Effects of a Critical Thinking Skills Program on the Learning Motivation of Primary School Students

Abstract

Learning motivation has a significant effect on student learning, which is a key determinant of academic performance and creativity. It is increasingly popular and important to cultivate learning motivation in schools. To consider this trend, a long-term intervention program named “Learn to Think” (LTT) was designed not only to improve students’ thinking ability but also to improve their learning motivation. The present study explored the effects of the LTT curriculum on primary school students’ learning motivation. The sample consisted of 158 Chinese primary school students, who were randomly assigned to experimental and control groups. Experimental students participated in the LTT curriculum for 4 years, with data collected via pretests, annual end-of-year assessments, and a delayed posttest administration 1 year after terminating the training. The results suggest that LTT had long-term transfer effects on the development of primary school students’ learning motivation, especially on deep motivation.

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Effects of a Critical Thinking Skills Program on the
Learning Motivation of Primary School Students
Weiping Hu, Xiaojuan Jia, Jonathan A. Plucker & Xinxin Shan
To cite this article: Weiping Hu, Xiaojuan Jia, Jonathan A. Plucker & Xinxin Shan (2016) Effects
of a Critical Thinking Skills Program on the Learning Motivation of Primary School Students,
Roeper Review, 38:2, 70-83, DOI: 10.1080/02783193.2016.1150374
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Roeper Review, 38:70–83, 2016
Copyright © The Roeper Institute
ISSN: 0278-3193 print / 1940-865X online
DOI: 10.1080/02783193.2016.1150374
CRITICAL THINKING
Effects of a Critical Thinking Skills Program on the
Learning Motivation of Primary School Students
Weiping Hu, Xiaojuan Jia, Jonathan A. Plucker, and Xinxin Shan
Learning motivation has a significant effect on student learning, which is a key determinant
of academic performance and creativity. It is increasingly popular and important to cultivate
learning motivation in schools. To consider this trend, a long-term intervention program named
“Learn to Think” (LTT) was designed not only to improve students’ thinking ability but also to
improve their learning motivation. The present study explored the effects of the LTT curricu-
lum on primary school students’ learning motivation. The sample consisted of 158 Chinese
primary school students, who were randomly assigned to experimental and control groups.
Experimental students participated in the LTT curriculum for 4 years, with data collected via
pretests, annual end-of-year assessments, and a delayed posttest administration 1 year after
terminating the training. The results suggest that LTT had long-term transfer effects on the
development of primary school students’ learning motivation, especially on deep motivation.
Keywords: critical thinking, deep motivation, delayed effects, “Learn to Think” intervention
program, learning motivation, long-term intervention, primary school students, thinking ability
Martin (2008) defined motivation as “students’ energy and
drive to engage, learn, work effectively, and achieve to
their potential at school and the behaviors that follow from
this energy and drive” (p. 239). Not surprisingly, it has
also been identified as a key predictor of student academic
performance (Linnenbrink & Pintrich, 2002; Steinmayr &
Spinath, 2009) and creativity (Amabile, 1985; Plucker,
Runco, & Lim, 2006). However, educators in China rou-
tinely encounter two common motivational problems: On the
one hand, Chinese students study hard and have solid basic
knowledge, but they lack an innovative spirit and practical
ability; on the other hand, the emphasis on grades and tests,
increasing onerous levels of assignments and homework, and
pressure from parents and teachers result in an increase in
student weariness, a dislike of school, and a lack of learning
motivation (Lin, 2007; Wang, 2003;Wu,2013). Therefore,
Accepted 3 October 2015.
Address correspondence to Weiping Hu, Shaanxi Normal University,
199 South Chang’an Road, Xi’an, 710062, P. R. China. E-mail: weiping
hu@163.com
Color versions of one or more of the figures in the article can be found
online at www.tandfonline.com/UROR.
facilitating and cultivating motivation for learning is a key
objective of Chinese education.
Many psychologists and other scholars put forward dif-
ferent perspectives on the composition and classification of
learning motivation. In this study, learning motivation is
divided into three categories (Biggs, 1987a,1987b,1987c):
surface motivation (SM), deep motivation (DM), and achiev-
ing motivation (AM). SM is to meet requirements minimally,
a balancing act between failing and working more than is
minimally necessary, and it is maladaptive; DM is intrin-
sic interest in what is being learned, to develop competence
in particular academic subjects; AM enhances ego and self-
esteem through competition, to obtain the highest grades,
whether or not the material is interesting. Both deep and
achieving motivation are considered to be adaptive.
Research has shown that both internal and external factors
impact students’ motivation. For example, internal factors
include gender (Maubach & Morgan, 2001; Meece, Glienke,
& Burg, 2006), age (Martin, 2001), personality characteris-
tics (Busato, Prins, Elshout, & Hamaker, 1998; Komarraju
& Karau, 2005; Komarraju, Karau, & Schmeck, 2009;
Tempelaar, Gijselaers, Loeff, & Nijhuis, 2007), thinking
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MOTIVATIONAL EFFECTS OF A CRITICAL THINKING CURRICULUM 71
and learning styles (Atkinson, 1998; Busato et al., 1998;
Fan & Zhang, 2009), learning attribution (Lei, Zhang,
Hou, & Zhou, 1998), and self-efficacy (Chi & Xin, 2006),
among others. External factors include characteristics of
the school and classroom (Urdan & Schoenfelder, 2006),
ability grouping and students’ perceptions of their learn-
ing (Brown & Fletcher, 2002), classroom climate (Stevick,
1980; Urdan & Schoenfelder, 2006), social relationships
with teachers and peers (Urdan & Schoenfelder, 2006), par-
ents’ attitudes toward and expectations for their children
(Dandy & Nettelbeck, 2000), and culture (Fisher & Evans,
2000).
