Thinking Skills and Creativity 42 (2021) 100922

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Thinking Skills and Creativity

journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/tsc

Thinking skills development in mobile learning: The case of

elementary school students studying environmental studies
Peiyan Cai *
Department of Journalism, Belarusian State University, Minsk, 2200108, Belarus

A R T I C L E I N F O A B S T R A C T

Keywords: The impact of mobile learning on the formation of thinking skills in elementary school students is
Development of thinking skills one of the key issues in pedagogy and psychology today. The novelty and originality of the work
Elementary school students are explained by the intensification of online learning with the use of modern technologies in the
Environmental studies
educational process, which arouses interest in researching the effectiveness of mobile applications
Interactive learning environments
Mobile learning
in thinking skills development. Based on the information available, mobile learning has both
positive and negative effects on thinking of schoolchildren. The purpose of the study is to test the
effectiveness of mobile learning in primary school and its impact on the development of children’s
thinking skills. The study was based on an interview of 80 Belarusian schoolchildren (8–9 years
old) that had taken a short online course “The Water Cycle in Nature” developed and taught not
by us, but by one of the school teachers via Zoom. The peculiarity of this course was the practical
implementation of exercises online through the Zoom platform, so it only required a computer or
mobile phone with the Zoom program installed. The course consisted of 4 sessions; before each
lesson, the children were sent a link to access. Training sessions were supervised by students’
parents. According to the results obtained, in general, the students have mastered the material of
the online course quite well. However, the majority of children (59%) had difficulty under­
standing the system. The students were more acquainted with separate components of the system
rather than their interactions. To make learning more effective, it is recommended that teachers
use collaborative learning, a play-based approach, combine mobile and traditional learning, and
motivate schoolchildren. Based on the results obtained, it can be concluded that mobile learning
in the context of elementary school can be effective and have a positive effect on the development
of children’s thinking skills provided that it is properly organized and the above recommenda­
tions are followed. The practical significance of the study is represented by the opportunity to be
used by teachers, parents, educational administrators, as well as by a wide range of people who
are interested in modern pedagogy and psychology. The prospects for further research in the
study of features of use and efficiency of concrete mobile applications in the teaching.

1. Introduction

Today a number of researchers are investigating various aspects of mobile learning, including its impact on certain psychological
and physiological processes in students. An important issue is the impact of mobile learning on the development of thinking skills

* Corresponding author.
E-mail address: 3304390148@qq.com.

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tsc.2021.100922
Received 12 July 2021; Received in revised form 5 August 2021; Accepted 7 August 2021
Available online 10 August 2021
1871-1871/© 2021 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
P. Cai Thinking Skills and Creativity 42 (2021) 100922

(Larsson, 2017). This problem is especially relevant in the context of teaching elementary school students. It is considered that it is
difficult for young children to concentrate during a lesson, especially in an online learning environment that indicate the necessity to
use different interactive technologies or mobile applications in order to interest students in the learning process. Due to the fact that at
the moment distance learning that relies on mobile devices has become inevitable, it is necessary to look for the ways to adapt it to the
peculiarities of the child’s psyche and perception.
Mobile learning is a type of learning that offers learners freedom of movement and interaction with educational content (Demir &
Akpinar, 2018). Mobile technologies are new emerging technologies in education. Today there is a peak of high technologies that
affects all strata of society (the poor and the rich, the educated and the uneducated) due to their accessibility for almost everyone. The
tools that enable mobile learning and teaching include mobile phones, tablets, e-books, portable audio players and game consoles.
Netbooks and laptops can also be included in this category (Sönmez, Göçmez, Uygun & Ataizi, 2018).
On the one hand, mobile learning has a number of advantages (students do not need to attend school, they can study at any
convenient time; when something is not clear, they can always use the Internet); but on the other hand, many people believe that it
negatively affects the physical and mental health of children, as well as the development of their intelligence and thinking (Larsson,
2017).
Thinking is a set of mental processes that are the basis for cognition. Thinking is associated with active cognitive processes:
perception, attention, the formation of judgments and concepts, associations. Thinking is characterized by an indirect and generalized
reflection of relations and connections between phenomena and objects of reality in the human mind (Hitchcock, 2018). In thinking,
the analytic-synthetic and reflex activity of the brain, which is based in the second signalling system, is manifested. Cognition is based
on the following operations: analysis, concretization, generalization, comparison, abstraction, and synthesis (Reshetnikova, 2019).
Therefore, the development of thinking skills is one of the most important aspects of learning as its quality affects further human
activities (Djamas, Tinedi & Yohandri, 2021).
Despite the arguments of the opponents of modern technology, today there are a number of studies confirming positive effects of
mobile learning. Mobile learning can improve students’ critical thinking skills (Astuti, Dasmo, Nurullaeli & Rangka, 2018). For
example, critical thinking skills can be developed with the help of FCMOC model on the basis of mobile technologies (Jantakoon &
Piriyasurawong, 2018). The positive influence of the mobile applications also can be explained by the opportunity to develop pro­
fessional skills of collaboration and communication through the interaction with students (Hwang, Lai, Liang, Chu & Tsai, 2018).
This study aims to test the effectiveness of mobile learning in elementary school, determine its impact on children’s thinking,
identify problems and suggest solutions. It is a contribution to the study of various aspects of innovative technologies in education.

