Fostering Critical Thinking Skills In Elementary Science Students Through Activity-Based Teaching

Abstract

Critical thinking is one of the most, in demand skill of 21st century. To empower critical thinking in learners, activity-based teaching has emerged as a new paradigm in science education. The present work was an effort to develop students’ critical thinking skills in the subject of science while integrating activity based teaching in Science classroom. For this purpose, an experimental study was conducted over 80 students of 8th class in local public sector school of Multan city. Students were divided into experimental and control group. Experimental group received intervention in form of activity based teaching while control group was taught with the same previously used traditional method. Text book of General Science was used to teach the students and critical thinking test was also made from this text book and taught units.25 item based MCQs test was developed to assess the critical thinking of students. Pre and Post-tests were conducted which showed significant change in critical thinking of experimental group while enhancing their critical thinking. Percentage and Mean score were used as data analysis techniques. Activity based teaching proved to be a catalyst of change in students’ critical thinking which was not at satisfactory level in pretest before intervention. It was concluded that various approaches of activity based teaching be used in classrooms by the teachers keeping in view the ILOs.