Perhaps more important, facilitating and cultivating moti-
vation is one of the major research foci in education and
psychology. Over the past 60 years, several researchers
developed a variety of interventions to cultivate students’
learning motivation. For example, Robertson (2000) compre-
hensively reviewed 20 intervention studies conducted from
1955 to 1997, in which researchers mainly used attribution
training as their intervention method, with most interventions
employing experimental designs and focusing on a particular
subject area such as mathematics or reading. In these stud-
ies, participants were primary and secondary students with
learning difficulties or low self-concept. Garcia-Sanchez and
Caso-Fuertes (2005) improved students’ motivation toward
writing through an instructional program designed around
four motivational determinants: (a) task value; (b) stan-
dards of performance; (c) students’ attitudes, expectations,
self-esteem, and self-efficacy beliefs; and (d) attributions
concerning success and failure. The participants were fifth-
and sixth-grade students with learning disabilities and/or
low achievement between the ages of 10 and 13. These
interventions/programs focus on students with learning dif-
ficulties in particular subjects and appear to be suitable
primarily for small numbers of students with learning
difficulties.
In recent years, motivation interventions have been inte-
grated across subject areas, treating learning motivation as
content general. For example, Martin (2005,2008)imple-
mented a series of workshops targeting high school stu-
dents’ motivation embedded within a youth enrichment pro-
gram. Birdsell, Ream, Seyller, and Zobott (2009) increased
seventh-grade students’ motivation by offering students four
types of choices: group choice, curriculum choice, assign-
ment choice, and assessment choice.
Some other programs embed the intervention within a
specific content area, which is exemplified by Grolnick,
Farkas, Sohmer, Michaels, and Valsiner’s (2007) develop-
ment of an after-school program to enhance seventh-grade
students’ autonomous motivation, learning goals, school
engagement, and performance. This program, called the
Investigators’ Club, was developed as a manual-based set
of curricular units, each with a particular content focused
on science (e.g., air pressure, sinking and floating, mass
and motion) that did not overlap with that of the science
class curriculum and with a set of common activities. Saleh,
Lazonder, and Jong (2007) adopted structuring collaboration
by group roles and ground rules to enhance average-ability
students’ (between 9 and 10 years old) motivation, and the
intervention was administrated within the context of plant
biology lessons. The disadvantage of these content-specific
interventions/programs may be a lack of transfer to other
content areas and tasks.
These programs largely reflect debates over the past
several years about the content specificity and general-
ity of a number of constructs related to learning, such as
intelligence (Carroll, 1993; Gardner, 1983; Herrnstein &
Murray, 1994), creativity (Hong & Milgram, 2010; Plucker,
2005; Plucker & Zabelina, 2009), motivation (Pajares &
Urdan, 2002), and intellectual development (Johnson, 2011;
Rakison & Yermolayeva, 2011; Rhemtella & Tucker-Drob,
2011).
A relatively new position in generality-specificity debates
is a hybrid position, with interventions that acknowledge
both the general and contextualized aspects of specific
constructs (e.g., see Beghetto & Plucker, 2006; Plucker
& Beghetto, 2004; related to creativity). In light of
these developments—and in response to the disadvantages
of the two approaches to the training of motivation—a
“Learn to Think” (LTT) curriculum was designed, activi-
ties of which are contextualized in almost all areas studied
by primary school students, including mathematics, lan-
guage and literature, science, society, art, and daily life
experiences.
TESTING A LEARN TO THINK CURRICULUM
On the basis of Hu’s thinking ability structure model (Hu
et al., 2011), Piaget’s cognitive development theory (as cited
in Evans, 1973), and Vygotsky’s social construction theory
(Vygotsky, 1978), an LTT curriculum was designed consist-
ing of a series of learning situations intended to develop
students’ thinking ability and learning motivation.
The thinking ability structure model includes:
●thinking content (mathematics, language and literature,
science, society, art, other disciplines, and daily life
experience),
●thinking methods (e.g., space cognition, comparison,
classification, inductive and deductive reasoning, reor-
ganization, brainstorming, transfer, questioning), and
●thinking quality (profundity, flexibility, critical think-
ing, agility, and originality).
This suggests that the cultivation of thinking ability requires
the teaching of thinking methods and the training of thinking
quality and that these must be set within the context of a body
of knowledge.
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72 W. HU ET AL.
Piaget (as cited in Evans, 1973) proposed that children
proceed through four stages of cognitive development: sen-
sorimotor, pre-operations, concrete operations, and formal
operations. Each stage has major cognitive tasks that must
be accomplished. Vygotsky asserted that children’s devel-
opment can be fostered both by adults and more competent
peers when working in the zone of proximal development
(Vygotsky, 1978) and that the only “good learning” (p. 89)
is that which is in advance of development.
Piaget’s conception of four stages of cognitive develop-
ment that allows specification of the cognitive complexity
of tasks and Vygotsky’s zone of proximal development
and the principle that good learning must be in advance
of development are the theoretical bases for estimating the
relative difficulty of activities of the LTT curriculum. That
is, the difficulty of activities is adjusted not just to match
current ability but to provide challenge to promote the
development of students’ thinking ability, creativity, aca-
demic performance, and learning motivation (Hu et al.,
2011).
Every grade from first through sixth of primary school
has a specific manual, each including 16 activities covering
different thinking content and methods. The thinking con-
tent is used as the carrier, the thinking methods are the main
thread, and thinking qualities are taught in each activity.