2. Literature review

The development of critical thinking skills is considered an important goal of education; the issue has become more serious in
recent years. Critical thinking is one of the key 21st–century skills (Kettler, 2014).
Generally, the critical thinking literature focuses on older students. There are also articles on critical thinking in nurse education.
But there is not much literature on the critical thinking of elementary school students, including gifted ones (Kettler, 2014).
Since 2000, mobile devices have been adopted by large numbers of people around the world due to the fact that better, faster and
cheaper models of such devices can be afforded by almost everyone (Sönmez et al., 2018).
From the perspective of psychology, features of thinking are as follows: generalization; indirect nature; connection with the so­
lution of a problem that arose in the process of practical activity or cognition; close connection with the speech. The tasks of thinking
are as follows: to establish relationships between objects, to understand connections and separate them from coincidences of a random
nature (Reshetnikova, 2019).
Critical thinking skills are an intellectual discipline process that actively and skillfully conceptualizes, applies, analyzes, synthesizes
or evaluates information that has been received (collected) (Hasan, Tumbel & Corebima, 2013).
The application of a mobile learning approach to develop thinking skills of schoolchildren can be helpful. The advantage of mobile
learning is that it can be used between and within contexts, and can also be easily integrated into a broader learning process that
includes other forms of learning. This experience can help educators develop cognitive and collaborative skills, encourage children to
work together to solve problems, consider the views of others, and jointly find critical and creative solutions (Lee et al., 2016).
Scientists from Taiwan obtained the following results: (1) perception of mobile learning shows a significant positive correlation
with study habits; (2) study habits positively correlate with lifelong learning; (3) perception of mobile learning positively correlates
with lifelong learning; (4) study habits indirectly affect the correlation between perceptions of mobile learning and lifelong learning
(Wu & Perng, 2016).
The importance of developing creative thinking is based on four reasons: the ability of creative people can give birth to an indi­
vidual, the ability to look at various possibilities for solving a problem, creative self-awareness is not only useful, but also satisfies the
individual, and also allows people to improve the quality of their life. Critical thinking skills do not develop on their own but through a
process; they can also be trained. Every person is individual and unique, has their own potential and creative talents (Suwandari,
Ibrahim & Widodo, 2019).
The current development of constructivism at the end of the twentieth century led to the development of a constructivist learning
model through the development of several types of thinking: logical thinking, consideration (meditation), questioning, reasoning,
critical thinking, etc. (Florea & Hurjui, 2015).
One type of thinking is functional thinking (a suitable way to introduce algebraic concepts in elementary school). Functional
thinking is a special kind of generalized thinking that directly contributes to the development of algebraic thinking. It is a type of

