Role of Critical Thinking, Optimism about Future and Learning Oriented Behavior on Academic Performance of High School Students

The present study is an attempt to explore whether critical thinking, optimism about the future and learning oriented behavior play a role in predicting the academic performance among high school students.This study will be conducted on a sample of 60 high school students. The sample will first be divided into two groups based on their academic performance. The high performance group will be composed of all those students scoring higher than 55% while the low performance group will comprise of those scoring less than 55%. The two groups were then assessed on critical thinking, optimism about future and goal oriented behavior using the California Critical Thinking Skills Test (CCTST), revised life orientation task (LOT-R), and learning goal orientation scale by Button et al respectively. The data will be analyzed in SPSS using regression analysis and independent sample t - test to find out whether the academic performance of high school students is determined by critical thinking, optimism about future and learning oriented behavior.