CRITICAL THINKING SKILLS AMONG SENIOR HIGH SCHOOL STUDENTS AND ITS EFFECT IN THEIR ACADEMIC PERFORMANCE

The research was conducted to identify the Critical Thinking Skills and Academic Performance of the Senior High School aside from this it is the most important goal of schooling is to learn. And learning, as numerous educators have repeatedly pointed out, is a consequence of thinking. The purpose of the research is to determine the level of critical thinking skills of the respondents in the SHS of LFG-DNHS, thus the Pearson-R Correlation will use and purposive sampling to select the respondents. This method includes giving standardized critical thinking test to determine the profile, the scores and the level of critical thinking of the respondents. The respondents include a total of 45 senior high school students. On the basis of the aforementioned findings of the study, the following conclusions were drawn: The researcher found the profile of the respondent in their age, gender, religion, civil status, source of information in reading. Among the Area of Academic Performance and Mean of the 45 respondents it has a weighted mean of 3.35; the level of academic performance of 45 SHS students covering Core, Applied and Specialized (marked as 3.35 in the DepEd Grading System) with verbal interpretation of AVERAGE. In this regards, it shows that SHS subjects need to infuse critical thinking skills because they need to think critically or to understand first the problem before they can solve or make a decision especially they are future hope of the nation; The critical thinking skills levels of the respondents are not fully developed yet. They got a mean score of 28.01 that belongs to Beginning Thinker in the Critical Thinking Skills Test using the Critical Thinking Test. The test had proven that they did not attain the appropriate critical thinking level skills of a students enrolled in a General Academic Strand and Tech-Voc in the senior high school level; There is a significant relationship between critical thinking skills and the academic performance of the GAS and Tech-Voc Strand students which is -0.13534233with a verbal interpretation of SLIGHT CORRELATION. It indicates that there is a need of infusing and developing critical thinking skills of the students as they move from one level to another and in facing the 21st Century Skills and the Outcomes-Based Education in the Senior High School Level.