DEVELOPMENT OF CRITICAL THINKING SKILLS SCALE FOR SCIENCE LESSON

The aim of this study is to develop a scale for use in determining critical thinking skills of secondary school students. In this study, both pilot and main implementation were made and as a result two different versions of the same scale were developed. The scales were applied to 807 students in the 6th, 7th and 8th grades. SPSS and LISREL programs were used to analyze the data. The reliability values and exploratory factor analyzes of the scales were calculated with the help of SPSS program. Cronbach Alpha value, Kaiser-Meyer-Olkin and Bartlett tests were performed at this stage. Afterwards, confirmatory factor analysis was performed with the help of LISREL program and fit indices of the scales were determined. Then, independent sample T-Test, one-way ANOVA and Post Hoc tests were used to answer the research questions. As a result of analyzes, scale was obtained in two versions called “Likert” and “optional” to determine critical thinking skills. In addition, it was found that female students had high critical thinking skills compared to male and sixth grade students had high critical thinking skills according to seventh and eighth grade