The effect of concept teaching techniques on middle school students' critical thinking skills in science course

Concepts are the most basic element of individuals' cognitive structures. Science education has an important place in the formation of concepts with high-level mental skills. Science education enables students to integrate with the environment and develop skills such as problem solving, decision making and critical thinking. The methods and techniques to be used in the course in order to develop critical thinking skills, which is one of the 21st century skills, are of great importance. The use of concept teaching techniques to ensure effective and meaningful learning and to develop critical thinking skills ensures that the information is permanently placed in the mind. In this context, the study aimed to determine the effect of concept teaching techniques on students' critical thinking skills in the 'Pure Matter and Mixtures' unit in the 7th grade middle school science course. The study group of the research consists of 42 7th grade students studying in a city center located in the Central Black Sea Region. The research was designed in a pretest-posttest quasi-experimental design with an unbalanced control group. The research covers a period of 30 lesson hours in the fall semester of the 2022-2023 academic year. The data of the study were obtained by applying "Personal Information Form" and "Science Course Critical Thinking Skills Scale". The research was applied for 7 weeks and the lessons were taught in the control group based on the 2018 science curriculum and in the experimental group using concept teaching techniques. IBM SPSS 25 program was used to analyze the data. Mann-Whitney U and Wilcoxon signed-rank test were used to analyze the data. According to the results of the study, it was found that there was a statistically significant difference between the pre-test and post-test scores of the experimental group Science Course Critical Thinking Skills Scale. In addition, it was determined that students' critical thinking skills in science course did not show a significant difference according to gender. As a result, it was seen that teaching with concept teaching techniques was effective in developing students' critical thinking skills in science course. Within the framework of the findings, suggestions were made for teachers and administrators in the process of implementing concept teaching techniques. Teachers can participate in special training programs to develop students' critical thinking skills. School administrations should provide teachers with training opportunities to improve their critical thinking skills. Increasing teachers' competencies in this area allows them to better guide students.