Measuring Students’ Critical Thinking Ability by Adapting California Critical Thinking Skills Test to Primary School Students

Abstract

This research aims to describe (1) the validity and reliability of the instruments adapted from the California Critical Thinking Skills Test and (2) its implementation to measure elementary school students’ critical thinking skill in Indonesian language learning. The research data were the scores obtained from the validity and reliability testing and from the implementation of the instrument to measure the students’ critical thinking skill. Data were analyzed using descriptive statistical methods . The results are (1) the adapted instrument to measure students’ critical thinking skill has a quite high validity (in interpreting, analyzing, and regulating) and high validity (in concluding, evaluating, and explaining). The reliability testing shows that the instrument is highly reliable with a Cronbach’s alpha of 0.634; and (2) the implementation of the instrument shows that 5% of the students have a high critical thinking skill, 14% high, 45% medium, and 36% low. The degree of critical thinking skill is described respectively: interpreting (48%), analyzing (51%), concluding (14%), evaluating (45%), explaining (74%), and self-regulating (56%). The implication of this research is that teachers need to design learning that is more innovative and creative to help improve students' critical thinking skills, so that there is a significant increase in aspects of the ability to interpret, the ability to analyze, the ability to conclude, the ability to evaluate.