The Development of Critical Thinking Skills of Mathematics Teachers

Abstract

The purposes of this study were to construct instruments and tests for using in developing critical thinking skills of mathematics teachers, and to analyze the efficiency of the constructed instruments and tests. The subjects were 11 graduate students majoring in teaching mathematics at the Department of Education, Kasetsart University during the second semester of the 1991 academic year, the instruments were the sets of practical skill lessons of knowing data and making to understand data. The test were a written test with 7 items of making to understand data used as the posttest. In developing the critical thinking skills, first, the subjects were given the pretest of knowing data, then used a set of the practical skill lessons of knowing data for 8 periods, and were given the posttest of knowing data. Secondly, the subjects were given the practical skill lessons of making to understand data for 12 periods, and were given the posttest of making to understand data. The collected data was analyzed through the application of match paired t-test. The results showed that there was a significant difference between the pretest and the posttest of knowing data at the .05 level. The posttes was higher than the prettest. And also, there was a significant difference between the pretest and the posttest of making to understand data at the .05 level. The posttest was higher than the prettest. Therefore, the sets of the practical skill lessons could help the graduate students to develop their critical thinking skill.