Investigating Grade Seven Students' Critical Thinking Skills through Math Intervention
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Date
2016-05
Authors
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Volume Title
Publisher
The British University in Dubai (BUiD)
Abstract
Teaching critical thinking is crucial in preparing students to face the challenges beyond school. In an unpredictable future, it is the school’s role to educate students to be lifelong learners with the skills to creatively encounter the demands of economic growth and the job market. This study explores the effect of enhancing higher order thinking intervention on students’ performance in a critical thinking skills test (CTST) and if this effect has a variant result according to gender and level of achievement in math. The participants were 152 students in grade 7 in an American international private school in the UAE. A Critical Thinking Skills Test (CTST) was developed by the researcher using Higher Order Thinking (HOT) practices in the McGraw Hill algebra textbook and revised by experienced math teachers. A pre-test and post-test quasi-experimental design was followed to examine the hypothesis of the study. The data was analyzed by using descriptive and inferential statistics. The study shows that the intervention has a significant effect on above students’ performance in CTST. It was also significant that the intervention has a variant effect on students’s performance in CTST according to their level of achievement in math. However the correlation between the intervention and gender was not proven significant. Discussion is offered to associate the findings, about enhancing explicit critical thinking skills correlated with embedded CT skills in math for grade 7 using intervention, with the current literature. Further implications and recommendations were given to develop the teaching of critical thinking skills at K-12 schools.
Description
DISSERTATION WITH DISTINCTION
Keywords
critical thinking, mathematics proficiencies, common core stare standards, math Intervention, United Arab Emirates (UAE)