GENDER-BASED DIFFERENCES IN CRITICAL THINKING SKILLS AMONG FIFTH-GRADE STUDENTS: A CASE STUDY OF SERAT CENTHINI TEXTS

Introduction

Critical thinking skills are widely recognized as an essential competency in 21^st-century education and have therefore been introduced from the elementary level. These skills enable students to draw reasoned conclusions, make informed decisions, as well as solve problems effectively. In higher education, critical thinking skill is emphasized to encourage independent thinking, personal autonomy, and reasoned judgment (Alwehaibi, 2012; Latif et al., 2018; Thomas, 2011). Critical thinking also enables students to solve problems effectively and make better decisions. Furthermore, critical thinking skills have become important for students’ future success in an ever-changing world (Tosuncuoglu, 2018). Within educational practice, critical thinking is often integrated into reading and literacy instruction to enhance students’ analytical, evaluation, and comprehension skills. For instance, in China, integrated reading and writing assignments are designed to stimulate critical thinking skills (Zhu et al., 2014). Such tasks are encourage readers not only to understand texts literally but also to “read between the lines” and “read across the lines” by making relevant inferences, analyzing, and synthesizing information from multiple texts (Westby, 2004).

One type of text that can be utilized to foster critical thinking is folklore. Folklore has significant potential to stimulate critical thinking through its rich content, including values, conflicts, morals, and cultural perspectives (Riani et al., 2025). Folklore can be defined to be traditional stories that reflect and transmit cultural values, social norms, and local identity. (Ahmed & Kousar, 2023; Babayeva, 2023; Reynolds, 2015). Integrating folklore into educational practices can support cultural appreciation and the development of analytical skills, including the ability to analyze the structure, meaning, and messages within texts. Numerous studies have shown that folklore can foster critical thinking. For example, integrating folklore into elementary school curricula in Ghana encourages reflective thinking about social life and cultural norms (Agbenyega et al., 2017). Folktales provide a rich context for critical reading, allowing students to connect their learning to real-life situations and cultural practices (Zakaria et al., 2023).

In the Indonesian context, one folklore that contains rich local knowledge and holds strong potential as critical literacy teaching material is Serat Centhini. Serat Centhini contains a wealth of local knowledge, covering various aspects of community life, including customs, beliefs, and daily practices. This local knowledge can be used to teach students about the importance of local wisdom and its application in modern life (Mambu et al., 2025; Parameswara et al., 2023). Despite this potential, the use of folklore rich of local knowledge has not yet been widely into classroom learning (Zakaria et al., 2023) since not all students and teachers have access to or lack of deeper understanding of folklore and the values contained within it (Johan et al., 2019).

Research indicates that critical reading skills among elementary school students remain low. For instance, Utami et al (2020) found that upper-grade students struggled to fully comprehend multimodal texts and required regular teacher guidance to do so. This indicates that students are not deeply engaged with the material to analyze or critique it critically.

Furthermore, research on critical thinking in folklore texts remains very limited, so the potential of local wisdom as a meaningful learning resource has not been fully realized. However, a local culture-based approach can increase the relevance of learning. Specifically, no research has examined Serat Centhini as a teaching material or as an object of critical analysis at the elementary school level, because folklore is considered too complex and relevant only to secondary and higher education. This situation indicates an important research gap that needs to be addressed, both in developing critical literacy and in preserving local culture through elementary education.

Many studies have shown gender differences in critical thinking, reading literacy, and other cognitive abilities. For instance, one study showed few gender differences in specific cognitive components of reading comprehension. Male showed a slight advantage in text inference and low-knowledge integration, while female performed better in high-knowledge integration and text memory (Hannon, 2014). However, other research shows that girls consistently outperform boys in reading literacy across 65 countries, with a significant effect size (d = 0.44) (Reilly, 2012). These results indicate that gender differences in cognitive skills remain inconsistent, as some studies show that women are better at literacy and others show that men are superior in certain logical skills. In fact, at the elementary school level, research on gender differences in critical thinking towards literary/folklore texts is almost non-existent. These gaps offer opportunities for research to uncover new insights, especially regarding gender differences in critical thinking skills regarding folklore texts, thereby adding a gender perspective to the study of critical thinking in elementary schools and providing a new understanding of critical literacy grounded in local knowledge.

This study aims to examine the students’ critical thinking skills through the lens of gender differences by engaging folklore texts, particularly Serat Centhini, by: 1) Comparing the level of critical thinking based on gender; and 2) Comparing critical thinking indicators reviewed from the perspective of gender differences.

Methods

This employed a survey design with a descriptive quantitative approach, which aims to analyze the differences in critical thinking skills between male and female students when engaging Serat Centhini text. This design was selected to provide a systematic overview of students’ critical thinking profiles and to examine gender-based differences in critical thinking abilities through statistical analysis. Furthermore, this approach enables trend analysis and risk estimation (in the form of odds ratios) across different categories of critical thinking abilities.

