ASSESSMENT OF CRITICAL THINKING SKILLS AMONG SECONDARY SCHOOL LEARNERS IN KENYA: A COMPARATIVE STUDY OF PUBLIC SECONDARY SCHOOLS IN NYERI AND NAIROBI COUNTIES
Journal Title: Educational Research International - Year 2017, Vol 6, Issue 3
Abstract
This paper evaluates critical thinking skills among learners in public secondary schools in Kenya. The study adopted the descriptive survey research design. The research was guided by the Cognitive Development Theory, postulated by Jean Piaget as its theoretical framework. The target population comprised of form three students from the selected schools in the two counties. Schools were stratified into boys, girls and co-educational. A sample of schools from the two counties was selected using Kothari sampling formula which gave 30 (10%) schools from both counties. The sampled schools were as follows; 2 boys’ schools from each county, 3 and 2 girls’, 4 and 17 co-educational schools from Nyeri and Nairobi Counties respectively. Data was collected by means of a questionnaire administered to the sampled students. The study used a sampling formula by Kathuri and Pals to determine the sample size which yielded 376 respondents. The results of the study on a scale of 1 to 5, showed that learners from Nairobi County had relatively better critical thinking skills with a mean of 3.31 while Nyeri County scored 2.85. It had been hypothesized that there was no significant difference in critical thinking abilities between learners in Nyeri and Nairobi Counties, to establish thus, t-test was calculated which gave a p-value of .000 against the α-value of .05, the null hypothesis was thus rejected. It was concluded that the difference in critical thinking among students in Nairobi and Nyeri Counties was statistically significant. The study further sought to find out if there were statistically significant differences between students’ critical thinking skills from single gender and co-educational schools. One way Analysis of Variance (ANOVA) was computed. From the results, it was evident that there were statistically significant differences in the critical thinking skills of students from in the different school categories. The computed P- value = 0.010 was more than the alpha value α < 0.05. Therefore the null hypothesis was rejected and concluded that the critical thinking abilities among students in the three categories of schools were dissimilar. It was therefore concluded that there is need to strengthen critical thinking skills among students in according to county and school category in order to inculcate good citizenship, problem solving, high levels of academic performance, conflict resolution mechanisms among all secondary school students in Kenya.
Authors and Affiliations
Perminus Githui, Johannes Njagi Njoka, Margaret Mwenje
Keywords
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