Adolescent Development in the 21st Century: Developing Critical Thinking Skills Through Expressive Drawing Techniques

Abstract

Adolescent is a formal operational stage of cognitive development. The development of an educational program prioritizes four skills to support success in meeting the challenges of the 21st century. One of the priority skills of the four skills is critical thinking skill. Critical thinking skill is a skill which shows the performance of individual cognition in interpreting, analyzing, and doing self-regulation regarding problems and information received. Critical thinking skill is closely related to problem-solving skill and decision-making skill. This study aimed to figure out the implementation of expressive drawing techniques to adolescents in sharpening and developing critical thinking skill in solving their life problems. In addition, this study was conducted to examine the relationship between problem solving strategies used by adolescents with their critical thinking patterns related to the problems they have. This research used a qualitative approach with descriptive data on exploring the implementation and impact of expressive drawing technique in stimulating adolescents' thinking skill as well as the form of adolescents' critical thinking pattern which is seen on the mapping pattern drawn after answering questions in interview. The data of the study were collected through interviews, documentation studies, and observation. The data collected in the form of documentation study of the image were analyzed to get the development result of expressive drawing technique toward adolescent development in critical thinking. Before the data were analyzed, the data were divided into 2 parts, namely the application in the early teens and the image data of the late adolescents. Data analysis techniques used were (1) data collection; (2) data reduction; (3) data interpretation; (4) perform data triangulation; and (5) drawing conclusions. The results of this study indicate that: (1) providing critical thinking skills materials through expressive drawing techniques can develop and stimulate the ability of adolescents in critical thinking to their problems; (2) the pattern of adolescent thinking on their problems through expressive drawing techniques can develop the critical thinking skills of adolescents in determining the action priority as decision-making to determine strategies and to make choices in life; (3) the average adolescents are able to think critically better in determining the priority of complex life problems to be solved systematically and more structurally when compared to early adolescents.