The effect of epistemological understanding of physics on students' critical thinking skills

Abstract

The work aimed to designate the level of the epistemological understanding of physics, the student’s critical thinking skills and to analyse the direct effect of the epistemological understanding of physics on students' critical thinking skills. This research is ex-post-facto research. The samples were 61 final year students. The instrument used for the epistemological understanding of physics adopts the instrument form of the epistemological understanding assessment and standardised epistemological understanding assessment. The instruments used have been validated theoretically and empirically. Data were processed with SPSS V22.0 and Analysis of Moment Structure (AMOS) V24.0 software. The results show that students’ understanding of physics epistemological and critical thinking skills are in the medium category. The students' understanding of physics epistemology has a positive and significant effect on critical thinking skills. These findings can be used to develop appropriate physics learning resources.

Keywords: AMOS V22.0, critical thinking, epistemological understanding, ex-post-facto, learning, physics