Abstract:

This study aims to determine whether the sub-dimensions and total scores of middle school students' critical thinking skills differ according to their Turkish course academic achievement, gender, and grade variables. The research was designed in accordance with the correlational survey model. Sampling was determined by criterion sampling. The sample consists of 684 students from different grade levels (5th, 6th, 7th, and 8th). “Analytic Critical Thinking Rubric for Narrative Texts”, which was prepared to evaluate the critical thinking skills of middle school students in Turkish lessons developed by Amanvermez İncirkuş and Beyreli (2019), was used as a data collection tool. Another data collection tool is students' end-of-term Turkish course academic achievement. The data were obtained in the 2018-2019 academic year. Data analysis was done with SPSS 22 program. Pearson correlation, independent sample t-test, and ANOVA analysis were used. As a result, it is seen that there is a moderate, positive, and significant relationship (r=.568, p<0.01) between the middle school students' Turkish course academic achievement and their critical thinking total score average. On the other hand, there is a moderate, positive, and significant relationship between students' Turkish course academic scores and definition (r=.452) and interpretation (r=.475) sub-skills. There is a weak, positive, and significant relationship between analysis (r=.339), inference (r=.383), explanation (r=.326), assumption (r=.374), and evaluation (r=.282) sub-skills. According to the gender variable, there is a significant difference in favor of female students in the total score of critical thinking. There is a significant difference in the total score of critical thinking between 5th, 6th, 7th and 8th grades in favor of 6th, 7th, and 8th grades and between 6th, 7th and 8th grades in favor of 7th grades.

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