ABSTRACT
Educators are continuing to research strategies that will enhance critical thinking in social studies to advance students and to have positive engagement in the development of society. With a solid foundation of knowledge in contemporary issues, students will be more prepared to meet the challenges of the critical thinking skills. This study attempted to assess the teacher’s competencies and other related factors toward raising the students’ achievement in contemporary issues. The study used descriptive and correlational research design in conducting the study. The study revealed that the respondents perceived teacher’s competencies as very competent, in terms of mastery of content, achieving goals and objectives, employing teaching pedagogy and learning assessment. Likewise, the findings show that the respondents perceived other related factors in terms of schools’ initiatives and issues and challenges as highly observed. Further, the study show that students’ achievement in critical thinking skills exceeds expectations while mindset attributes of great extent.
Moreover, a significant negative relationship was found between the assessed teaching competencies to students’ critical thinking skills. Furthermore, the findings also revealed that the teaching competencies have significant relationship to mindset attributes. Other related factors as to schools’ initiatives and issues and challenges have no significant relationship to critical thinking skills but other related factors as to schools’ initiatives and issues and challenges have significant relationship to mindset attributes. Thus, this study recommends that the curriculum makers to identify other factors affecting critical thinking skills of students to enhance teaching-learning approaches in teaching contemporary issues.
Keywords: Teacher’s Competencies, Students’ Achievement
see PDF attachment for more information