Scientific Attitude in Relation to Critical Thinking among School Teachers

Scientific attitude helps to tackle problem objectively without bias promoting logical thinking. It is the "scientific spirit" or "scienticism" which creates rational outlook. A person accepts whatever is based on scientific background. He tries to improve situation/condition according to new evidence. Scientific approach is progressive, such a person is never too certain of his facts and always ready to accept truth on the basis of empirical data. He encourages systematic doubts and critical thinking. Critical thinking is self-guided, self-disciplined thinking which attempts to reason at the highest level of quality in a fair-minded way. A person who thinks critically, consistently attempt to live rationally, reasonably, empathically. He works diligently to develop the intellectual virtues of intellectual integrity, intellectual humility, intellectual civility, intellectual empathy, intellectual sense of justice and confidence in reason. At the same time, he recognizes the complexities often inherent in doing so. He avoid thinking simplistically about complicated issues and strive to appropriately consider the rights and needs of relevant others. The study had been conducted on the schoolteachers of Mohali district of Punjab through descriptive research. Findings revealed that there had been significant difference among the male and female teachers on scientific attitude and critical thinking. On both the variables the mean scores favored the female teachers signifying more scientific attitude and critical thinking than their male counterparts. Both the variables signified positive co-relation meaning that there is strong co-relation among the two variables signifying the dependency of one on the another.