High-level thinking and its relationship to academic affirmation among university student

Abstract

High level thinking is considered as one of the most modern and abundant with knowledge resources in the field of cognitive psychology that cannot be dispensed in daily life. Through it, effective strategies can be implemented to face the renewed conditions of life, in order to achieve effective academic performance. The current research aimed to identify the level of high level thinking and academic affirmation among university students and it also aimed to identify the nature of the relationship between them. To achieve the aims of the research, the researchers developed two scales; the first one was designed to measure high level thinking, which consisted of (47) items with five-point alternatives which were distributed into three aspects; (analysis, synthesis, and evaluation), and the second scale was designed to measure academic affirmation which consisted of (58) items with five-point alternatives which were distributed into four aspects (self-confidence, social, academic, achievement). After ensuring the psychometric characteristics (validity and reliability) of the two scales, they were distributed to the main sample of the research consisting of (400) male and female students. The data were analyzed statistically using T-test for one and two samples, and the Pearson Correlation Coefficient. The results of the statistical analysis indicated that the university students have a good level of high level thinking (35.54) and academic affirmation (33.85). The results also indicated statistically significant differences in high level thinking according to the gender variable, in favor of males (2.36), and statistically significant differences in academic affirmation according to the gender variable in favor of males (3.83). In light of the findings of the current research, the research proposed a set of recommendations, including the participation of students in meaningful activities that would develop their knowledge structure and focus on aspects that improve their academic achievement.