Every activity is delivered in four steps:
1. setting up a learning situation via cognitive conflict to
arouse children’s maximum interests;
2. facilitating children to observe, think, discuss, and
conduct experiment;
3. leading children to reflect the process of the activity,
how they thought and what they learned; and
4. facilitating transfer of thinking skills and motiva-
tion to daily life and other subjects of study, named
broadening—or bridging per Adey and Shayer’s
(1994) terminology.
A sample lesson is included in Appendix A.
To achieve the program’s aims of cultivating children’s
thinking ability, creativity, and learning motivation, we
need not only well-described curriculum content but also
advanced teaching methods in the processing of activi-
ties, expressed in the following five principles: stimulating
interest and motivation, cognitive conflict, social construc-
tion, self-regulation and metacognition, and application and
transfer (Adey & Shayer, 1994; Hu et al., 2011).
Stimulating Interest and Motivation
The LTT curriculum aims not just to teach skills and knowl-
edge but also to develop student interest and motivation.
All aspects of activity selection, from choosing activity con-
tent, materials, and situations to producing cognitive conflict,
teacher–student and student–student interactions, as well as
reflection or transfer, are focused on stimulating children’s
learning interest and motivation, encouraging children to
explore learning methods and strategies, and staying positive
and active in the acquisition of learning. Specifically, activ-
ity content is designed to be at least mildly entertaining to
children of the target grade.
For instance, the Grade 2 activity “Little Ant Crossing the
River” aims to train students to solve a problem in as many
ways as possible, identify the most effective approach, and
be happy to help others; at the beginning of this activity, a
situation is set up that there is a new infectious disease in the
Ant Kingdom, and if there is not timely treatment, all ants
will be dead. A little ant named John is sent by the king to
invite a doctor, but on the journey John encounters a huge
river that he cannot cross; listening here, students become
nervous and actively think about how to help John cross the
river.
Another example is the activity named “What Does One
Plus One Equal?” in Grade 6, which sets up a question
situation surrounding assumptions of addition and combin-
ing units to arouse students’ interest and guide them to
design creative products by recombining different items.
Here, stimulating students’ interest and motivation is inte-
grated through the whole LTT activity of the four steps,
in order to encourage students to explore by themselves
actively.
Cognitive Conflict
Cognitive conflict is a term drawn from the Cognitive
Acceleration through Science Education project designed by
Adey and Shayer (1994). It is used to describe an event or
observation that the students find puzzling and discordant
with previous experience or understanding. Cognitive con-
flict is an effective means to improve students’ motivation
and can lead them to pay more attention to the learning
material or the topic (Kang, Scharmann, & Noh, 2004;Kim
& Bao, 2004) and can arouse more curiosity and interest
(Frick, 1992; Kong, Scharmann, Kang, & Noh, 2010;Yarlas
& Gelman, 1998). It is a feature both of Piaget’s account
of the impact of environmental stimulus and children’s con-
structivist response on cognitive growth and of teaching
thinking programs. Here, at the beginning of an LTT activity,
a learning/problem situation is set up via cognitive conflict
to inspire students’ curiosity and intrinsic motivation and to
encourage their positive thinking; which also is needed in the
activity processing such as students’ observation, thinking,
discussion, practicing, and more.
Social Construction
Social constructivism emerges from Vygotsky’s contention
that social interaction is central to children’s development.
The teaching environment for social construction means that
teacher–student interactions and student–student interactions
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MOTIVATIONAL EFFECTS OF A CRITICAL THINKING CURRICULUM 73
are emphasized in the delivery of the LTT curriculum.
Teachers encourage students to explain their reasoning to
each other and to learn from each other through coop-
erative learning. Discussion is a well-established method,
but it must involve analysis of the processes of argument
if it is to be effective in teaching thinking. In addition,
cooperative learning could increase students’ motivation
(Haywood, Kuespert, Madecky, & Nor, 2008), and a peer-
learning partner has a motivational effect even before the
actual cooperation takes place (Eisenkopf, 2010). Here,
in the processing of each whole LTT activity, there are
more exchanges and actions between teachers and stu-
dents (i.e., strengthening the teacher–student interactions);
student–student interactions were mainly strengthened in the
processing of discussion/cooperation in groups.
Self-regulation and Metacognition
Underlying all of these methods are the principles of
metacognition and self-regulation. Metacognition is the
awareness and control of your own thinking processes.
Regarding motivation, self-regulated learners are thought
to hold a collection of adaptive beliefs and attitudes that
drive their willingness to engage in and persist at academic
tasks (Wolters, 2003). Metacognition affects motivation, and
there are significant correlations between metacognition and
motivation (Sperling, Howard, Staley, & DuBois, 2004),
specifically intrinsic motivation (Baleghizadeh & Rahimi,
2011; Oxford & Ehrman, 1995; Vandergrift, 2006). The goal
with this aspect of the LTT program is to give pupils practice
in monitoring their own thinking, with the teacher initially
making their strategies explicit and the learners then inter-
nalizing them, making them part of their habitual mode of
thinking. Near the end of each activity, the students should
reflect and summarize the thinking methods, thinking strate-
gies, problem-finding and -solving methods, and what they
learned from the activities.
Application and Transfer
Generally, each activity in LTT is situated in a specific
domain. To encourage transfer, the program also includes
opportunities for broadening content in each activity—or
bridging in Adey and Shayer’s (1994) terminology. That
is, the thinking methods and strategies studied in the activ-
ity need to be applied and transferred to daily life or other
domains for training the thinking qualities and forming gen-
eral habits of effective thinking. Success application and
transfer can provide students positive reflection, enhance
their self-efficiency, and, in turn, improve their motivation to
apply what they have learned in other subjects. Meanwhile,
motivation is regarded as one of the key variables in
the transfer process (Gegenfurtner, Veermans, Festner, &
Gruber, 2009; Machin & Fogarty, 1997), and motivation
to learn is proven to be a strong predictor of motivation
to transfer (Facteau, Dobbins, Russell, Ladd, & Kudisch,
1995; Kontoghiorghes, 2002; Tannenbaum, Mathie, Salas,
& Cannon-Bowers, 1991). Here, at the last broadening step
of each activity, students are required to apply what they
have learned to solve problems of daily life or in other
domains.
