Biology Student Teacher’s Critical Thinking: An Exploration Study

Abstract

Critical thinking is incorporated in learning outcomes to enable student teacher to analyze, evaluate, and synthesize information in the new era of information and technology era. It is very important for the preparation and understanding of their future profession as a teacher who was crucial in setting up the community of critical thinkers. This study aimed to determine the critical thinking ability of Biology student teachers. The method used is descriptive analysis with the total research subject is 98 sophomores in Biology Education at State University of Malang. The instrument used is critical thinking test consisting of 25 multiple choice questions which refer to Watson-Glaser Critical Thinking Appraisal (WGCTA). Data were analyzed using SPSS 22.0 for Windows with descriptive statistic. The result showed that only 35 students (35.71%) who have achieved critical thinking ability with the average of 61.39. Ability to evaluate the argument has the highest average (X=79.39) and make inference has the lowest average (X=27.14). Efforts to overcome the lack of critical thinking ability can be done by training the students to solve problems from multiple resources, one of them is through a challenge based learning.