Critical thinking skills: The academic ability, mastering concepts, and analytical skill of undergraduate students

Abstract

Science and technology development in the 21 st -Century has been demanding educators to provide learning activities which stimulate students' critical thinking skills. This study aimed to find out the correlated factors of the students' critical thinking skills as well as of which was the strongest determinant in leveling the skills. The subject of this correlational research was 112 undergraduate students in the Department of Biology Education, Universitas Muhammadiyah Malang who took Botany course. There were four variables measured in this study, namely academic ability, mastering concepts, analytical skill, and critical thinking skills. The data of academic ability was obtained from students' cumulative index in the previous semester while the three other variables were measured using final exam test. All the variables then analyzed using multiple linear regression. The results showed that the three predictor variables (mastering concepts, academic ability, and analytical skill) gave effective contributions toward students' critical thinking skills, with the percentages of 3.84%, 32.25%, and 54.26% respectively. Therefore, the results of this study could be a basic reference in designing learning process which empower the students' critical thinking skills.

QASEE: A Potential Learning Model to Improve the Critical Thinking Skills of Pre-service Teachers with Different Academic Abilities

“…The results of ANCOVA analysis also found that there was a significant difference in critical thinking skills among the upper, middle and lower academic ability pre-service teachers. This finding supports the results of previous research reporting that differences in academic ability can affect the pre-service teachers' ability at criticizing information (D'Alessio et al, 2019;Mahanal et al, 2019;Permana et al, 2019;Zubaidah et al, 2018).…”

“…The academic ability itself is illustrated with academic performance (D'Alessio et al, 2019) and learning achievement (Fong et al, 2017). Academic ability is believed to be associated with critical thinking skills (Alkharusi, 2019;Permana et al, 2019;Tanujaya et al, 2017). Upper academic ability pre-service teachers generally have sufficient prior knowledge, so that they tend to have better critical thinking skills than the lower academic ability (Mahanal et al, 2019;Zubaidah et al, 2018).…”

“…Upper academic ability pre-service teachers generally have sufficient prior knowledge, so that they tend to have better critical thinking skills than the lower academic ability (Mahanal et al, 2019;Zubaidah et al, 2018). Academic ability is even reported to have a bigger contribution toward the improvement of pre-service teachers' critical thinking skills than does the mere mastery of the concepts (Permana et al, 2019).…”

“…On the other hand, the lecturers tend to be reluctant to provide a challenging learning experience because they believe that the lower academic ability pre-service teachers will not be able to complete the tasks. If this belief continues to be maintained, the academic achievement of the lower academic ability will continue to suffer, and they will have difficulty to improve as critical teachers (Permana et al, 2019).…”

Peningkatan Keterampilan Berpikir Kritis Mahasiswa Biologi Melalui Multimedia STEM Education

“…Pembelajaran biologi tidak boleh hanya sekedar mengingat dan memahami karena pembelajaran yang seperti ini akan mengarah pada kemampuan menghafal materi (Septy et al, 2015). Keterampilan berpikir kritis merupakan salah satu keterampilan berpikir tingkat tinggi yang menuntut mahasiswa untuk mengunakan level kognitif tingkat analisis, evaluasi, dan mencipta (Permana et al, 2019). Pratama et al (2017); Zulfaneti et al (2018) dan Bustami et al (2019) menjelaskan bahwa keterampilan berpikir kritis berkaitan dengan pengambilan keputusan, perencanaan strategis, proses ilmiah, dan penyelesaian masalah untuk menemukan solusi.…”