The Effect of Gender on the Relationship between Critical Thinking and Pattern Recognition: Students’ Perspectives

Abstract

In this qualitative study, individual interviews were conducted on 11 private school students to seek their opinions about the effect of gender on the relationship between critical thinking and cognitive pattern recognition. The participants, age 16 to 19 inclusive with six males and five females, were students recruited from three private schools in Singapore. All the interviewees have enrolled in the General Certificate of Education (GCE) 'O' level preparatory courses. The interview transcripts were analyzed using Qualitative Data Analysis (QDA) Miner software. The majority (64%) of the interviewees agreed that gender influence the relationship between critical thinking and pattern recognition. Two primary themes were identified that affect the effect of gender: the internal character traits of a person and society's influences. Two recommendations were to examine the impact of various internal character traits in more detail and to include interviews from school teachers and administrators to obtain more professional insights.