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representational thinking that focuses on the relationship between two different quantities. Functional thinking is a core expectation in
the maths curriculum (McEldoon & Rittle-Johnson, 2010).
Brainwork of elementary school students definitely differs from that of older students or adults. However, some findings support the
hypothesis that young children have a certain level of abstract thinking, especially when they participate in experiments taking place in
an authentic context (Roslan, Hasan, Zaremohzzabieh & Arsad, 2021).
Both children and scientists are described as people curious from birth and having an innate and passionate approach to learning
about the world. Infants and young children have certain qualities and abilities that are essential for scientific thinking. Older children
and adults struggle with the challenges of scientific thinking; they can be haphazard, ignore and misinterpret evidence, try to prove
what they already believe to be true, and develop uninformative experiments (these are only minor difficulties). Unlike basic cognitive
skills (e.g., attention, perception, and memory), scientific thinking does not develop routinely; that is, scientific thinking does not arise
independently of culture and cultural tools (Zimmerman & Klahr, 2018).
Over the last few decades of the 20th century, the importance of developing thinking skills in children has increased due to the
complexity and changing reality of modern life: there has been an increase in the need to generate new knowledge, skills of under­
standing, judgment and evaluation in order to meet the demands of the labor market. All this depends not only on students but also on
teachers. The research found that teachers (in particular in Saudi Arabia) lack understanding of critical thinking and cannot explain
critical thinking to children regardless of their level of education (Alwadai, 2014).
Today, mobile learning models and systems are being developed. The development of a Blended Web Mobile Learning (BWML)
model is based on current learning theories (constructivism, observational learning, discovery learning, cognitive processes, meta­
cognition, etc.), the empirical foundations of current research and scientific publications. The BWML model includes five phases,
namely (1) IoTs and Big Data-based orientation, (2) exploration, (3) analysis, (4) presentation and (5) evaluation, which are performed
and supported at each stage by the MoLearn app. Emphasis on the BWML implementation: 70% (work experience), 20% (mentoring
and coaching), and 10% (audience, course and reading) (Prahani et al., 2020).
Mobile learning provides ample opportunities for the introduction of games. Findings obtained by Maltese researchers show that
learning mobile apps have improved the cognitive skills of elementary school students. In addition, these games motivated children to
learn and provided emotional benefits when they interacted with other people. Also, these apps helped students improve their
communication skills. Children themselves believe that such resources can be used to improve the learning process (M. Camilleri & A.
Camilleri, 2020).
Mobile games also foster creative thinking. American researchers found that students with higher creative self-efficacy were more
likely to play a situational mobile game than those with lower creative self-efficacy, and that playing a game focused on creativity
contributed to an increase in students’ creative self-efficacy (Atwood-Blaine, Rule & Walker, 2019).
Researchers from Canada studied how a mobile app used synchronously with bilingual picture books can support social and
emotional learning as well as literacy learning in bi- / multilingual children. According to the results, children had great opportunities
to train social, cognitive and multi–lingual literacy skills (McGlynn-Stewart, Murphy, Pinto, Mogyorodi & Nguyen, 2019).
The results obtained by scientists from the UAE show that behavioural, cognitive and emotional teaching strategies are one of the
teaching methods that are used today by teachers; these include Bloom’s cognitive, psychomotor and emotional domains and other
teaching strategies that develop thinking skills, research and scientific creativity, which improves the educational process (Jarrah,
2020).

2.1. Setting objectives

This study is conducted in order to identify problems with the development of thinking skills and to suggest ways to improve the
quality of mobile learning in elementary school.
The purpose of the study is to test the effectiveness of mobile learning in elementary school and suggest possible improvements.
The objectives of this study are as follows: assessment of the quality of knowledge of elementary school students in the context of
mobile learning; identification of possible ways to improve children’s thinking skills; development of recommendations to improve the
effectiveness of mobile learning in elementary school and its impact on the development of students’ thinking skills.

