Content Analysis of the Studies in Turkey on the Ability of Critical Thinking.

AbstractCritical thinking, along with other skills, is included as a basic skill in the constructive education program that has been in use in Turkey since 2005. Therefore, a large increase has been observed in studies on critical thinking skills since 2005. In this frame, the present study was conducted in order to systematically examine research papers on critical thinking skills in terms of several variables published between the years 2005 and 2014 in national journals which are indexed by SSCI and the ULAKBIM social sciences database. In this context, a total of 93 articles from 29 different journals were analyzed using the NVivo 10, SPSS 18, and MicrosoftExcel programs and performing content analysis which is widely used in qualitative studies. According to the findings, a large number of the studies were from 2011 and 2013, and they were carried out by female researchers on prospective teachers using quantitative methods and descriptive research design; they used scales as data collection tools. However, it was found that only one study was made at the primary school level and there have not been any researches performed in kindergartens, English or Math classes, or for improving a model.Keywords: Critical thinking * Content analysis * Studies in Turkey* NVivoThinking is one of the concepts that has attracted the most interest since the beginning of man's existence. Therefore, it is very hard to identify the first studies on thinking. Aristotle, however, the great scientist from ancient Greek thought, said that thinking is composed of reason and logic is a tool which takes one to the truth. Descartes, one of the thinkers from the 17th century, puts thinking on par with being suspicious. According to Ibni Haldun, thinking means searching for reasons in an event or situation (Hancerlioglu, 2007). Dewey (1910) defines thinking, just as feeling the symptoms of rain, as recognizing what will happen in the future and taking steps accordingly. Mevlana indicates that thinking is a dream which humans relive in their mind, and he also defines this dream as a potential strength which takes humans to their goals. Mustafa Kemal Ataturk identifies the ability to think as a more powerful weapon than artillery or rifles (Kocahanoglu, 2003; Nahifi& Celebioglu, 2008). Because the history of thinking as a concept is based on the past and highly intensified, various skills were put forward on this concept; the importance of high-level thinking and conscious thinking especially began to emerge. One of the concepts which meets these requirements is the ability of critical thinking.The first serious studies on critical thinking started in the 1960's. These studies are generally noted for evaluating written expression (Kazanci, 1989). The ability of critical thinking was first presented by Perry in the 1960's and then it was modeled in the 1980's by Paul et al (Ozden, 2000). Critical thinking was first defined in 1962 by Ennis. In the 1980's, Ennis and Beyer handled critical thinking differently. According to Ennis (1985), critical thinking is focused on deciding what to believe and what to do; it is reflective and mentally based. Additionally, critical thinking includes hypotheses, questions, and alternatives. Beyer (1987) defines critical thinking as requiring an analysis between connections together with assessment of the truth and certainty of knowledge.In Turkey, studies on critical thinking were first done by Kazanci in 1989 and Cuceloglu in 1995. Cuceloglu defines critical thinking as the recognition of the process of self-thought by considering the thinking processes of others with the aim of understanding situations about one's environment by applying what one has taught one's self. Cuceloglu also believes that it is an active and organized mental process. Kazanci defines critical thinking as the total process of skill, style, and information which is included in argumentation and assessment in regard to the validity and consistency of a problem's cultural, social, and scientific criteria. …