Level of critical thinking skills among students of Tahfiz school

Abstract

The purpose of this study is to identify the level of critical thinking skills among students of Tahfiz school from the science stream tahfiz and religious tahfiz. A total of 124 students had answered surveys under the Malaysian Critical Thinking Skills Instrument (MyCT) comprising 62 items from four sub-constructs (which are evaluation, analytical and logical, disposition and assumptions) derived from the results of a study conducted by SitiRahayah (2003). The quantitative data of the survey were analysed descriptively by using the Statistical Package for Social Sciences (SPSS) to get the frequency, percentage, mean and standard deviation. The findings show that the level of mastery of critical thinking is average. The conclusion of the study shows that individuals who had the ability to think critically were from all level of students of the Tahfiz school whether they are from the science and religious stream or otherwise. This is because their exposure to the “al-fahm” memorization technique in the hafazan (memorisation) studies had trained them to analyse and understand the meaning and the interpretation of the verse being memorized. The implication of this study shows that mastery in critical thinking must be impressed on the students of tahfiz schools through the methods of “al-fahm” in hafazan.