Students’ Critical Thinking Skills Based on Gender And Knowledge Group

Özet

Thestudy aimed to measure the validity of critical thinking instruments and determinedthe differences in critical thinking skills in terms of gender and knowledge group.The study was used survey method.Critical thinking instruments were developed based on the Facoine (2015)’s indicators of critical thinking. Data were obtained from 285 respondents (N = 285) of first-yearstudents who took Indonesian language courses. Respondents consisted of 78 male and 207 female students.The25 questions in critical thinking instruments were claimed valid and homogeneous with r count of 0.266. Data were analyzed using non-parametric statistics of Mann-Withney test in SPSS version 21 application for Windows. There was no significant difference in students' critical thinkingskills in gender differences and knowledge groups. Result of the study showed that 22 sub-indicators of students’ critical thinking was foundsimilarity in gender and 20 sub-indicators also foundsimilarity in knowledge group.Thestudy supportedthe new paradigm that students regardless of gender differences and science clusters neededcritical thinking skills. Based on learning context in various science groups, there wasno need to differentiate gender even though there weredifferences in the number ofa certain gender in one class.