The LTT program was first developed in 2001. We have
explored the effects of the program on primary school stu-
dents’ graphic thinking (Du & Hu, 2008), thinking ability,
and academic achievement (Hu et al., 2011) and have shown
significant positive effects compared to control groups in
both cases. For example, experimental studies with 6- and
7-year-old students provide evidence of effects after one or
more years after starting the curriculum in thinking abil-
ity (d=0.78–1.45), Chinese (d=0.68–1.07), and math
(d=0.58–.87). Qiang and Hu (2010) also found that
the LTT program improved the teaching behavior of pri-
mary school teachers: The cognitive level of their classroom
questioning improved, the use of active and efficient ques-
tioning strategies increased, and the application of positive
feedback instead of neutral and negative feedback were
enhanced.
Therefore, based on the theoretical foundations of the pro-
gram, the design of the curriculum units, and the results
of previous experimental evaluation, we hypothesized that
the LTT curriculum can play an important role in culti-
vating learning motivation: It may decrease maladaptive
surface motivation while increasing adaptive deep motiva-
tion and achieving motivation; we also hypothesize that
the program’s effects on perceived learning motivation are
long-lasting.
METHOD
Participants
Participants for the study were 158 first- to third-grade stu-
dents (86 boys, 72 girls) in three classes from a primary
school in Shanxi Province, China. The mean age of Grade
1 students was 6.57 years old, Grade 2 students’ mean age
was 7.21 years old, and Grade 3 students’ mean age was
8.45 years old. By random sampling, 30 students in Grade
1 were assigned to the experimental group, and the remain-
ing students in the same class were assigned to the control
group. By stratified random sampling according to their final
examination results of the previous term, 30 students in each
class of Grade 2 and Grade 3 were assigned to the experi-
mental group, with the others in the control group. Of the
sample, 86 participants (42 boys, 44 girls) participated in the
LTT curriculum, and 72 participants (44 boys, 28 girls) were
in the control group. Attrition was modest, with 140 students
remaining (an attrition rate of 11.4%) in the study over the
course of the 4-year intervention (75 experimental group,
65 control group).1
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74 W. HU ET AL.
Materials
Learning Motivation Questionnaire
The Learning Motivation Questionnaire was based
on Biggs’s (1987a,1987b,1987c) Learning Process
Questionnaire (LPQ). Liu, Xin, Huang, and Shen (2000)
modified the learning motivation subquestionnaire of Study
Process Questionnaire to create a 9-item scale, and we con-
tinued amending and added seven additional items for a
total of 16 that are suitable for primary school students (see
Appendix B), each rated on a 4-point scale from 1 (strongly
disagree)to4(strongly agree) with three subscales: sur-
face motivation (SM), deep motivation (DM), and achieving
motivation (AM), with 3 items, 8 items, and 5 items sepa-
rately. The Cronbach’s alpha internal consistency estimates
of the subscales (SM, DM, AM) were .41, .52, and .76,
respectively; the split-half reliability estimates were 0.44,
0.64, and 0.81, respectively, providing acceptable evidence
of reliability for research purposes. The correlation coeffi-
cients among the subtests were lower, whereas the correla-
tion coefficients between the whole questionnaire and each
subtest were higher (i.e., ranging from 0.86 to 0.88), suggest-
ing acceptable validity. Confirmatory factor analysis showed
that the fit index for three factors is good, (χ2=292.84,
df =101, Comparative Fit Index [CFI] =0.86, Incremental
Fit Index [IFI] =0.86, Goodness of Fit Index [GFI] =0.88,
root mean square error of approximation <0.08), providing
evidence of acceptable construct validity.
LTT Curriculum Survey Questionnaire
This questionnaire was a survey intended to tap experi-
mental students’ attitudes about the LTT curriculum. There
are 10 items in this survey (see Table 1), and each item has
four response options: strongly disagree, do not agree very
much, almost agree, and strongly agree.
Interviews
The interview protocol (see Appendix C) was intended to
explore what the experimental group students thought about
the LTT curriculum and the change in themselves caused by
the program. The interview content included what they have
learned after participating in the LTT curriculum, the self-
perceived changes in themselves before and after the LTT
activities, self-perceptions about how their parents or teach-
ers judge them after the LTT, identification of LTT activities
or units that were particularly impressionable, and transfer
of the skills and knowledge to other subjects or daily life,
among other related topics.
Procedure
For each of the three classes that formed the sample, experi-
mental and control groups had the same teacher and teaching
conditions, with the only difference being that the students
of the experimental group (approximately half of the class)
attended an LTT curriculum lesson once every 2 weeks that
was taught by three members of the research team—one
member was in charge of one grade—and that was different
from and did not overlap with the topics that they learned in
the regular classroom, whereas students in the control group
did their homework or worked independently, monitored by
their head teachers. Note that the extra teaching received by
the experimental group amounts to only an extra 16 hours
per year (about 45 minutes for each activity/intervention
session) compared to a total of over 750 hours of teaching
in a school year (about 2%).
