The research of the connection between critical thinking level and Social Studies academic achievement of secondary school students

The aim of this research is the analyzing the connection between academic achievement of Social Studies and critical thinking level of middle-school students. In this research, critical thinking level of students and Social Studies academic achievement are analyzed in terms of school that students study, gender, educational status of mother and father, question types variate that students have difficulty in Social Studies exams. Research data is collected by the way of "Critical Thinking Scale" that consist of 17 articles that is improved by Görücü (2014) and "Personal Information Form" which is prepared for specify students personal characteristics. The scale is in this research, carried out in general survey model, is applied 224 students in class 7 in 5 middle school in Ağrı city centre. Datas, collected with aplied scale, are analyzed with statistics package software. Cronbach Alpha Reliabilty Coefficent of the scale is 0,71. The significance level in the research is taken as 0,05. In research conducted statistical methods (frequency, percentage, average, standard deviation), Mann Whitney U test, Kruskal Wallis test and Spearman Correlation test are used. According to research point average of general critical critical thinking of students is x̄=57,72. Critical thinking level of students is intermediate according to score interval that specified by Görücü (2014). It is determined a meaningful difference between Social Studies academical achievement of students and both gender and mother educational status variate, critical thinking level and both school and question types variate that students have difficult in Social Studies exams. Also, it is found that there is low-level, positively and meaningful connection between the point that students take from critical thinking scale and academical achievement of Social Studies. Keywords: Middle school students, academic achievement, critical thinking, social studies.