ABSTRACT Organizations governing education in the health professions have recently called for changes in teaching to promote students’ use of critical thinking (CT). Expectations for CT in courses to train educators should be aligned with the expectations of student use of CT. A growing number of certificate and master’s-level programs are being developed to address the needs of educators in the health professions who are unlikely to have experienced training in adult education, curriculum development, and assessment. This study explored the extent to which online course discussion forums in continuing profession education courses on teaching and curriculum design can play a role in the development of participants’ CT skills. It investigated an online pilot program of courses that relied heavily on discussions, with prompts designed to elicit higher-level thinking. The 190 discussion posts made over the four program courses were analyzed for CT. Posts were cross-coded by both authors. Frequency of CT increased substantially over the program. Metacognition use in particular rose sharply and consistently. We found that carefully structured online courses can promote CT among educators in the health professions.

中文翻译：

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在卫生专业教师的在线证书课程中促进批判性思维

摘要 管理卫生专业教育的组织最近呼吁改变教学以促进学生使用批判性思维 (CT)。在培训教育者的课程中对 CT 的期望应与学生对 CT 使用的期望保持一致。越来越多的证书和硕士课程正在开发中，以满足卫生专业教育工作者的需求，他们不太可能接受过成人教育、课程开发和评估方面的培训。本研究探讨了在线课程讨论论坛在继续职业教育课程教学和课程设计中对参与者CT技能发展的作用。它调查了一个严重依赖讨论的在线课程试点计划，带有旨在引发更高层次思考的提示。对四门课程的 190 个讨论帖进行了 CT 分析。两位作者对帖子进行了交叉编码。CT 的频率在整个程序中大幅增加。特别是元认知的使用急剧且持续地上升。我们发现精心组织的在线课程可以在卫生专业的教育工作者中推广 CT。