CLASSROOM TEACHERS' VIEWS ON THE TEACHING OF CRITICAL THINKING SKILLS

Abstract

Critical thinking skills and development of critical thinking skills are important today. Thus teachers should incorporate critical thinking skills into the lessons to imparting critical thinking skills to their students. Effective teachers engage students in various learning activities which encourage the student to think critically. Teachers' views about critical thinking may have impact engage students in critical thinking. The purpose of this study is to determine the classroom teachers’ views on the development of critical thinking skills. Thus teachers should incorporate critical thinking skills into the lessons to imparting critical thinking skills to student. This research was a qualitative research in which phenomenology technique was used. The research was carried out with 15 classroom teachers working in Agri Center. Data was collected through semi-structured interview technique and analyzed through 1 11. Ulusal Sinif Ogretmenligi Sempozyumu’nda yapilan sozlu bildiri sunumundan geniĢletilerek hazirlanmiĢtir. Sinif Ogretmenlerinin Elestirel Dusunme Becerisi Ogretimine Iliskin Gorusleri 164 descriptive analysis technique for this research. Descriptive statistics are used to analyze the data. According to the results, classroom teachers’ views on critical thinking skills are that it is important and it can be taught. They found insufficient primary education programs in the development of critical thinking skills. The classroom teachers believe that developing of the critical thinking skills should plan with lessons which are Turkish, Life Science and Social Studies. They prefer discussion, six hat thinking, question-answer, brain storming, case, drama for develop critical thinking skills. It is identified that classroom teachers have problems to develop critical thinking skills due to crowded classes, the inadequacies of primary school curriculum, the intensity of the curriculum.