LEVEL OF CRITICAL THINKING SKILLS FOR GRADUATE STUDENTS IN SOCIAL WORK

Abstract

    Critical thinking has recently become a necessary and important goal due to the rapid and successive progress in the world, especially in science in all its branches, and it has become broadcast daily around the hours a huge and huge amount of data and information from several sources, and thus the educational field and educational institutions are facing a real challenge to build the personality of a student or scientific researcher capable of choosing from multiple alternatives and making a decision. The current study aimed to determine the level of critical thinking skills among graduate students majoring in social work. In Egyptian universities, the study was applied to a simple random sample of graduate students (diploma, master, doctorate) in the five Egyptian universities that have graduate programs, and the sample size was (306) male and female students. The results of the study showed that most graduate students in the field of social work possess critical thinking skills at an moderate level, except for the skill of reasoning that came at a high level, and The overall average critical thinking skills was at moderate level also with average (3.24), which shows that there is a necessary need to develop the content of courses and teaching methods to allow students to develop other critical thinking skills such as The skills of interpretation, conclusion, knowledge of assumptions, and evaluation of discussions, which contribute to the development of their research capabilities and independence in critical analysis and the development of their creativity and innovation skills.

Keywords: Critical thinking – critical thinking skills