Critical Thinking Skills of Junior Mathematics Students in the Province of Batangas

Abstract

INTRODUCTION

The 21st-century learning and mathematics curriculum should integrate critical thinking in all lessons so that learning becomes more meaningful, purposeful, and great for the learners. The aim of this study is to determine the academic critical thinking skills among the three zonal settings namely, inductive, deductive, and blended reasoning suitable to the junior high school students in teaching Mathematics.

METHODS

In this study, the 7E learning cycles, a teaching method which has been used in Science will be tested if it will enhance the critical thinking skills of the junior students in Mathematics. The participants were divided into four groups consisting of148 Grade 8 learners. The analysis of variance showed that the learning of four groups is homogenous before the intervention. By using the Solomon Four-Group design of experimental research, two groups were randomly assigned as experimental groups and the other two as control groups. The experimental groups were taught using the daily lesson log in 7E learning format in three zonal settings of inductive, deductive and blended. The pretest was administered in one control group and in one of the experimental groups while the post-test was administered in four groups after the treatment.

RESULTS

The analysis of variance showed that there was a significant difference among the four groups' posttest. The experimental groups got higher posttest results compared to the control groups. Among the three zonal settings, blended of inductive and deductive reasoning obtained the highest mean of experimental groups and high academic critical thinking performance. On the 7E learning format (explicit, engage, explore, explain, elaborate, evaluate, and extend), explain got the highest frequency of 7 out 10 Mathematics teachers and6 out of10 grade 8 students included in the experimental groups. This showed the effectiveness of explaining the topics of lessons to the learners and contributed in critical thinking performance of the learners in Mathematics.

DISCUSSIONS

Some of the factors that contributed to the enhancement of the academic performance of the grade 8 students were the positive attitude of the students in the subject, the students' focus on the topics, eagerness to improve grades, the rewards they acquired from different activities, the challenges of how they passed the test given after every lesson, the availability of instructional materials, the teachers' students interaction, and the students' assistance to each other.