Abstract:
The purposes of this research were to 1) study the factors of critical thinking for early childhood education students, 2) construct MAPLE instructional model and 3) develop the critical thinking for early childhood education students through the MAPLE model. The samples used in the study of the factors of critical thinking were 357 students from the upper northern Rajabhat universities. The samples for the development of the critical thinking for early childhood education students through MAPLE instructional model were 38 students selected by purposive sampling. The instruments used in this study were MAPLE model and the evaluation form of the critical thinking for early childhood education students. The results of the research were as follows:1.The confirmatory factor analysis model of critical thinking for early childhood education students composed of five factors including: defining the problem, considering the data, hypothesis, interpreting and evaluation. The critical thinking model of early childhood education students was consistent with empirical data and the weight of each factor was positive with statistical significance at the level of .00 and could measure the factors of early childhood education students.2.The MAPLE instructional model to develop the early childhood education students constructed by the researcher consisted of six principles including: reinforcement, intellectual thinking process, cooperative learning, evaluation, interaction and learning. The five teaching steps were motivation, analyzing, presentation, learning together and evaluation.3. The comparison of means of critical thinking in general and individual of samples, it was found that the means after the experiment were higher than those before the experiment with statistical significance at the level of .01.