Academic performance and parenting styles differentially predict critical thinking skills and dispositions among primary students: Cross-sectional and cross-lagged evidence

The present research examined both critical thinking skills and critical thinking dispositions to gain a comprehensive understanding of critical thinking in primary students and the associations with academic performance and family factors including both parenting styles and family socioeconomic status. Study 1 utilized a cross-sectional design and involved 254 fifth-grade students who completed measures of critical thinking, academic performance, and family factors. Results showed that critical thinking skills were significantly associated with academic performance and parental education, and critical thinking dispositions with parental styles, parental education, and academic performance. Parenting styles accounted for a larger portion of the variance of critical thinking dispositions compared to academic performance, whereas academic performance explained the majority of the variance of critical thinking skills. These findings were further tested in study 2 which was conducted with 165 fourth-grade students assessed at two time-points separated by one year. Cross-lagged panel analyses demonstrated unidirectional associations from academic performance to critical thinking skills and unidirectional associations from parenting styles and academic performance to critical thinking dispositions. Taken together, these results provide insights into how parenting styles and school academic performance jointly explain individual differences in critical thinking among primary students.