Dialogue-Based Education and Critical Thinking: A Case Study of Iranian Primary Students

The syllabus in Dialogue-based education emphasizes the learner's active participation in the learning process and is based on cultural, social, and political issues. The aim of the present study was to determine the effectiveness of the dialogue-based education model on the critical thinking skills of Iranian primary students. In so doing, 44 students were selected from the population using multistage cluster sampling. The Dialogue-Based Education Model was implemented to instruct the experimental group, and the Critical Thinking Questionnaire for Iranian Primary Students was employed to collect the data. The study's findings showed that the implementation of dialogue-based education significantly affected the participants' critical thinking skills. In the qualitative phase of the study, several participants in the experimental group shared their personal experiences of the course signifying their positive attitudes and perceptions towards the dialogue-based teaching method. Moreover, it was revealed that dialogue-based learning gives the learners a sense of ownership of the learning process by putting emphasis on learning in real contexts and encouraging the students to propose their own views while respecting those of others. In other words, students in the experimental group actively participated in classroom discussions, while in the control group, the students were passive and less involved in the course subjects, and rather than asking further questions, they were looking for answers to the questions.