Evaluation of critical thinking skills related to philosophy for children education in fourth grade students

In this study, a measurement tool was developed that will serve to reveal level of reasoning, questioning, organizing information and transfer skills of fourth grade students. The study group of research consisted of 177 fourth grade students studying in 2019-2020 and 2020-2021 school years. Before developing the test, four thinking skills that are thought to develop through the philosophy for children approach were determined within framework of the relevant literature. Item pool was created in line with determined skills. In order to ensure validity of the test, item pool was sent to three experts. In general, experts stated that questions were suitable for relevant age group and skill to be measured, but there were points that needed to be corrected in terms of intelligibility. In line with opinions of experts, amendments were made to test items and an item was removed. After first trial application of 44-item test was carried out, item-total correlation values were examined to investigate the reliability of the test. In addition, item difficulty and discrimination indexes of each item were examined. As a result of analysis, items with low values were removed. The second trial and pre-trial applications were carried out with remaining test items and item analysis were made in the same way. Taking into account the content validity of items, two more questions were eliminated and test was finalized. The Cronbach alpha value of final test was found to be 0.691 and Mcdonalds omega value was 0.696. The developed test can be used with fourth-grade students to assess their development in relation to philosophy for children applications.