The Situation of Tendency towards Critical Thinking in Students of the University of Isfahan and Some Factors Related to It

21st world is witnessing the advent of a critical movement and consequently the creation of a new view towards the issues governing societies. With the advent of this movement, a tradition of criticizing and challenging supposed foundations appeared in different fields of intellectual work and science, leading scholars to endeavor for expanding critical thinking among the public. While in the middle of the 20th century critical thinking was considered as an educational requirement, now required measures are defined to put this concept into academic curriculums, developing therefore habit of critical thinking in all learners. Regarding the necessities and importance of critical thinking in every society, the present study indents to evaluate tendency of students in critical thinking as they are indeed the forerunners of social change in Iran. In addition to examining this phenomenon, we also want to know how some specific factors are related to it. These factors include academic motivation, economic-social status, sex and field of study. The method employed in this study is cross-sectional survey. Data collection process included two standard questionnaires (Critical Thinking Disposition Inventory (CTDI) and Academic Motivation Scale (AMS)) and one researcher-made questionnaire. The first questionnaire, designed by Ricketts, includes three dimensions of engagement, innovativeness and cognitive maturity. The second questionnaire, designed by Vallerand et al. (1992), is a seventh-grade Likert scale questionnaire including 28 items, which are divided into 7 subscales: intrinsic motivation to experience stimulation, intrinsic motivation toward accomplishment, intrinsic motivation to experience stimulation, identified regulation, introjected regulation, external regulation and amotivation. The last questionnaire is a Our last questionnaire, designed by the authors, starts with three question of "field of study", "year of enrolling" and "sex" and continues with 8 items for evaluating the economic-social status. To evaluate the economic-social status, 5 dimensions of education, occupational rank, income, house price and car price were considered. Respondents of the present study included students of faculties of Humanities and Engineering of the University of Isfahan, whose total number was 833 individuals. Overall, 310 individuals were selected to constitute sample size using stratified probability sampling. Discussion of Results & The data obtained from the study was analyzed descriptively and inferentially at two univariate and bivariate levels. The most important findings of the study are as follows: The results of the study indicate that around % 82 of students have a high tendency towards critical thinking. Also, around %93 of them have the high educational motivation. When it comes to socio-economic status, around %71 of students belong to the middle class. In addition, to examine research hypotheses, the data at the bivariate level was analyzed descriptively and inferentially with the follow 1. The level of significance (Sig=0.000) was obtained from testing correlation between the two variables of tendency towards critical thinking and academic motivation, indicating there is a meaningful correlation between these two variables. 2. The analysis of the correlation between the two variables of tendency towards critical thinking and sex indicates that there is a meaningful correlation between these two variables (Sig=0.028). 3. The descriptive analysis of the correlation between the two variables of tendency towards critical thinking and economic-social status indicates that there is positive, albeit weak, correlation (0.007) between two variables. However, this correlation is not meaningful and may be due to sampling error because the level of significance for this test is above 0.05. 4. The Goodman & Kruskal's tau coefficient (0.049) to examine the correlation between two variables of tendency towards critical thinking and field of study means that only about 0.05 of the changes of student's tendency towards critical thinking is correlated with their field of study and yet this correlation seems to be meaningless because significant level is not acceptable in the test.