Analyzing Students' Critical Thinking Skills in Geometry Learning through Augmented Reality: An Evaluation Using the Technology Acceptance Model

Technological innovation is still changing the face of mathematics teaching, providing fresh opportunities to create higher-order thinking and interest in students. The article focuses on how the critical thinking abilities of junior high school students can be helpful in their acceptance of Augmented Reality (AR) in geometry learning based on the Technology Acceptance Model (TAM). The quantitative survey was conducted on 234 students of 13 schools in Yogyakarta, Indonesia and analysed using the structural equation modelling with the Fuzzy C-Means Clustering to determine the trends of technology adoption. The results suggest that critical thinking skills also have a strong influence on the perceived usefulness and the perceived ease of use, which in turn influences the actual usage of the system by the students of Augmented Reality (AR) based learning applications. These results indicate that cognitive skills are significant predictors of technology acceptance and considerable learning. This study is theoretically relevant in that it builds on the Technology Acceptance Model (TAM) by integrating the mental construct of critical thinking to mediate between the technology adoption theory and the views of cognitive learning in describing the issue of the adoption of emerging educational technologies among students.