TABLE 1
Results of the LTT Curriculum Survey
Percentage Almost Agree and
Strongly Agree
Items Grade 1 Grade 2 n M±SD
I like the LTT very much. 92 97 50 3.56 ±0.72
I feel learning is something more meaningful. 88 94 50 3.16 ±0.68
I often spend more time on learning what I like than before. 69 90 50 2.93 ±0.73
I like to restructure my knowledge more than before. 69 81 50 3.02 ±0.76
What I have learned can often be applied. 88 93 50 3.40 ±0.67
When doing something, I am more likely to compare it with
something similar.
77 90 50 3.39 ±0.64
I’m better at raising questions than before. 69 87 50 3.26 ±0.79
I have become more active in answering and asking more questions in
class and less afraid of failing.
69 68 50 2.70 ±0.96
I dare to say my own ideas in front of strangers more bravely than
before.
88 90 50 3.29 ±0.68
I dare to put forward different ideas on issues in front of elders than
before.
77 90 50 3.30 ±0.80
Note. At the time of the survey administration, the Grade 1 and 2 cohort students were in Grades 5 and 6, respectively (i.e., about 11–13 years old).
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MOTIVATIONAL EFFECTS OF A CRITICAL THINKING CURRICULUM 75
TABLE 2
Results of Repeated Measure ANOVA: Effects of Intervention on Learning Motivation
Surface Motivation Deep Motivation Achieving Motivation
Source FPartial η2FPartial η2FPartial η2
Time 2.58∗0.02 15.68∗∗ 0.12 0.18 0.00
Time ×Intervention 1.27 0.01 2.95∗0.03 1.40 0.01
Intervention 0.42 0.00 16.78∗∗ 0.13 3.12 0.03
Note. ∗p<.05. ∗∗p<.001.
The school year starts in September and is divided into
two semesters. Before the formal experiment, we collected
second- and third-grade students’ final examination results
from the previous school year, which were then used to
assign students into experimental or control groups using
stratified random sampling. Specifically, Grade 2 and Grade
3 students were categorized into three groups (high-score
group, n=15; mid-score group, n=74; and low-score
group, n=19) according to their final examination results
(Chinese and math scores) of the previous term. Students
were randomly selected from each group and distributed
proportionally among the experimental and control groups
to help control for prior academic achievement in core
subjects.
Students also completed the LMQ. During the 5-year
study, experimental group students participated in the LTT
activities for 4 years. Most experimental and control group
students were administered the LMQ on five occasions: at
the end of year 1, the end of year 2, midway (January)
through year 4, the end of year 4, and 1 year after the end
of the intervention (third-grade students did not complete the
LMQ 1 year later, because they had graduated from the pri-
mary school and attended seventh grade in a number of other
schools).
As a complement to the LMQ, 1 year after the end of
the intervention, 10 experimental group students in each
grade were interviewed, and the LTT Curriculum Survey
Questionnaire was administered to all experimental group
students who started the treatment in first and second grade
(i.e., they were in fifth and sixth grade when they were
interviewed and completed the LTT Curriculum Survey
Questionnaire).
RESULTS
Pretest Scores
No significant differences were found in LMQ scores
between the experimental and control group students before
the intervention, providing evidence that the randomization
and assignment procedures produced experimental and con-
trol groups with similar levels of learning motivation at the
start of the study.
Development of Learning Motivation Over 4 Years
During the 4 years of the study, all participants were
posttested four times with the LMQ. Repeated measures 5
×2 analysis of variance (ANOVA) was used to test the main
effects and interaction of time (5) and intervention (2: exper-
imental, control). The results are presented in Table 2 and
Figures 1–3.
There was no significant difference in the interaction
effect of time and intervention (p>.05, partial η2=0.01),
but from an overall point of view, and the SM score of the
experimental group students was lower than that for con-
trol group students at almost every point except T2 (see
Figure 1).
As predicted, there was a significant Time ×Intervention
interaction, F(4, 456) =2.95, p=.045, partial η2=.03,
although the effect size was small. Simple effects analy-
ses showed that except in T1 (pretest), the DM scores of
experimental students were significantly higher than that of
controls (pT2 =.004, pT3 =.001, pT4 <.001, pT5 <.001);
the partial η2values were from medium to large (see Table 3
and Figure 2).
FIGURE 1 Developmental trends of surface motivation.
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76 W. HU ET AL.
FIGURE 2 Developmental trends of deep motivation.
FIGURE 3 Developmental trends of achieving motivation.
The ANOVA provided evidence that there was no signifi-
cant difference in the interaction effect of time and interven-
tion (p>.05, partial η2=0.01), but from T2, the trend for
AM appears to be declining through primary school, with the
experimental group experiencing less decline over time than
the control group (see Figure 3).
Delayed Effects
One year after the end of the intervention, all students except
those in the Grade 3 cohort completed the LMQ. The results
are presented in Table 4, indicating that 1 year after terminat-
ing the intervention, the LTT still appears to have influenced
the development of experimental students’ perceptions of
their deep motivation, F(1, 81) =8.78, p=.004, partial
η2=0.10.
LTT Curriculum Survey and Interviews
In order to tap the experimental student reactions to the LTT
curriculum, as well as their feelings after the conclusion
of the intervention, all first- and second-grade cohort stu-
dents were asked to complete the LTT Curriculum Survey.
In addition, the research team interviewed a random sample
of 10 experimental group students in each cohort to obtain
a richer set of data about participant experiences. Table 1
presents the percentage of experimental group students who
agreed or strongly agreed with each item.
