Learning activities to develop critical thinking skills for career or further education decisions for grade 9 students

Abstract

The purpose of this research was to develop learning activities to enhance critical thinking skills for making career or further education decisions for Mathayom 3 (Grade 9) students. The research methodology was divided into two phases: Phase 1: Developing the learning activities through interviews with experts and using the information to create activities that combined the concept of learning management to enhance critical thinking skills and the Self-Mapped Learning Pathways (SMLP) concept. Phase 2: Studying the effects of using the learning activities to develop critical thinking skills for making career or further education decisions for Mathayom 3 (Grade 9) students. Experimental methods were employed to confirm the results of this innovation's development. The sample group consisted of 35 students from students in Mathayom 3/4 from Wat Khienkhet School, selected by random sampling. The employed instruments were the learning activity plans and a 5-rating scale critical thinking assessment. Data were analyzed using a paired sample t-test to compare means at a statistical significance level of .05

The results of this research showed that the learning activities consist of 1) Knowing Careers and Knowing Yourself, 2) Career Information and Self-Analysis, 3) Checking Yourself with Careers, 4) Self-Information and Further Education Planning, 5) Considering Options Based on Information, and 6) Deciding on a Career or Further Education. The quality of this learning activity was consensually validated by three experts. As for the result of employing the learning activities, it was showed that the average scale of critical thinking skill for making career or further education decisions of the students was significantly higher than the pre-employing state. The learning activities that students designed themselves could appropriately reflect their own future goal planning. Under the specified conditions where the teacher and students defined learning roles consistent with the students' context, and the evaluation results from the worksheets reflected qualitative data indicating that almost all both teachers and students had a high level of satisfaction with the use of the learning activity.