Impact of Critical thinking on Performance in Mathematics among Senior Secondary School Students in Lagos State

Abstract

Critical Thinking has been one of the tools used in our daily life's to solve some problems because it involves logical reasoning, interpreting, analysing and evaluating information to enable one take reliable and valid decisions. The purpose of the study is to examined the impact of Critical thinking on Performance in Mathematics among Senior Secondary School Students in Lagos State. The study would benefit students and teachers by promoting creativity in solving mathematical problems. Quasi-experimental designs was adopted for the study. Multi-stage sampling were applied to generate a sample of 195 students for the study. Mathematics performance test and Watson-glaser Critical Thinking Appraisal were used for the study. Three hypotheses were formulated and tested using Analysis of covariance. The study revealed that there was a significant difference in Mathematics performance test scores among the experimental groups. The study also found out that there was no significance gender difference in Mathematics performance test . Critical Thinking Skills was also an effective means of enhancing students' understanding of Mathematics concepts. It therefore recommended that in teaching Mathematics in secondary schools, Critical thinking skills should be infuse in the curriculum of teachers education so as to improve students' performance in Mathematics.