Developing Critical Thinking Attitudes in Middle School Social Studies Through the Development of Teaching Materials

Abstract

In recent years, critical thinking has been attracting attention as one of the general abilities and qualities. In this study, in the geography section of junior high school social studies, we set up an activity in which learners critically evaluate the summary statements of others and mutually evaluate and comment on them As a learning material we developed the "Peer Assessment of Critical Thinking Slide" and verified its effectiveness. The results showed that the rubric evaluation and questionnaire showed significant improvement in fostering critical thinking attitudes among the learners. In addition, the learners' evaluation comments to others in the peer evaluation situation and their summative descriptions after the peer evaluation showed their critical thinking attitudes. Therefore, it was suggested that the mutual evaluation using PACT slides is effective in fostering a critical thinking attitude.