Critical Thinking Skills in the Elementary Books on Social Studies

Expanding the skill of critical thinking is one of the determining factors of an effective education. Texts books are the important instruments of this process in centralized educational systems which contribute to developing critical thinking by increasing the coefficient thinking or supporting research studies. The purpose of this study is evaluating the attention which the elementary school books on social studies devote to critical thinking. The statistical population is the elementary school text books on social studies taught in the third grade to the sixth grade. A checklist based on Lipmann critical thinking components was used for collecting the data. The results are as follows: 1. Critical thinking skills vary in the different grades of elementary school in as far as analysis, combination, evaluation and explanation are concerned. 2. Critical thinking skills in all the stages of analysis, combination, evaluation and explanation are lower than expected in all the text books of the grade three to grade six. 3. The relative status of the critical thinking skills in the stage of explanation in the text books on social studies is better than it is in the other stages. 4. On the whole, the elementary text books on social studies cannot contribute to the development of the critical thinking skills among students.