3. Methods and materials

3.1. Research design and sample

The research was based on interviews. A similar research method was used by M. Camilleri and A. Camilleri (2020); McGlynn-­
Stewart et al. (2019). It was attended by 80 elementary school students (8–9 years old) from Belarus. School children from
comprehensive schools were invited to participate in the study. The number of sample from 80 participants is explained by the
complexity of the experiment, in particular, conducting an online course through the Zoom platform, which has restrictions on the
participation of conference participants, in the online learning environment. The main criterion for the selection was age as well as it
was necessary that all children needed to be at the age of 8–9 years old, other criteria weren`t taken into account.
The online course “The Water Cycle in Nature” was developed and taught not by us, but by one of the school teachers via Zoom. The
peculiarity of this course was the practical implementation of exercises online through the Zoom platform, so it only required a
computer or mobile phone with the Zoom program installed. The children had to use mobile devices to access the course. The course
consisted of 4 sessions. Before each lesson, the teacher e-mailed the students an access code that they used to go to the Zoom program

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and join the Zoom Conference. After the teacher gave permission to join, the online lesson began. Training sessions were supervised by
students’ parents. The interview was conducted at school. The tools used additionally during the interview were ice, hot and cold
water, transparent dishes, and an iron tray.

3.2. Survey

At the end of the course, the children were interviewed at their schools. The interview was conducted by teachers from schools on
the basis of which the experiment was realized with their written consent. The psychologist was present during the interviews with the
children. The interview was represented by 11 questions (“What is most of the Earth’s surface covered with?”, “What types of water
bodies do you know?”, “What aggregate states of water do you know?”, “What is the state of water at a temperature below zero?”,
“What is the state of water at a temperature above zero?”, “What state does water change into when it is heated above 100 ◦ C?”, “What
happens if you cover a glass of boiling water with an iron tray? What state does the water get into?”, “Where does the rainwater go?”,
“Where do snow and rain come from?”, “Does human activity affect the water cycle in nature? How?”, “Try to define the water cycle in
nature”) chosen by the purpose of the study to understand the effectiveness of mobile applications and studying with their help in the
thinking skills development. Therefore, all questions give the opportunity to determine the level of students` development of thinking
skills after online course. There were open-ended questions and the children had to comment on their answers. They were asked to use
additional tools (dishes, water, and ice).

3.3. Data analysis and statistical processing

The results of the interview were recorded and transcribed in Word. The calculation of statistical data was done with the help of
Statistics and SPSS programs.

3.4. Ethical issues

The experiment was conducted in accordance with all ethical standards, it was not required to indicate the confidential information
of the participants. The ethical norms of the World Medical Association Declaration of Helsinki were taken into account. The research
was approved by the local ethics committees of [BLINDED] University. Due to the fact that minor children took part in the study, in
addition to their consent, parental consent was also obtained. Before the study, the children and their parents were described the
research details and each of them was given a brochure containing all information.

3.5. Research limitations

The study can be considered reliable, but it must be taken into account that it involved a limited number of participants and was
conducted only in one city of the Republic of Belarus.

4. Results

The children’s responses to the interview questions were as follows (Table 1):

1 What is most of the Earth’s surface covered with?

Examples of children’s answers: “water”, “ocean”, “rivers”, “land”, “land and water”, “plants”.
There were 35 people who answered this question correctly and 45 people – incorrectly. These results indicate the inattention of the
majority of students during mobile learning. The children understand what it is about, but not everyone can remember the exact
information. To increase attention, it is necessary to involve children in the process (play-based approach, joint learning, etc.).

Table 1
Results of students’ answers to questions, %.
Correct Incorrect

Question 1 44 56
Question 2 53 48
Question 3 36 64
Question 4 69 31
Question 5 36 64
Question 6 61 39
Question 7 60 40
Question 8 46 54
Question 9 54 46
Question 10 78 23
Question 11 41 59

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1 What types of water bodies do you know?

Examples of children’s answers: "lake", "sea", "ocean", "puddle", "river".

There were 42 people who answered this question correctly and 38 people – incorrectly. The answer is counted as correct when the
student names 4+ types of water bodies. There were over 50% of such students. The rest also mentioned water bodies, but fewer than
four. This shows that children do not fully understand the system of the phenomenon (systemic thinking). A bigger number of visuals,
diagrams and pictures should be used in mobile learning.

