The relationship between middle school students' critical thinking tendencies and their sustainable learning levels

The aim of this study is to examine the relationship between critical thinking dispositions and sustainable learning levels of middle school students. Relational survey model, which is one of the quantitative research methods, was used in the study. The sample of the study consists of a total of 1103 students studying at the 5th, 6th, 7th and 8th grade level in 3 official secondary schools in the central district of Kırklareli province in the 2023-2024 academic year. In this study, "Sustainable Learning Scale" developed by Eskici in 2019 and "Critical Thinking Tendency Scale for Secondary School Students" developed by Yıldırım Döner and Demir in 2021 were used as data collection tools. The data obtained were transferred to the statistical package program. Within the framework of the sub-problems, it was examined whether there was a difference in terms of various variables (age, gender, grade level, achievement certificate, number of siblings, participation in sports and artistic activities). Mann Whitney U and Kruskal Vallis H tests were conducted in accordance with the results obtained from the variables. In the light of the findings, it was concluded that the critical thinking tendencies and sustainable learning levels of middle school students were at a high level. When the entire critical thinking disposition scale was taken into consideration, it was seen that there was a significant difference in terms of gender, certificate of achievement, number of siblings, participation in sportive and artistic activities, while there was no significant difference in terms of the class level variable. When the whole sustainable learning scale was taken into consideration, it was seen that there was a significant difference in terms of gender, grade level, certificate of achievement, number of siblings and participation in artistic activities, but not in terms of participation in sportive activities. It was concluded that there is a significant, moderate and positive relationship between critical thinking tendencies and sustainable learning levels of middle school students.