Institute of Educational

The purpose of this study was to investigate the effect of teaching critical thinking skills on students' social and cognitive development. This quasi-experimental study was performed using pre-test and post-test with control group. The statistical population consisted of all seventh grade female students in Karaj in the academic year 95-96. Multistage cluster sampling method was used for sampling. For this purpose, all the girls' schools in Karaj were divided into four groups according to their location and then we randomly selected one district and two schools from that district. So that from the first school one class was taught for critical thinking skills and the other from the school one was assigned to the control group. The number of subjects was based on Cohen's table with effect size of 0.50 and test power of 0.97, sample size for experimental group 24 and control group of 24 persons. The instruments used in the study were Matson's Social Skills Questionnaire (1983) and Neural Cognitive Skills Questionnaire (2013). Descriptive statistics was used for data analysis and multivariate analysis of variance (MANOVA) was used for inferential statistics. The results showed that there was a significant difference between the mean scores of social skills and cognitive skills of students who were trained in Critical Thinking and compared to students who were trained in the usual way in schools and increased their skills. Social skills and cognitive skills.

The aim of this study was to determine the effect of teaching critical thinking skills on creativity of male high school students in Behbahan city. Teaching critical thinking was independent variable, and creativity were dependent variables. The present study was a field experimental study with pre- post-test and follow-up design. The variables were measured by Critical Thinking of Halpern, version 21 and Creativity of Abedi. The sample consisted of 50 high school students in third grade that were enrolled in the school year of 2015-2016, and were selected through multistage random sampling method. They also were randomly assigned into two experimental and control groups. Before teaching critical thinking to experimental group, the pre-tests of critical thinking and creativity were administered to both groups. Then, the experimental group was taught critical thinking and no training was provided to the control group. After the completion of the course, the critical thinking and creativity questionnaires were administered to both groups, and five weeks later were administered again. Results of multivariate analysis of covariance (MANCOVA) indicated that teaching critical thinking causes a significant increase in creativity in students. Also, the results indicated that teaching critical thinking has a persistent effect on creatively over time.