Exploration of flipped classroom approach to enhance critical thinking skills

Flipped classroom approach has become well-accepted and widely-used in different levels of education. Critical thinking was deemed as the core goal of higher education institutions to enhance students' competence advocated in the 21st century. The definition of critical thinking originating from Peter Facione was one of the most widely-accepted and commonly-used at present. The aim of the research was to explore a flipped classroom approach which was effective to enhance critical thinking skills proposed by Peter Facione, namely interpretation, analysis, inference, evaluation, explanation and self-regulation. This study selected 300 junior students majoring in business administration (100 students), international trade (100 students), and accounting (100 students) respectively of a private university in China, and took the Marketing flipped classroom course as an example. The quantitative research method was adopted in the research, and a questionnaire with 22 questions was used to collect data from the participants. The study involved two rounds. Each round involved three control classes with a traditional teaching instruction approach conducted and three experimental classes with a flipped classroom approach adopted. After analyzing and discussing the data collected, the research found that the flipped classroom approach promoted students' critical thinking skills to some extent. Through the study, a modified model of flipped classroom approach to enhance critical thinking skills was put forward. The modified model can be applied to more other courses at different levels, especially business courses. The research also had some limitations, including the 5-point Likert scale used, the representativeness and individual differences of participants, and the application of the study. In the future research, aspects regarding other skill development, effectiveness of course feedback and assessment, interdisciplinary knowledge, and implementation of the marketing plan etc.can be explored deeper.