1 What aggregate states of water do you know?

Examples of children’s answers: "what is this?", "steam", "water", "ice", "smoke", "fog", "dew".
There were 29 people who answered this question correctly and 51 people – incorrectly. The results show that elementary school
students found the question to be a bit difficult probably due to the term “aggregate”. Children should be explained this term in more
understandable words so that at their level of thinking they can understand the connection between the term and its meaning.

1 What is the state of water at a temperature below zero?

Examples of children’s answers: "solid", "liquid", "icy", "cold", "snow", "ice".

There were 55 people who answered this question correctly and 25 people – incorrectly. The answers to this question indicate a
proper level of understanding of the relationship between temperature and the state of matter.

1 What is the state of water at a temperature above zero?

Examples of children’s answers: "usual", "not special", "liquid", "steam", "cold".

There were 29 students who answered this question correctly and 51– incorrectly. This question was one of the easiest, but it
confused the children. They probably thought the answer should be more complicated. Most likely, the teacher’s explanation gave the
impression that the material was too complex. The explanation should be simplified.

1 What state does water change into when it is heated above 100 ◦ C?

Examples of children’s answers: "steam", "smoke", "smog", "boiling water", "hot".

There were 49 people who answered this question correctly and 31 people – incorrectly. The result is generally good, but some
children did not understand the difference between steam and similar phenomena. In this case, children should be explained what
smoke and smog are, and the reasons for their occurrence.

1 What happens if you cover a glass of boiling water with an iron tray? What state does the water get into?

Examples of children’s answers: "ice", "steam", "water", "dew", "rain".

There were 48 people who answered this question correctly and 32 people – incorrectly. At first, the children found it difficult to
answer this question and many of them were asked to do it in the classroom. After that, most of the pupils answered correctly.

1 Where does the rainwater go?

Examples of children’s answers: “into the sewer”, “into the sky”, “into the clouds”, “it evaporates”, “into the rain”, “into the snow”.
There were 37 people who answered this question correctly and 43 people – incorrectly. The children probably did not listen
carefully to this part of the course. To increase attention, it is necessary to use methods of involving students in the process.

1 Where do snow and rain come from?

Examples of children’s answers: "from water", "from clouds", "from the sky", "water evaporates", "from ice".
There were 43 people who answered this question correctly and 37 people – incorrectly. The majority of children answered
correctly.

1 Does human activity affect the water cycle in nature? How?

Examples of children’s answers:

Student 1: A person pollutes nature and mud goes into the water. There are many colored spots in the ocean due to pollution. Ships
also pollute the ocean and fish sometimes die.
Student 2: Plants, factories, and plastic pollute water. This often hurts turtles and fish. There are fewer water resources due to
people.
Student 3: Water and animals often suffer from humans. People are destroying forests and there is less water. The climate is getting

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hotter.
There were 62 people who answered this question correctly and 18 people – incorrectly. Children’s answers show that many of
them relied not only on the information provided by the teacher. Many students have developed associations with related phenomena
and disciplines (for example, animal welfare, and zoology). This suggests that at this age, children can partially synthesize knowledge
obtained from different sources.

1 Try to define the water cycle in nature.

Examples of children’s answers:

Student 1: First, water evaporates from the earth’s surface. Then she goes to the sky and creates clouds. After that, it turns into rain
or snow and returns to the ground.
Student 2: Water comes in the form of rain, snow or hail. Then it falls into the water and underground. Next the water returns back
to the clouds.
Student 3: Water constantly moves between the sky and the earth: in the form of rain, snow, river, and ice.
This phenomenon was correctly explained by 33 people, incorrectly – by 47 people. The answer is counted as correct when the
student lists all the phases mentioned during the lesson. This task was fully completed by 41% of the participants.

