Measuring Critical Thinking Aptitudes of High School Students in a Private School in Dubai

Abstract

For nearly 60 years and more, educators and policymakers have highlighted the need to graduate students who are good critical thinkers, from classrooms to workplaces. To meet the demands of the twenty-first century, critical thinking abilities are essential. Critical thinking is defined as a collection of basic skills that must be mastered before moving on to more complex thinking. In order to gain a better insight into various aspects of critical thinking, the current study specifically measures the critical thinking aptitude of high school students in a private school in Dubai. From a population size of 291 students, 91 students from grades 10 and 11 were taken as a sample size for high school students in this private school. This is a unique study whose hypothesis stressed the science online instructions for students and teachers in the school context. This research is a quantitative, descriptive case study using a modified 40-question W-GCTA test to collect the data. Norms and scoring analysis were done by conducting one-sample t tests, section analysis was done by conducting one-way repeated-measures ANOVA, while independent-sample t tests were used to test demographic differences. The study's findings revealed that the students possess a critical thinking aptitude above the average percentage, with a total score of 76%. This is in contrast with studies discussed in literature. However, other implications regarding curriculum modifications, educational teaching strategies, and teachers’ readiness are needed to foster students’ critical thinking skills. For future research, increasing the sample size by involving more schools would be better, since the present study is focused exclusively on the quantitative data. It is also recommended that qualitative research might also be conducted to obtain reliable and rigorous results.