Teaching Science Students to Think Critically: Understanding Secondary School Teachers’ Practices

Abstract

Critical thinking is considered an important aspect of formal education and one of the 21st-century skills in contemporary literature. Policy documents National Education Policy 2009 and National Curriculum for Physics, Chemistry and Biology, Grades IX-X, 2006 all focus on developing students’ critical thinking to become independent, logical, rationale and decision-makers. The purpose of the current qualitative study was to explore teachers’ perspectives regarding pedagogical practices for the development of critical thinking skills of secondary school science students. Using basic qualitative research design, twelve secondary school teachers of Physics, Chemistry and Biology were purposively selected as participants from a district in Punjab through criterion sampling technique. In-depth semistructured interviews in which questioning and probing often continued for as long as an hour were conducted for data collection. Qualitative content analysis was used to analyze interview data through NVivo 12 software. According to the findings of the study, the teachers used different pedagogical practices that are, questioning, group work, activity-based teaching, discussion, demonstration, learning by doing and audio-visual aids in their classrooms. However, their main focus was only to get good grades for students instead of developing critical thinking. It is suggested that a top-down (policy to practice) change should be implemented in order to ensure that science teachers use relevant pedagogical practices for developing critical thinking in students. Assessment system should also be revised so that these skills may be developed in science students.