Analysis of critical thinking in junior high school students through science learning in Indonesia: A systematic review

Abstract

The purpose of this study was to see the results of the research analysis regarding the critical thinking of junior high school students through science lessons in Indonesia. This research was a systematic review of studies through the Scopus database. Search was done through nine stages with criteria at each predetermined stage, i.e.: stage I, initial search with the keywords “critical thinking” with the category “article title”; stage II, type of access “open access”; stage III, published in “2010 – 2018”; stage IV, “English” language; stage V, the type of source “journals and proceedings”; stage VI, keywords “critical thinking”; stage VII, “Indonesia” research location; stage VIII, field of study “Science”; and stage IX, “Junior High School” education level. Searching through these nine stages results in 13 articles. The focus of this study was to analyze critical thinking skills and the indicators used in these studies. Most studies reported that increasing the critical thinking skills of Junior High School students in Indonesia were still at a “moderate” level. This study recommends to do further research on experimentation-based learning with an environmental approach to enhance critical thinking skills.