The Effect of Teaching Critical Thinking on Educational Achievement and Test Anxiety among Junior High School Students in Saveh

Abstract

The current study was done due to the goal of considering the effect of teaching critical thinking on educational achievement and test anxiety among junior high school students in Saveh. What is considerable here is that whether teaching critical thinking is effective in decreasing test anxiety and increasing educational achievement or not. The sample includes the 3rd grade high students in Saveh during the educational year 2012-13, including 4200 students. Since this study is quasi-experimental, the sample including 40 students were randomly divided into 2 groups of 20 students in control and experimental groups. At first, an anxiety pre-test was given and the amount of students’ educational achievement was studied. Then, there were 12 sessions of critical thinking treatment and a post-test. Finally, the results of pre-test and post-test were compared and analyzed via SPSS software. The results indicated that the test anxiety in pre-test was approximately the same in both groups, but after critical thinking treatment sessions in experimental group, the anxiety was decreased to a great deal in post-test. The results of educational achievement test are indicator of dissimilar changes in control and experimental groups. The amount of achievement in experimental group indicates some sort of increase in post-test rather than pre-test. Regarding the results, it is possible to say that critical thinking training can be found useful in junior high school level.