Development of Critical Thinking Scale through Philosophical Inquiry for Children 5-6 Years Old

Author : - Vesile Yıldız Demirtaş, Tuğba Yıldız
Number of pages :

Abstract

Philosophy for children approach has been implemented in 50 different countries, and the materials of this approach have been translated into 20 different languages. Lipman (2003) describes this approach as a philosophy-based approach to encourage critical thinking in students. The purpose of this study is to develop the "Critical Thinking Scale through Philosophical Inquiry" for the children at 5 and 6 years in pre-school period and to conduct the validity and reliability studies. The study group consisted of 509 children: 201 of them (39.5%) at 5 years, 308 (60.5%), at 6 years with 249 (48.9%) girls and 260 (51.1%) boys. Data were gathered from 41 classes in 10 kindergartens in İzmir in terms of working group, group diversity and representation power. After the end value, normality, and linearity analyses of the data were computed, the implicit factor analysis was used to determine the scale, and model fit was examined by confirmatory factor analysis. As a result of the EFA, there was no need to withdraw any material and AFA was a result of a 5-point Likert-type scale consisting of 38 factors, namely “Philosophical Inquiry", "Language and Cognitive Skills" and "Formulating Question". Internal consistency coefficients for these sub factors and the overall sum of the test were calculated to be .974, .955, .983, .986 respectively and were found to be at a higher level. Factors obtained from EFA were tested with CFA and the agreement values were found as χ2 / df: 4,933, RMSEA: .088, NFI: .899, CFI: .917, RFI: .889, IFI: .918, TLI: .910. As a result of the analyses made, it was concluded that the scale of " Critical Thinking Scale through Philosophical Inquiry ", which will enable the children in the pre-school period (5-6 years) to evaluate critical thinking skills through philosophical inquiry, is a valid and reliable scale.

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