Exploring Filipino Students’ Critical Thinking Skills: Basis for Enhancement of Science Laboratory Class Delivery

Abstract

In today’s knowledge-based and rapidly changing society, developing students’ critical thinking skills in instruction is a vital concern in almost all science curricula. To acquire meaningful learning, learners need to develop skills in choosing suitable information, gauging the integrity of information, and crafting sound decisions. With this, creating learning spaces that stimulate critical thinking has become a challenge among educators. This study aims to explore the critical thinking profile of Filipino students in science laboratory classes as a means of generating insight for possible curricular enhancement. Utilizing a quantitative descriptive research design, a survey was administered to 300 junior high school students under K to 12 curricula. Results revealed that openness to different ideas is the most practiced aspect of critical thinking among Filipino students, while the planning and organization of information disclosed as the least. Furthermore, the importance of gathering information to support position is the most agreed factor, while the strategies in thinking of a problem in an experiment are the least. Hence, findings suggest that the necessary facets of critical thinking strategies should be explicitly articulated in the science curriculum framework, especially encapsulating it in the content and performance standards.

Keywords

• critical thinking
• curricular enhancement
• k to 12 curriculum
• science laboratory classes