Effectiveness of Critical Thinking Training on the Strategies of Constructive Thinking and Self-efficacy of Medical Sciences Students

Attention to critical thinking is one of the higher educations goals and is a key component in students mental health. This study aimed to investigate the effect of critical thinking strategies on constructive thinking and self-efficacy of students.

This was a quasi-experimental study with pre-test and post-test design with control group. The sample consisted of 40 students of Lorestan University of Medical Sciences in the academic year of 2017-2018 who were selected by available sampling method and were randomly divided into two control and case groups. Before and after the Critical Thinking training, Emotional Productivity Strategies of Spain and Meyer (1990) and Morris Self-Efficacy Questionnaire (2001) were used to measure the emotional productivity of both validity and reliability indices. Critical thinking training was administered to the case group separately, for 10 sessions of 90 minutes and from the two post-test groups. Finally, the data obtained from pre-test and post-test scores of the case and control groups were analyzed by SPSS software using covariance analysis.

The results showed that the correlation coefficient between constructive thinking strategies and self-efficacy was 0.241. The results also showed that between the mean scores of constructive thinking strategies (8.81) and self-efficacy (83.3) in control group also in the mean scores of constructive thinking strategies (86.1) and self-efficacy (76.4) in the experimental group no significant differences was observed. Findings indicated that between the mean scores of constructive thinking strategies (0.78) and self-efficacy (81.6) in the control group and the mean scores of constructive thinking strategies (88.4) and self-efficacy (99.05) there was a significant differences in the experimental group (F = 12.57, P <0.001).

Therefore, considering the use of Critical Thinking training has a positive effect on increasing students 'constructive and self-efficacy thinking strategies and enhances students' constructive and self-efficacy thinking strategies, training courses in this field in educational centers Recommended.