Critical thinking of elementary school students

The aim of the study is to investigate the level of critical thinking skills of 6th grade students, and to determine the extent to which the variables of age, gender, academic achievement, socio-economic status, academic self-concept, the application of new and previous curriculum explain the variance of observed critical thinking skills of the students. The study was conducted in April and May during the academic year of 2005-2006. The sample of the study consisted of 629 6th grade students studying in 12 Elementary schools in İzmir, 6 of the schools were implementing new curricula, 6 schools were implementing previous curricula at the time of the data collection process. In order to measure students? critical thinking skills, Cornell Critical Thinking Skills Test Level X was employed which was adopted to Turkish for the first time for this study. Other data was collected through ?Academic Self Concept Test?, grade average points and an information form to collect data about students? age, gender and socio-economic level. The analysis of the data yielded the followings:Students could get 29 correct answers in average out of 71 questions in CCTTDX. The accepted norm in the USA for the 6th graders is 35 in average. Therefore, it is concluded that the sample group students? critical thinking skill levels are ?inadequate?.Approximately 36 per cent of the observed variance of students? critical thinking skill levels is explained by the independent variables of the study. The variables of students? academic achievement, socio-economic level and academic self concept are the most important variables in explaining the observed variance by 15 %, 14 % and 7 % respectively. The variables of age, gender and implementation of new or previous curriculum did not provide any valuable contribution in informing the variance in students? critical thinking skill levels. Contrary to the expectations, the new curriculum did not contribute to the critical thinking skills of the students.