Productive Thinking in Postgraduate Students

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The study investigates the problem of unproductivity of thinking of some postgraduate students which is attributed to their deactivation of thinking skills in general and productive thinking skills in particular. The problem starts in primary stages up to the higher stages, as confirmed by Saadeh (2009). Hence, hundreds of experimental educational studies stressed that thinking skills contribute significantly not only to the teaching-learning process, but also to the learners themselves (Saadeh, 2009: 84). Its significance stems from the importance of "productive thinking" that the individual and society need, from their community, their sample, and tool. The significance lies also in the scarce amount of research dealing with this variable in graduate students, and its theoretical framework and results that could fill gap in the related epistemic field. The objective of the research is to identify the level of productive thinking among doctoral students and the differences between them, according to specialization (scientific – humanities) and sex (male - female). Attaining the two objectives of research required building a tool to measure the variable, verifying its validity and consistency, applying it to the members of the research sample, calculating the scores of the respondents of the sample and analyzing them statistically by SPSS statistical pack. The results showed that the level of productive thinking among doctoral students was statistically significant at the level of (0.05). Also, there were no statistically significant differences between the research samples according to sex and academic specialization. In light of these results, a number of conclusions, recommendations and proposals were presented.