Critical Thinking Skills Development among Secondary School Students: An Analysis of Chemistry Textbook Grade X (2020)

The current study used qualitative analysis of the Chemistry textbook grade X through the facilitation of NVivo 12 software to analyze the textbook about critical thinking skills development. The textbook was selected through purposive sampling. The findings revealed that the textbook fostered critical thinking skills through several approaches relevant to chemistry concepts in to real-world, and their applications, asking open-ended questions, presenting merits and demerits of chemical processes, offering flow diagrams of industrial systems, comparing related concepts, and illustrating underlying chemical principles behind the phenomenon. The book urged students to apply chemistry principles critically in practical settings, evaluate them from different perspectives, rationalize complex processes thoroughly, and analyze their strengths and weaknesses in various approaches. Additionally, it invited them to discover the logic behind complex chemical systems and question what drives chemical behaviors at core levels. Moreover, explicit instruction on developing critical thinking skills should be better integrated into the curriculum with inquiry-based activities.