Critical Thinking Skills of Students and Teaching Strategies of Mathematics Teachers
Keywords:
Critical Thinking Skills, Teaching Strategies, Lesson Exemplars, Problem SolvingAbstract
Introduction
This study aimed to assess the critical thinking skills of students and selected Mathematics teaching strategies of teachers in the three public Junior High Schools of Paoay, Ilocos Norte: Paoay National High School, Paoay Lake National High School, and Malaguip Integrated School.
Methods
The research made use of the descriptive method in conducting this study. A survey on the critical thinking skills of the Grade 7 and 8 students and teaching strategies Mathematics teachers of Paoay was conducted. Data was obtained by using a questionnaire and an unstructured interview.
Results
Results revealed that creating is the most dominant critical thinking skill among the respondents. Likewise, public Junior High School learners have very good critical thinking skills in remembering, understanding, applying, analyzing and evaluating.
Discussions
On the other hand, the most commonly employed teaching strategy by the teacher is the lecture method. Also, teachers employed discussion methods, active learning methods, clicker use in classroom method, experiential method, cooperative/collaborative, experiential method, games/experiment/simulation method and problem-based learning method in developing critical thinking skills among its learners. The problem-solving method integrated with other teaching strategies was the best method to develop the critical thinking skills of the students.Based on the assessed critical thinking skills of the students and the teaching strategies of the Mathematics teachers, lesson examples were made for Mathematics 7 and Mathematics 8.