ATTITUDES OF ARABIC LANGUAGE TEACHERS IN PUBLIC SECONDARY SCHOOLS IN JERUSALEM TOWARDS TEACHING CRITICAL THINKING SKILLS
This study is concerned with identifying the attitudes of teachers in secondary schools in Jerusalem towards teaching critical thinking, and identifying the educational strategies they actually use to develop it. The importance of this study is highlighted in identifying teachers’ attitudes towards teaching critical thinking, and in encouraging teachers and students to liberate themselves from the traditional patterns prevailing in education, and replace them with educational patterns based on the use of thinking teaching programs, to develop students’ latent skills and energies. The researcher asked the following main question: “What are the attitudes of teachers in secondary schools in Jerusalem towards teaching critical thinking skills?” The following two sub-questions branched out from this main question: The first: What are the educational strategies that teachers use to develop critical thinking skills? The second: Do teachers intend to use educational strategies that develop critical thinking, or do they use them by chance and without planning? To answer the research questions, the researcher chose a purposive sample of teachers in secondary schools in Jerusalem. The qualitative approach was used in the study, and the research tool was discussion in the focus group. The study was conducted in the first semester of the academic year 2022/2023. After collecting the data, the researcher analyzed it qualitatively, and arrived at the following main results: There are some strategies that teachers use to develop critical thinking skills, and their use varies from one teacher to another, and teachers’ attitudes towards enhancing critical thinking skills range between desire and lack thereof, and whoever has the desire does not have the knowledge and skill. And experience, as well as the teachers’ use of some strategies for teaching critical thinking is unintentional and unplanned. The study concluded with a number of recommendations based on the results of the study, the most important of which are: that the responsible authorities in the Ministry of Education prepare special training programs for teachers in using strategies for teaching critical thinking skills, and that other studies be conducted on critical thinking strategies within the framework of various academic subjects, and the last recommendation is that Other studies are being conducted that link inclinations toward critical thinking and its skills, due to the importance of inclinations toward critical thinking in acquiring and developing skills.
Keywords: Teachers’ Attitudes, Critical Thinking, Skills, Secondary Schools, Arabic Language