Abstract:

The aim of this study is to reveal the impact of sex, education type, class level and kind of the high school on students’ ability to solve problems and their level of using critical thinking. Also, it aims at determining the relation between high school students’ ability of solving problems and critical thinking. The paradigm consists of 450 high school students. The data of the study was gathered with the help of questions which contain high school students’ demographical qualifications, “Inventory of Solving Problem” that was developed by Heppner and Peterson (1982) and translated into Turkish by Şahin and Heppner (1993) and “Measure of Tendency of Critical Thinking” developed by Akbıyık (2002) that includes views about critical thinking. According to the results of the research, (1) It is defined that the kind of high school is an important (meaningful) predictor for students’ ability to solve problems. Sex, success level in class, age variation is not a meaningful predictor for high school students’ ability to solve problems. (2) Sex, kind of high school, success level in class, and age variation is not a meaningful predictor for high school students’ level of critical thinking. (3) There is a positive and a medium-level relation between high school students’ ability of critical thinking and solving problems.

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