Profile of students’ critical thinking processes on the topics of Hydrostatic Pressure and Archimedes’ principle

Abstract

In learning physics, students often have difficulty in understanding concepts. This certainly has an impact on students’ critical thinking skill. This study aims to analyze students’ critical thinking skills related to the concept of hydrostatic and Archimedes’ principle. This research was conducted using a qualitative descriptive design. The research subjects were students of class XII MIPA in Malang (N = 127). Data collection was carried out through a series of tests in the form of essay and interview questions. The indicator used to create critical thinking questions refers to the five main perspectives presented by Hughes. The results show that the majority of students have relatively low critical thinking skill. It is shown by the average score of critical thinking skill of students which only reached 36.1 from the maximum score of 90. The main cause of the low critical thinking skill of students was the presence of misconceptions experienced by students. The low critical thinking process of students are also caused by students have not yet accustomed to applying the concepts of physics in daily life.