Math learning module model to stimulate critical thinking skills for elementary school students

Improving the quality of education in Indonesia can be developed through the implementation of education reform. One form of educational reform can be done by using a learning approach that can assist teachers in producing experts using the STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics) approach. The initial findings revealed only about 47.8% of elementary school students in Wae Ri'i sub-district (grade V) who still had not achieved satisfactory scientific and mathematical scores according to the minimum passing grade. This study aims to see the effectiveness of the STEM approach in improving the critical thinking skills of elementary school students in Wae Ri'i District. The research method used is an experimental design with Non Equivalent Control Group Design. The research subjects were elementary school students in five (5) elementary schools in Wae Ri'i District. The results shows the sig (2-tailed) value of Equal variances is assumed to be 0.000 <0, 05. Therefore, Ho is rejected and Ha is accepted, which means that there is a significant difference in critical thinking skills after students used the STEM-PBL approach, compared to innovative K13 approach. The average scores of the control class critical thinking skills for the pre-test and post-test were 38 and 79.5. The fixed coefficient is 0.676 and is significant at 0.000. This means that the correlation is positive. Therefore, learning with STEM approach is proven to be effective in improving the critical thinking skills of elementary school students in Wae Ri'i sub-district.

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Developing Critical Thinking Skills in Elementary School Students Through Foreign Language Education: An Action Research

Education Quarterly Reviews ◽

10.31014/aior.1993.04.02.196 ◽

2021 ◽

Vol 4 (2) ◽

Author(s):

Elif Sarıcan ◽

◽

Ecenur Büşra GÜNEŞ ◽

Keyword(s):

Elementary School ◽

Critical Thinking ◽

Action Research ◽

Foreign Language ◽

Elementary School Students ◽

Social Life ◽

Thinking Skills ◽

Critical Thinking Skills ◽

School Students ◽

Research Activities

People constantly practice the act of thinking. They may not think about everything, yet they certainly think of something and make decisions. Critical thinking is a sort of reflective thinking. It is controlled and aimed at perfect thinking. It enables the self-realization of individuals in social life. Therefore, it is important to develop critical thinking at school stages and early ages. The purpose of this research was to investigate “the effect of foreign language learning activities on critical thinking skills of 4th-grade students”. To achieve this purpose, researchers tried to answer these questions: (1) What is the effect of critical thinking activities on students’ critical thinking? (2) What is the effect of critical thinking activities on students’ personal definitions of critical thinking and critical thinker? (3) What is the effect of critical thinking activities on students’ social skills? The method of this research is action research which is considered highly important for educational sciences. In the course of this research, activities for developing critical thinking skills were implemented to 4th grade students. 25 4th grade private elementary school students participated in the research. Researchers used 13-question “Critical Thinking Skill Open-ended Questionnaire” to collect data. The answers given to the open-ended questionnaire before and after the activities were analyzed using content analysis, and themes and codes were determined accordingly, thereby answers of the students are compared. It is noted that before implementation, most of the students did not have any idea about critical thinking or they thought critical thinking has a negative connotation; however, after implementation, they gained more positive and open-minded opinions about this term.

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