Mathematics teachers' perceptions of critical thinking

Abstract

Critical thinking is a skill that is essential for students in the 21st century. Critical thinking is also important to be understood by the teachers. The purpose of this research was to determine the mathematics teachers' perceptions of critical thinking. The purposed-design survey method was used in this research in which the researchers used the questionnaire to gather the information—31 mathematics teachers as respondents. The phone call interview was then conducted to get the detailed information. Based on the analysis of teachers' responses, more than half of the teachers seemed not to have a clear understanding of critical thinking. However, almost all of the teachers claimed that critical thinking could help students learn mathematics better. Then almost all of the teachers claimed that they had developed students' critical thinking skills in learning mathematics but experienced obstacles in its application, such as time constraints and students' lack of focus. This study could provide an overview and information related to what mathematics teachers understand related to critical thinking and could be used as evaluation material to create a curriculum to apply critical thinking in learning activities or further research related to critical thinking.