The study population consisted all fifth-grade students in Surakarta City, Indonesia. The sampling technique used in this study was cluster random sampling. The selected sample comprised 186 fifth-grade students from nine schools across five sub-districts. This technique was used to ensure gender representation. Of the total participants, 100 were boys and 86 were girls, aged between 10-11 years.

Critical thinking skills related to the Serat Centhini text were measured using a critical thinking test instrument developed based on the critical thinking framework by Ennis (2015) and has been adapted to the context of elementary school learning. The five indicators of critical thinking skills assessed in this instrument are presented in Table 1.

Data collection was conducted during Indonesian language lessons under the supervision of the class teacher to maintain a natural learning environment. Students were provided the Serat Centhini text and asked to transform it into a simplified story that incorporated local knowledge and philosophical values appropriate to the cognitive development of elementary school-aged children. Students completed the instrument after reading the Serat Centhini text. Before completing the instrument, they input gender data, which the researcher recorded as a categorical variable for comparative analysis.

Data analysis was conducted using SPSS version 25. Descriptive statistics were applied to describe the general profile of students’ critical thinking skills. To examine the relationship between gender and critical thinking ability categories, researchers used Crosstab and Risk Estimate (Odds Ratio) analyses, with a 95% confidence interval and a p-value < 0.05 as the significance limit. Additionally, each critical thinking indicator was analyzed separately to identify specific tendencies and gender differences in students’ comprehension of the Serat Centhini text.

Results

The results indicate that there are differences in the ability to critique Serat Centhini among fifth-grade elementary school students based on gender. Female students have a higher average score than male students, as presents in Table 2.

Based on the results above, it is known that women have an average critical thinking ability that is 7.30 points higher than men. This means that in general, women tend to be more able to think critically about the Serat Centhini text. Furthermore, the median score for women is higher than that for men, indicating that most female students are at a higher level of ability than men, and this is not due to a few extreme values. However, the scores of male students are more diverse than those of female students, as indicated by the variance and standard deviation. Female students demonstrated a higher peak scores than male students. Thus, it suggests that female students are superior to male students even though both have the same minimum score. Female students also have a slightly wider score range, indicating that they are not only superior in average scores but also have students with more extreme maximum scores.

Inferentially, differences in critical thinking abilities among 5th-grade students by gender were assessed using a normality test to determine whether the data were normally distributed, as shown in Table 3.

Based on the results of the Kolmogorov-Smirnov test, a significance value of 0.000 was obtained, as was the Shapiro-Wilk test, which showed a significance result of 0.000. Both values are less than 0.5, indicating that the data on students’ critical thinking abilities are not normally distributed. Therefore, to determine the results of the comparison of critical thinking in male and female students, the test used is the non-parametric Fisher’s Exact Test. The results of this analysis are presented in Table 4.

Based on Table 4, the majority of male students are in the low critical thinking category (55%), while female students are more in the high critical thinking category (66.3%). Descriptively, female students have better critical thinking skills towards Serat Centhini than male students. This also indicates a significant difference in critical thinking skills by gender, as shown by the p-value of 0.005 < 0.05. These results also indicate that males are 2.4 times more likely than females to be in the low category. The confidence interval obtained also does not exceed 1, so this result is stable and reliable.

Furthermore, gender-based differences across each critical thinking skill indicator are presented in Table 5.

The results of the cross-tabulation analysis between gender and critical thinking ability indicators indicate variations in differences between male and female students in each critical thinking indicator. The inference and clarity indicators were found to be significant (p = 0.041) and (p = 0.011). These results indicate that male students are 1.8 times more likely than female students to be in the low category on the inference indicator. Meanwhile, for the clarity indicator, male students are also 2.1 times more likely to have lower clarity than female students. Hence, it can be concluded that female students demonstrate better inferential abilities and clearer thinking.

The other four indicators, focus, reason, situation, and overview, did not show significant differences between male and female students (p > 0.05), although the reason indicator showed a tendency to approach significance (p = 0.076). In addition, the Odds Ratio values for all indicators are above 1, indicating that male students are generally more likely to be in the low category than female students, although not all are statistically significant.

Discussion

This study explores the critical thinking of fifth-grade elementary school students when engaging with Serat Centhini which has been transformed into a simplified version for elementary school readers. Furthermore, it also examines how gender influences their interpretive and evaluative engagement with the text. As a rich literary works rich in moral, philosophical, and cultural reflections, Serat Centhini demands readers not only to understand its surface narrative but also to infer symbolic meanings embedded in Javanese philosophy, particularly the concept of manunggaling kawula lan Gusti (unity between man and God), which represents Javanese philosophical thought (Ediyono et al., 2025; Widodo & Purwantoro, 2019).

