The Development and Validation of a Curriculum Hierarchy Designed for Use in Teaching Selected Principles and Strategies of an Aspect of Critical Thinking.

The establishment and validation of a learning hierarchy for use in the teaching of selected principles and strategies was useful in judging a conditional argument in the familiar content domain. Preservice elementary teachers were instructed in two basic skills: (1) translating a simple argument from verbal to symbolic form, and (2) judging the validity of a simple argument given in symbolic form. Several sequences, with and without a Gagne guided thinking component, were investigated. Subjects attained the first skill readily, while the sequence providing the learning of the second skill prior to the first appeared to be the better one. The guided thinking information appeared to have no significant influence on the attainment of the terminal objective, judging a simple conditional argument presented in verbal form. (Author/SM)