Influence of Critical Thinking on The Academic Performance of Students in Economics in Secondary Schools in Abia State

Abstract

The study was carried out to investigate the influence of critical thinking on the academic performance of students in Economics in Abia State. The sample size of the study was 309   SS II students which comprised 117 male and 192 female students. The sample size of the study was 195 comprising of 95 male and 100 female. The study was guided by two research questions and two corresponding null hypotheses which were tested at 0.05 alpha level of significance. The study adopted the descriptive survey research design. The instrument used for data collection was a questionnaire titled; influence of critical thinking on students’ performance in Economics “ICTSPE” with two clusters addressing the two questions that guided the study.  The instrument was face validated by three experts, two in Economics Education and one expert from Measurement and Evaluation unit all from Michael Okpara University of Agriculture, Umudike. While the reliability of the instrument was determined using the test-retest method, a reliability index of 0.77 obtained. The mean and standard deviation were used to answer the research questions while t-test statistic was used to test the hypotheses at 0.05 level of significance. The finding revealed that that there was no significant influence in the mean responses of male and female students on how critical thinking influence students’ problem-solving skills in Economics. Also, the finding showed that there was no significant difference in the mean responses of male and female students on how critical thinking influence students’ performance in Economics. Therefore, it was recommended that the Ministry of Education should train teachers on how to use critical thinking in teaching student since this can increase academic performance among others.