Enacting Critical Thinking in Dialogic Picture Book Instruction: Skills and Dispositions in Late Childhood Classroom Discourse

This dataset is derived from a classroom study based on the reading activity. The dataset focuses on the development and manifestation of critical thinking skills, including interpretation, analysis, inference, explanation, and self-regulation. Classroom discourse and written responses were coded using a structured coding scheme in MAXQDA. The classroom interaction data capture teacher–student and student–student exchanges. The assignment data further illustrate students’ independent application of critical thinking skills in written form, particularly in evaluating perspectives, generating alternative interpretations, and reflecting on prior assumptions. The student-level dataset provides quantitative summaries of participation frequency, number of critical thinking segments, and multidimensional coding patterns, along with background variables such as gender, personality traits, and academic performance. All data have been anonymized.