5. Discussion

Analysis of the answers to the questions proposed in the interview makes it possible to determine the level of development of
thinking skills. Generally, it can be seen that the children understand the essence of the water cycle in nature and that the course based
on mobile learning described to them a general idea of the phenomenon; but some children find it difficult to combine all this and get
an idea of the system as a whole. The interview results show that, in general, the children coped satisfactorily.
Thinking skill is one of the most important student’s skills. In order to effectively learn and interact with the environment, the
student needs to develop different types of thinking (critical, systemic, etc.). This becomes more difficult when it comes to mobile
learning as children receive information from the screen and do not have an opportunity to communicate with the teacher and peers. In
order to understand how various natural processes and phenomena are arranged, children need to be able to delve into this process,
understand it, and apply it where needed. This can be performed with the help of thinking skills.
According to our results, some children did better and others did worse. There are studies that show that in the same learning
environment, different children can demonstrate different levels of progress. The same thing happens in the context of mobile learning.
Thus, according to the results of some research, the group of talented students who took part in the experiment demonstrated more
advanced critical thinking skills than the group of ordinary children. The authors did not observe a difference in critical thinking
determined by the gender of the respondents (Kettler, 2014).
In order to successfully complete the course offered in this study and cope with the interview questions, the children needed to have
systems thinking skills. Different authors name many kinds of thinking. The main ones are described below (Fig. 1):
The research considers the issue of water cycle in nature. Integrated systems are an essential part of science education as they
include important ideas and provide an integrating context in many branches of science (Roslan et al., 2021).

Fig. 1. Types of thinking source: own development based on Reshetnikova (2019).

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According to scientists from Malaysia, there are eight important hierarchical characteristics of systemic thinking in the context of
earth systems:

- the ability to identify the components of the system and processes in it;
- the ability to identify simple relationships between or among the components of the system;
- the ability to identify dynamic relationships within the system;
- the ability to organize system components, processes and their interaction within the framework of relationships;
- the ability to identify the cycles of matter and energy within the system – the cyclical nature of systems:
- the ability to recognize the hidden dimensions of the system and to understand natural phenomena through relationships and
patterns that are not visible on the surface;
- the ability to make generalizations and solve problems based on the understanding of the system mechanisms;
- the ability to think in real-time: retrospection and prediction. The ability to understand that some of the demonstrated interactions
within the system took place in the past while future events may be the result of current interactions (Roslan et al., 2021). This type
of thinking is difficult for elementary school students, which explains the reason they made mistakes in their answers.

Similar to other studies, the research results confirmed that certain indicators of participants’ thinking were higher than others.
Based on the eight intellectual standards of critical thinking skills of elementary school students (grade 4–6), it was found that the
children had average Clarity, Accuracy, Relevance and Fairness scores. However, the results were poor for Correctness, Depth, Lati­
tude, and Logic metrics (Yuliati, Lestari, Herlina, Zakiah & Fahrurrozi, 2020).
In Belarus, the process of teaching thinking skills is based on the same approach as in other post-Soviet countries. In other parts of
the world, the approach to developing thinking skills may be very different. For example, "Confucian Education" (China) is often
associated with the reproduction of knowledge through repetition and has nothing to do with teaching thinking skills. However, the
approach to education of Confucius was significantly different from this popular view of "Confucian education." It was a dialogical
approach, where the dialogical form most emphasized by the Confucians was a silent internal dialog. The paradox of Chinese education
is that what appears to be rote learning often leads to deep conceptual understanding (Li & Wegerif, 2014).
In the context of mobile learning, it is more difficult to understand the material and develop different types of thinking, especially
for elementary school students. To make the process more effective, the following pedagogical strategies can be recommended (Fig. 2):

• Collaborative learning. Many studies have shown that collaborative learning has great potential for developing critical thinking
in learners compared to traditional learning. Social interaction is important for the development of children’s thinking. Moreover,
cooperation between group members can contribute to the cognitive development of students, including critical thinking skills
(Hasan et al., 2013). In the context of mobile learning, children should be provided with the opportunity to communicate with each

Fig. 2. Recommendations for improving the development of thinking skills in elementary school students in the process of mobile learning.