From the survey and interviews, students provided evi-
dence that their behaviors, motivation, and attitudes toward
learning changed significantly and positively due to the pro-
gram; they felt that they had become more active, more
independent, and more self-reflective in class and perhaps
even much braver—an important finding within the Chinese
context, where independence and forthrightness are often
neither present nor encouraged. For example, one student
shared, “I like the lesson, because in class all of us are happy
and the teacher is happy, too. ...I didn’t like answer ques-
tions in class before because I am afraid of making mistakes.
Now I would like to answer and ask questions after attending
the LTT. My parents treat me like an adult, and I can argue
against what they said.” Another student noted that “the les-
son is very interesting, it helped me think things which I
never considered before and made me learn better. Before the
course, I disliked writing, but now my composition is more
and more imaginative. My parents were very strict with me
before, but after the LTT my father looks at me with new
eyes.”
Students also generally felt that they could better analyze
and solve problems from different perspectives, and think
TABLE 3
Effects of Intervention on Deep Motivation at Each Data Collection Point
T1 (September 2005) T2 (June 2006) T3 (June 2007) T4 (January 2009) T5 (June 2009)
F0.47 8.61∗11.40∗17.97∗∗ 13.53∗∗
Partial η20.00 0.06 0.08 0.13 0.10
Note. ∗p<.01. ∗∗p<.001.
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MOTIVATIONAL EFFECTS OF A CRITICAL THINKING CURRICULUM 77
TABLE 4
Results of Multivariate ANOVA: Delayed Effects
SM DM AM
Source F(1, 81) Partial η2F(1, 81) Partial η2F(1, 81) Partial η2
Intervention 0.63 0.01 8.78∗0.10 0.18 0.00
Note. ∗p<.001.
about problems in more complex ways. For example, one
student observed, “I remembered that in a maths class about
calculating angles, I got the results as fast as I could by rotat-
ing the graphic. I can analyze and solve everyday problems
from different perspectives.”
Interestingly, students appear to believe that learning was
more interesting and meaningful and that they could trans-
fer their new knowledge and skills to other domains or to
daily life. For example, one student said, “This course is of
great help to my studies. It makes me know how to solve the
problems, observe things carefully and be more interested in
learning. What is more important is that I can think in depth.
In addition, when my parents encounter problems in daily
life, they would like to seek help from me.” Another student
shared, “Once I found my room was messy, and then I used
the classification method which we had just learned to put
my books and notebooks together, pencils and ruler together,
old books together by grades.”
Given all of these benefits offered by the students, their
self-reported increase in self-confidence and belief in the
value of cooperation and communication with others is not
surprising. Indeed, several students mentioned that they had
learned how to draw on the strengths of others to offset their
own weaknesses, therefore accomplishing things they could
not have completed by themselves. For example, one student
observed that “I like discussing very much, because it pro-
vides me the chance to cooperate with other members in
our group and listen to their ideas. When I was in a group
with students of higher academic achievement, their ideas
inspired me to think more.” Another student said, “In the
group discussion, different persons have different ideas, and
then combining different ideas will be a new idea. We are
always inspired by others’ ideas, and then more and more
good ideas will be generated.”
Even allowing for a tendency in students to answer
positively to questions about their experiences of an inno-
vative curriculum experience (i.e., what Plucker & Gorman
[1999, p. 148] referred to as the “rose-colored glasses phe-
nomenon”) and the lack of comparison group data for the
interviews and LTT Curriculum Survey, these qualitative
responses about the subjective experiences of participating
students and teachers represent additional evidence of the
quantitative trends discussed earlier.
DISCUSSION
The results of this study provide evidence in support of
Martin’s (2005,2008) findings suggesting that a multidi-
mensional educational intervention can have long-term and
replicable effects on young adolescents’ learning motivation.
Possible explanations for the positive and significant effects
were as follows:
First, the intervention deliberately addresses students’
interests and motivation through the use of multiple strate-
gies, from choosing activity contents, materials, and activity
situations to producing cognitive conflict, teacher–children
social construction, and thinking method reflection or trans-
fer. Although the importance of and ability to increase
student interest and motivation through classroom-based
intervention is well established (e.g., Renzulli & Reis, 1985,
1994), the finding that multiple avenues can be used to
achieve this set of student outcomes is unique within the
Chinese context (see Pang & Plucker, 2013).
Second, students are set in a learning or problem situa-
tion via cognitive conflict, which focuses student learning on
problems that are interesting and approachable. The conflict
is at least partially resolved as students’ minds go beyond
their previous thinking capability, and it is an effective way
to make students think actively. Some previous studies sug-
gest that students show more curiosity and interest when the
given phenomenon or information is not consistent with their
expectations (Frick, 1992; Yarlas & Gelman, 1998) and that
students therefore pay more attention to the learning material
or the topic at hand (Kang et al., 2004; Kim & Bao, 2004).
Third, the intervention attempts to create an open, demo-
cratic, and supportive atmosphere, and it encourages students
to spend more time on discussing problems with partners,
thinking independently, speaking out about their own ideas,
and evaluating others’ views; this stands in contrast to many
Chinese classrooms, where student participation is often
characterized (not unfairly) as students blurting out answers
without thinking in order to get the teachers’ attention. In the
LTT context, student concerns about failing to share the
“right answer” appear to be reduced. In Stevick’s (1980)
words, classroom climate greatly affects student learning
motivation and learning attitude. Recent research suggests
that cooperative learning can increase student motivation
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78 W. HU ET AL.
(Haywood et al., 2008) and that a partner has a motiva-
tional effect even before the actual cooperation takes place
(Eisenkopf, 2010). Moreover, when students are encour-
aged and allowed to take ownership of their learning in an
environment in which they feel cared for, supported, and
socially connected to teachers and peers, and when they
are given meaningful and appropriately challenging work,
they will likely experience enhanced motivation (Urdan &
Schoenfelder, 2006).
