The effect of concept mapping strategyoncritical thinkingskills in students

One of the goals of education is to foster thinking and reasoning. The realization of this goalrequires providing condition and using effective methods and strategies on Critical thinking. The purpose of this study was to investigate the effect of concept mapping on critical thinking skillsin students. The sample included 50 third grade of high school female students in Karaj city that were selected through purposive sampling. The research project was a quasi experimental design of pre- test and post-test with control group. The subjects were randomly assigned to experimental and control group. The experimental group was through using concept mapping cooperatively, while control group was not exposed to such kind of learning technique and the students in this group were through in common way of reading comprehension teaching.The California Critical Thinking Skills Test form B (CCTST) was used to measure the critical thinking ability of the students. The data were analyzed with Analysis of covariancetest (ANCOVA), and showed that the students in the experimental group achieved significantly higher critical thinking scores than the students in the control group. The findings reveal that using concept mapping as a learning strategy is effective in helping students develop critical thinking skills.