarize the new knowledge and the old knowledge in a new way. The mastery of knowledge is improved.

This study shows that through the application of the CDIO clinical teaching model, the nursing students in the intervention group were better than the nursing students in the control group in terms of nursing consultation, physical examination, determination of nursing diagnosis, implementation of nursing measures, and humanistic care. Furthermore, statistically significant differences were found in each dimension between the two groups (p < 0.05), which was similar to the results of Hongyun [ 29 ]. Zhou Tong [ 21 ] studied the application effect of the teaching mode under the guidance of the conception-design-implementation-operation concept (CDIO) in the clinical practice teaching of cardiovascular specialist nursing and found that the students in the experimental group who adopted the CDIO clinical practice teaching method were significantly better than those who adopted the traditional teaching method in the eight dimensions of nursing procedures, humanistic care ability, and overall.It may be because in the learning process, nursing students no longer passively accept knowledge but use their various abilities to acquire knowledge. Team members give full play to team spirit to integrate learning resources and repeatedly report, practice, analyze, and discuss clinical practical nursing problems, cognition from the shallower to the deeper, and pay more attention to the specific content of the cause analysis of health problems, the formulation of nursing goals, and the feasibility analysis of nursing measures. Teachers guide and demonstrate in the discussion to form a cyclic stimulus of perception–practice–response to guide nursing students to complete a meaningful learning process and improve the clinical practice abilities of nursing students, improve the interest and efficiency of learning, and continuously improve the ability to learn from theory to practice while completing the internalization of knowledge.

The application of the CDIO-based clinical teaching scheme improved the quality of clinical teaching. The research results of Ding Jinxia [ 30 ] and others suggest a correlation between various dimensions of learning motivation, autonomous learning ability, and the effective teaching behavior of clinical teachers.In this study, with the development of CDIO clinical teaching, clinical teachers received several specialized trainings, updated teaching concepts, and improved their teaching abilities. Second, it enriches the clinical teaching cases and teaching content of cardiovascular nursing and grasps the orderliness and operability of the teaching mode from a macro perspective, which is conducive to students’ understanding and memory of the course content. The feedback after each lecture can promote clinical teachers’ self-awareness and urge clinical teachers to reflect on their own skills, professional level and humanistic accomplishment to truly achieve mutual teaching and improve the quality of clinical teaching. The results showed that the teaching quality of clinical teachers in the intervention group was better than that in the control group,which was similar to Xiong Haiyan’s research results [ 31 ].

Limitations and suggestions

Although the findings of this study are valuable for clinical teaching, there are still many limitations in our research. First, the use of convenience sampling may limit the generalization of these findings, and we also had a limited sample for one tertiary hospital. Second, the training is conducted only four weeks, and the critical thinking skills of nursing interns need more time to develop. Third, in this study, the patients used in Mini-CEX are real patients who have not been trained, the quality completed by the nursing interns may vary from patient to patient. These are the main issues that limit the findings of this study. Future research is needed to expand the sample size, and increase the training of clinical teachers, unify the design standards of teaching cases. Longitudinal studies should also be conducted to examine whether the flipped classroom based on the concept of CDIO can foster the comprehensive ability of nursing students over a long period.

Conclusions and implications

This study developed the CDIO model in designing an orthopedic nursing student training course, constructed a flipped classroom based on the CDIO concept, and combined the mini-CEX evaluation model. The results indicated that the flipped classroom based on the concept of CDIO improved students’ independent learning ability, critical thinking ability, and clinical practice abilities while improving the quality of clinical teaching. This teaching method was more credible and effective than the traditional lectures. It can be concluded that study results may have implications for medical education. The flipped classroom, based on the concept of CDIO, has significant potential to prepare students for performing clinical work by focusing on teaching, learning, and doing, which closely integrates the consolidation of specialized knowledge points and the cultivation of hands-on operation ability. Because of the importance of involving students in learning and practicing for positive, it is proposed that the CDIO-based clinical teaching mode can be used in medical education considering all aspects. This method can also be recommended as an innovative and student-centered method for clinical teaching. In addition, the results can be extremely helpful to policymakers and academics in developing strategies for improving medical education.

Availability of data and materials

The datasets used and/or analyzed during the current study are available from the corresponding author on reasonable request.

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Acknowledgments

The authors would like to convey their gratitude to the Nursing Department of the Binzhou Medical University Hospital and all the nursing staff of the Orthopedics Department for their thoughtful support of this project.

The present study was funded by Shandong Province Medical and Health Science and Technology Development Plan Research Project(No.2017WS550).

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Study design: Xinyang Su, Hongmei Xu,Huaxiu Ning. Data collection:Fang Zhang and Xiaoling Zhang. Statistical analysis: Li Liu. Manuscript writing and editing: Xinyang Su, Huaxiu Ning, Hongmei Xu. All authors gave approval for the fInal manuscript.

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Su, X., Ning, H., Zhang, F. et al. Application of flipped classroom based on CDIO concept combined with mini-CEX evaluation model in the clinical teaching of orthopedic nursing. BMC Med Educ 23 , 219 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1186/s12909-023-04200-9

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DOI : https://doi.org/10.1186/s12909-023-04200-9

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