Fourth, the intervention focuses heavily on improv-
ing student metacognition. Students are encouraged to
reflect and summarize how the successful methods or
strategies they used helped them solve the problems.
Research suggested that there were significant correlations
between metacognition and motivation (Baleghizadeh &
Rahimi, 2011; Oxford & Ehrman, 1995; Sperling et al.,
2004; Vandergrift, 2006). More specifically, exercising self-
control probably caused an increase in approach motivation
(Schmeichel, Harmon-Jones, & Harmon-Jones, 2010), and
students reporting a greater use of metacognitive strate-
gies also reported more motivational intensity (Vandergrift,
2005).
Fifth, the LTT program guides students to apply and
transfer thinking methods, strategies, and interests to daily
life or other domains. Successful application and transfer
can provide students positive reflection, enhance their self-
efficacy, and, in turn, improve their motivation to apply what
they have learned in other subjects. Research suggests that
learning motivation and transfer affect and promote each
other (Facteau et al., 1995; Kontoghiorghes, 2002; Machin
& Fogarty, 1997; Tannenbaum et al., 1991).
Finally, previous research suggests that this particular
intervention has a consistent, long-term effect on primary
students’ general thinking ability (Hu et al., 2011). Given
other studies that provide evidence that the teaching of think-
ing and motivation may have reciprocal benefits (Busato
et al., 1998; Fan & Zhang, 2009), the focus on think-
ing strategies in the intervention may explain some of the
motivation change.
We suspect that an advantage of the program is that
it helps students feel competent, view learning as a pro-
cess rather than an end, and meet their social–relational
needs. Students are also frequently encouraged to share their
thinking processes with other students. This approach to
instruction mobilizes students’ enthusiasm to think, makes
students solve the problem that they encounter actively, and
trains them to transfer motivation and the thinking methods
they have learned consciously and effectively.
Hardly any significant differences were found on surface
motivation and achieving motivation between experimen-
tal and control groups. The borderline reliability estimates
for the SM scale may be a cause for the lack of signif-
icant change. Another possible reason may be that both
surface motivation and achieving motivation are related to
extrinsic motivation, yet the LTT program more directly
seeks to cultivate students’ intrinsic motivation, which orig-
inates from within the individual and results in enjoyment
of the process of increasing one’s competency (Deci &
Ryan, 2000). By focusing on the general teaching of think-
ing skills, with application to a range of curricular topics
and settings, an intervention grounded in psychological the-
ory and represented by a multifaceted theoretical model can
have a consistent, long-term, and growing effect on primary
students’ deep motivation.
FUNDING
This research was supported by the National Natural
Science Foundation of China (31271110, 31470977),
the National Social Science Foundation Key Project
(14ZDB160), the Science and Technology Foundation
project (2013IM030200), and the Program of Key Science
and Technology Innovation Team in Shaanxi Province (grant
no. 2014KTC-18).
NOTE
1. Attrition had a differential gender effect on the control group,
with fewer girls remaining in the study than boys, for which we
have no explanation.
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APPENDIX A
Sample Learning to Think (LTT) Lesson
Content of activity: Little Ant Crossing the River (one of
activities in Grade 2)
Objectives of activity: (1) Methodological objectives: train
the problem-solving ability of students—come up with
as many creative solutions as possible stage by stage
when they encounter problems, identify the most effective
approach. (2) Ability objectives: cultivate students’ abili-
ties to observe, analyze, and solve problems. (3) Emotion
objectives: culture students’ compassion, willingness to help
others and collaborate with peers, diligent thinking, and
problem-solving abilities.
Highlights of activity: Cultivate children’s dialectical think-
ing, divergent thinking, and problem solving in lower grades
of primary school.
Difficulty of activity: How to choose the optimal one from
so many solutions.
Preparation of activity: A few seconds of cartoon, some
pictures of animals, multimedia courseware.
Procedures of activity:
Step 1: Set up a learning/problem situation via cognitive
conflict to arouse children’s maximum interests.
The situation that is set up: There is a new infectious dis-
ease in the Ant Kingdom, and if there is not timely treatment,
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MOTIVATIONAL EFFECTS OF A CRITICAL THINKING CURRICULUM 81
all ants will be dead. A little ant named John is sent by the
king to invite a doctor, but on the journey John encounters
difficulties.
Then a few seconds of cartoon on the screen: on the way
to invite a doctor little ant John encounters a huge river
that he cannot cross; listening and watching here, students
become nervous and actively think about how to help John
cross the river.
“Kiddy, are you willing to help John?” (Ss: Yes.) “How
to help him? Think quickly.” (Guide the students to speak
freely.)
Design intent: Establish a problem situation to arouse
children’s interest in thinking, to stir up their enthusiasm
for participating in the activity, and at the same time make
students clearly aware of what the problem is in this activity.
Step 2: Activity process, involving facilitating children to
observe, think, discuss, and conduct experiment.
Part 1: Help John find ways to cross the river.
The children freely answer, and the teacher guides stu-
dents to be divergent. The teacher listens to children and
writes on the blackboard.
“Wonderful. Now, let’s cross off repeated methods.
What’s left? We want to divide all of these methods left
into different groups; how will you classify it? Think.” The
teacher listens to children, while adjusting the content of the
blackboard.
Design intent: Guide students to come up with as many
solutions as possible.
Part 2: Choose the most effective and optimal way and the
reasons why.
“Wonderful! There are so many solutions you have
thought of and good classification. Well, now let’s help John
to select which methods are more effective.”
