Careful Thinking and Its Relationship to Academic Achievement among History Department Students at the College of Basic Education, University of Diyala

Abstract

The primary purpose of this research is to measure the level of empathy and academic achievement among history majors at the University of Diyala's College of Basic Education in order to draw any conclusions about the relationship between the two. The researchers employed a correlational descriptive technique to achieve their study aims. At the University of Diyala, the research was conducted during the first morning study (first academic course) of the 2024–2025 academic year and included 150 male and female students from the History Department in the College of Basic Education. The 227-person research population was stratified randomly according to gender using an equal distribution method. A total of 150 pupils were chosen, including 75 men and 75 women. In order to achieve the goals of the study, researchers developed a test for caring thinking based on Lipman's paradigm (Lipman, 2003). The fifty-five questions in the test mostly dealt with five areas: effective thinking, emotional intelligence, evaluative thinking, normative thinking, and emotional intelligence. For each category, there were 10 items based on the five-point Likert scale; five items were positive and five were negative. Each question had five possible answers: (very) so, (slightly) so, (not, lkjlollat all so), (very little so), and (not at all so). A good object would have a weight of (5, 4, 3, 2, 1) while a negative item would have a weight of (1, 2, 3, 4, 5). Researchers used statistical analysis to find out how discriminating the test items were. We also managed to get our hands on the test's psychometric properties, such as its face validity, component validity, and concept validity. Also, the reliability coefficient (as determined by Cronbach's alpha) was 0.87. The results of this research were obtained by analysing and interpreting data using SPSS, which stands for Statistical Package for the Social Sciences.