Interpreting the transformed Serat Centhini text demands the ability to question, interpret, and evaluate the text’s cultural meanings. This requires readers to navigate between literal and symbolic understanding, connecting textual content with moral reasoning and contemporary relevance. Research findings indicate that female students exhibit more refined critical responses, particularly in articulating interpretations and constructing moral inferences. This pattern supports the idea that gender differences in reading are often associated with empathy-based interpretations. Females generally demonstrate higher levels of empathy than males (Rochat, 2023; Watanabe et al., 2022). These differences are influenced by socialization, neurobiological factors, and hormonal variations (Derntl et al., 2010; Rochat, 2023). On the other hand, female students tend to be more analytical but struggle to convey abstract meanings derived from culturally rich texts with clarity.

Furthermore, male students are 2.4 times more likely to be in the low category of critical thinking. This is also inline with Luke & Freebody’s (1999) critical literacy theory, literacy is not just about reading texts, but also assessing, interpreting, and relating them to socio-cultural contexts. In critical literacy, gender influences the reader’s positioning of the text. One piece of supporting evidence is the finding that women often interpret texts through an empathetic, relational perspective, enabling them to uncover the implicit meanings in texts rich in moral and spiritual symbols. This approach is better suited to understanding emotional nuances and contexts that may not be explicitly visible. In contrast, men tend to assess the structure of the text and relate it to explicit rules or logic. They focus more on technical and structural analysis of the text, allowing them to identify underlying patterns and rules (Comber & Nixon, 2012; Gustine & Insani, 2019; Jones, 2013). Therefore, female students tend to have higher levels of critical thinking than male students. Moreover, in a text like Serat Centhini, which is full of moral and spiritual symbolism, a female relational approach is more appropriate for uncovering its implicit meaning.

Meanwhile, according to the theory of genderlect style, men and women communicate with different styles and strategies, which are considered different dialects or “genderlects” (Borisova et al., 2018). The theory states that these differences in communication are deeply rooted in socio-cultural norms and expectations. For instance, women tend to use language more frequently to build relationships and understand emotions (rapport talk) than men (Palomares, 2008). Meanwhile, men are more likely to use language that emphasizes logical reasoning and evidence, especially in high-stakes negotiation situations, which aligns with the concept of report talk (Bau & Trang, 2025). This impacts the way women become more accustomed to structuring their speech to build shared understanding when reading texts. Therefore, female students tend to excel in critical thinking.

Gender differences and their influence on critical thinking skills in relation to text are also supported by neurocognitive theory. Women tend to have stronger interhemispheric connectivity, which supports the integration of emotional and cognitive processes (Gong et al., 2011; Satterthwaite et al., 2015; Yang et al., 2023). Therefore, women often excel at tasks involving verbal memory and emotional processing (Gao et al., 2018; Yang et al., 2023). Meanwhile, men generally show stronger connectivity in one hemisphere, particularly the right hemisphere, which is associated with spatial and analytical processing (Gong et al., 2011; Satterthwaite et al., 2015; Yang et al., 2023). Therefore, men tend to be superior in completing tasks that require spatial and analytical skills (de Lacy et al., 2019; Satterthwaite et al., 2015). In the context of reading literary texts such as Serat Centhini, which contains many cultural symbols and moral messages, women find it easier to interpret the emotional and relational context, while men focus more on the factual or structural aspects of the text.

These findings also confirm field findings commonly encountered around us, and have been confirmed by other researchers: girls tend to be more driven to achieve, more conscientious, and more social than boys. However, this motivation decreases with increasing grade level (Göçer et al., 2011). In addition, girls have significantly different achievement goal orientations and learning strategies than boys, although these differences have little practical significance (Fadlelmula, 2011). Girls generally perform better academically than boys, especially in language (Golsteyn & Schils, 2014; Matějů & Smith, 2015). However, boys show more positive attitudes towards mathematics and have higher achievement in this area (Animasaun & Oyadeyi, 2023). Hence, these findings suggest that the observed gender differences in critical thinking skills when engaging with the Serat Centhini text align with established patterns in literacy research. Thus, the result of this study highlights the importance of considering gender as a variable in critical literacy instruction.

Ethical considerations

The Research Ethics Commission of Yogyakarta State University has approved this research under contract number: T/876.2/UN34.9/PT.01.04/2025. The ethical approval document is publicly available via Zenodo at (Sugara, 2025).

Written informed consent was obtained from the parents or legal guardians of all participating children prior to data collection. Participation was voluntary, and consent was provided without any form of coercion. To protect the rights and privacy of participants, all data collected in this study were treated confidentially and used solely for research purposes. We obtained informed consent at (Sugara, 2025).