“Well, let’s have a competition in groups. Before
the selection, there is something required: first, choose one
recorder from your group quickly whose duty is to write
down which you choose and the reasons; second, collabo-
rate with each other; third, keep secret before sharing your
group’s result; fourth, lower your voice when in discus-
sion.” (Group discussion begins, and the teacher guides the
groups.)
“Have you finished? Let’s share your achievements. Each
group sends a representative to speak first, and then others
add, including which methods your group choose, according
to what criterion, and what reasons. Who is the first?”
Design intent: This part is method optimization. In the
form of cooperation within group and competition between
groups, students are expected to choose the most effective
ways according to some standards and criterion.
Step 3: Evaluation and reflection. Leading children to reflect
on the process of the activity, how they thought, and what
they learned.
Well, let’s have a break for 2 minutes. Close your eyes.
Have a rest while thinking, from the beginning of the class to
the present, you help little ant John come up with many ways
and choose the optimal way to cross the river. What is your
profound experience? What have you learned? What would
you like to share with others?
Design intent: Ask students to recall and reflect on what
they have learned; summarize the emphasis and main points
in order to cultivate students’ metacognitive ability.
Step 4: Consolidation transfer (activity broadening).
Facilitate transfer of thinking skills and motivation to daily
life and other subjects of study.
Design different animals to cross the river. (Two situations
need be set up by teachers: firstly, how do different animals
cross the same river? Secondly, how do you cross different
widths of the river?)
Design intent: Expect that students can successfully apply
what they have learned in class to daily life or other domains.
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82 W. HU ET AL.
APPENDIX B
Learning Motivation Questionnaire for Primary School Students
Name:_________ Gender: _________ Age: _________ Class: _________
Strongly Disagree Sometimes Disagree Always Agree Strongly Agree
1 I like studying very much. 1 2 3 4
2 I think that teachers shouldn’t expect students to work on
topics that are outside the set course.
1234
3 I study hard in order to obtain new knowledge. 1 2 3 4
4 I think the learning itself is very interesting. 1 2 3 4
5 I think we study in order to learn how to think and master
knowledge.
1234
6 I study hard in order to be commended and encouraged. 1 2 3 4
7 I will work for top marks in a subject whether or not I like
the subject.
1234
8 I have a strong desire to do best in all of my studies. 1 2 3 4
9 I have a strong desire to learn new knowledge. 1 2 3 4
10 I am learning in order to win honor for teachers and parents. 1 2 3 4
11 I study in order to live a more comfortable life in the future. 1 2 3 4
12 I study hard in order to be a merit student. 1 2 3 4
13 I study in order that people will live a better life. 1 2 3 4
14 I think learning will enable us to become more intelligent
and contribute to science.
1234
15 I study hard in order to get a good grade. 1 2 3 4
16 I think if I study hard, I will have lots of delicious and fun
stuff and make more friends.
1234
Note. Items 2, 10, and 16 comprise Surface Motivation; Items 1, 3, 4, 5, 9, 11, 13, and 14 comprise Deep Motivation; Items 6, 7, 8, 12, and 15 comprise
Achieving Motivation.
APPENDIX C
Interview Protocol
Q1: What you have learned after participating in the LTT
curriculum?
Q2: Please evaluate the changes in yourself before and
after the LTT activities.
Q3: How do your parents or teachers judge you after the
LTT?
Q4: How do your teachers judge you after the LTT?
Q5: How do your classmates judge you after the LTT?
Q6: What is the change in your classmates who had the
LTT curriculum with you?
Q7: What effects did the LTT curriculum have on your
study and life? Is it still influencing your life
now?
Please list some thinking methods that you
learned in LTT, in what discipline curriculum you
still use these methods, and how you use them. Also,
how do you use these methods in your daily life?
Please give an example.
Q8: What is/are the most impressive lesson(s)? Why did
it give you a deep impression?
Q9: What are the differences between LTT curriculum
and the usual curriculum, such as Chinese, math, and
so on?
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MOTIVATIONAL EFFECTS OF A CRITICAL THINKING CURRICULUM 83
AUTHOR BIOS
Weiping Hu, PhD, is a professor at Shaanxi Normal University, director of MOE Key Laboratory of Modern Teaching
Technology, director of the Center for the Development of Teacher Professional Ability, and deputy director of
Collaborative Innovation Center of Assessment toward Basic Education Quality. His research focuses on creativ-
ity and science education. He has provided consultation and guidance for more than 100 primary and middle schools
in 10 provinces and developed the “Learn to Think” activity curriculum aimed at cultivating the creativity of students,
which has been used by more than 400 experimental schools. E-mail: weipinghu@163.com
Xiaojuan Jia is a PhD candidate of School of Psychology at Shaanxi Normal University, as well as MOE Key
Laboratory of Modern Teaching Technology. She majors in psychology, and her interests mainly focus on creativity
and thinking ability, especially the cultivation of creativity and neural plasticity mechanisms of creativity. E-mail:
jxj5207418@163.com
Jonathan A. Plucker is Raymond Neag Endowed Professor of Education at the University of Connecticut, where
he teaches in the Educational Leadership and Educational Psychology programs. His research and teaching focus on
student learning, creativity and intelligence, education policy, and excellence gaps. He is now the Julian C. Stanley
Endowed Professor of Talent Development at Johns Hopkins University. E-mail: jplucker@jhu.edu
Xinxin Shan is a postgraduate of basic psychology, teacher of secondary school, director of the Preschool Education
Department of Longgang Teachers’ Continuing Education Institute, the expert member of the continuing educa-
tion course construction expert database in the kindergarten headmaster training center of Guangdong province.
She is committed to research on primary students’ thinking ability, creativity, and preschool teachers’ professional
development and training. E-mail: 497206860@qq.com
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