An investigation of higher religious education students' abstacles to critical thinking in terms of some variables

The aim of this study is to examine the critical thinking abstacles of higher religious students in terms of variables such as gender, age, level of education, place of birth, graduated secondary education institution, parental education status, economic status and frequency of participation in scientific activities. The population of the study consists of 829 undergraduate students studying at the Faculty of Islamic Sciences of Muş Alparslan University in the 2024-2025 academic year. The sample of the study consists of 305 higher religious education students who were determined by disproportionate stratified sampling method. In the study, the "Personal Information Form" created by the researcher and the "Critical Thinking Obstacles (ELDEN)" scale developed by Semerci et al. were used as data collection tools. The scale consists of 26 articles in total and four sub-dimensions: "Inability to Reason", "Egocentrism", "Belief in Authority" and "Overconfidence". SPSS 22.0 package program was used to analyze the quantitative data of the study. According to the results of the research data, it was seen that the critical thinking abstacles of higher religious education students were low. The critical thinking abstacles of the students do not create a significant difference according to the variables of gender, age, grade level, place of birth, secondary education institution they graduated from and parent's educational status. However, the critical thinking abstacles of the students created a significant difference according to the variables of economic status and frequency of participation in scientific activities. It was determined that students with low economic status faced more obstacles in the self-centeredness dimension of critical thinking obstacles than students with medium income. As a result of examining the effect of the frequency of students participation in scientific activities on their critical thinking disabilities, it was found that those who participated in scientific activities more frequently had lower levels of critical thinking disabilities. Based on the results of the study, suggestions such as increasing scholarships and other financial support programs for students with low economic status, encouraging participation in scientific activities, adding courses on this subject to the curriculum in order to improve critical thinking skills, organizing personal development seminars and awareness activities for students to be aware of their critical thinking abstacles, and helping students to develop their critical thinking skills by providing information and opinions from different perspectives have been offered.