Effect of Organizing Science Learning Activity Using Phenomenon Based Learning On Critical Thinking Ability of High School Students

Abstract

The aims of the study were to 1) compare students’ critical thinking ability before and after employing phenomenal-based learning activities and 2) study students’ improvement in critical thinking ability after learning from phenomenal-based learning activities. The samples were 44 Grade-10 students at an extra-large size secondary school under the Secondary Education Service Area Office Bangkok 1. Moreover, the research instruments were the achievement test for evaluating students’ critical thinking ability, the observation forms for evaluating students’ progress of critical thinking ability, and the lesson plans utilizing the science learning activities with phenomenal-based learning. The findings were as follow: 1) There was a statistically significant different result between pre-test and post-test of the students taught by using phenomenal-based learning at the 0.5 level of significance, which the mean of post-test scores was higher than pre-test scores. Furthermore, after identifying each component, it was found that there were 5 components including 1) problem identification 2) information gathering 3) hypothesis formulation 4) inference and 5) evaluation of argument. The mean of the post-test scores was higher than the pre-test scores at the .05 level of significance. 2) students’ critical thinking ability after employing phenomenal-based science learning activities has positively improved both holistic and each component.