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P. Cai Thinking Skills and Creativity 42 (2021) 100922

other, as well as to ask the teacher questions. This can be implemented with the help of modern platforms, such as Zoom. To avoid
chaos during such communication, it is necessary to appoint a leader (for example, a teacher or a parent) who will give the floor to
each one in turn. The role of adults, teachers and the educational process is to turn a child’s rich but naive idea of the world around
into professional skills required to participate in research, evidence evaluation, explanation, argumentation, and discourse as
science students and as science-literate adults (Zimmerman & Klahr, 2018).

Scientists from Malaysia have confirmed the development of critical thinking skills in the mobile learning environment. The most
popular strategy was collaborative learning. Other strategies (situational learning, peer review, and project-based learning) can also be
used in schools (Ismail, Azizan & Gunasegaran, 2016).

• Use of games. A play-based approach during mobile learning can allow children to better understand the information being
studied, establish relationships between phenomena and facts, and also think systematically. According to the results of the re­
searchers from Indonesia, the educational game has been confirmed to be effective in the development of critical thinking in
younger students (Fitriyadi & Wuryandani, 2021). For example, educators can use pictures, assign roles to students, and invite
them to do some experiments on their own (if applicable).

Games also contribute to the development of creative thinking (Fig. 3) in younger students. The results obtained by Taiwan authors
show that role play in game-based classroom management improves verbal divergent thinking in children and fosters creative ten­
dencies in the classroom. These results indicate that gamification enhances children’s creativity (Chen, Chang & Wu, 2020). In the case
of studying earth systems and natural phenomena, teachers can, for example, ask children to draw this system schematically or to
depict it in any way convenient for them.

• Combination of mobile learning with traditional learning.

• Motivation of students (points, gifts, participation in an interesting game).

In general, the results of the study do not contradict the conclusions of other researchers. The results are consistent with psy­
chological and pedagogical concepts. This study is a contribution to exploring ways to develop thinking skills in the context of mobile
learning.

6. Conclusions

The results of the experiment indicate the impact of the online course used on the effectiveness of the development of critical
thinking skills. According to the indicators after the course, most children (72–85%) were able to give the correct answers to the
questions asked in the interview, which indicates the positive impact of the course on improving thinking skills. Thus, for example, the
majority of students (78%) correctly answered question No.10 about the influence of human activity on the water cycle in nature. This
suggests that the children managed to synthesize knowledge obtained from different sources as they did not rely exclusively on the
information provided by the teacher during the course. The last question asking students to explain the system under study was

Fig. 3. Creative thinking source: own development based on Guo (2016).

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answered correctly by 41% of the participants. This shows that children aged 8–9 years do not yet have sufficient systemic thinking
skills. The results demonstrated that children understand individual elements of the system better than the whole system.
This study confirms that mobile learning can be used in elementary school, but it must be properly organized and phased. At this
stage of development, the child needs live communication with the teacher and peers; therefore, it should be provided whenever
possible. The study also showed that simple independent experiments on the topic under consideration contribute to the assimilation of
the material and the development of thinking in younger students. To develop students’ thinking skills and improve the results of
mobile learning in elementary school, the following recommendations have been developed: the use of collaborative learning, a play-
based approach, a combination of mobile and traditional learning, and encouragement of students.
The research is a contribution to the study of the development of thinking skills in younger students in the context of mobile
learning. The practical significance of the study is represented by the opportunity to be used by teachers, parents, educational ad­
ministrators, as well as by a wide range of people who are interested in modern pedagogy and psychology. The prospects for further
research in the study of features of use and efficiency of concrete mobile applications in the teaching.
This research did not receive any specific grant from funding agencies in the public, commercial, or not-for-profit sectors.

Data availability statement

Data will be available on request.

CRediT authorship contribution statement

Peiyan Cai: Conceptualization, Methodology, Software, Validation, Formal analysis, Investigation, Resources, Data curation,
Writing – original draft, Writing – review & editing, Visualization, Supervision, Project administration, Funding acquisition.

Declaration of Competing Interest

The author declares no conflict of interest.

Supplementary materials

Supplementary material associated with this article can be found, in the online version, at doi:10.1016/j.tsc.2021.100922.

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