The Extent to Which Arabic Language Teachers Focus on Developing Critical Thinking Skills at the Basic Education Level in Iraqi Schools

Critical thinking has consistently occupied a central position in educational discourse across historical periods, owing to its pivotal role in equipping learners with essential cognitive and learning skills. The significance of critical thinking stems from its capacity to develop students’ abilities to analyze, evaluate, and make reasoned judgments, thereby preparing them to effectively address academic challenges and real-life situations. Accordingly, educators across different educational levels strive to adopt and implement instructional strategies specifically designed to cultivate and enhance critical thinking skills. The systematic promotion of inquiry sustained investigation, and the rigorous interrogation of unexamined assumptions constitute a foundational mechanism for expanding students’ cognitive horizons. Such an approach encourages learners to engage critically with a wide range of academic domains, thereby deepening their conceptual understanding and reinforcing their capacity for autonomous, lifelong learning. Given that learning is intrinsically a cognitive enterprise grounded in processes of thinking, the deliberate and explicit instruction of critical thinking assumes heightened significance. This importance is particularly pronounced in the context of Arabic language education, where teachers bear a central responsibility for cultivating learners’ higher-order thinking skills through linguistically mediated analysis, interpretation, and evaluation. The study population comprised all male and female Arabic language teachers at the basic education level in Iraq. To achieve the study objectives, a random sample of 510 teachers was selected from this population. The sample reflected diversity in gender, academic qualification, and type of secondary school certificate (scientific or literary). Research Instrument: The California Critical Thinking Skills Test (CCTST, 2000). The California Critical Thinking Skills Test was developed based on a comprehensive definition of critical thinking derived from a consensus among a group of experts in the field of psychology. The test aims to measure five core critical thinking skills: analysis, induction, inference, deduction, and evaluation. The study revealed variation in the levels of critical thinking skills among participants, with mean scores ranging from 1.578 to 4.507. Nevertheless, all of these means were below the level considered educationally acceptable. This outcome is attributed to shortcomings in the curricula in promoting critical thinking, as well as to the difficulty of acquiring and practicing these skil