A Program in Teaching Composition Using Project-Based Blended Learning to Develop First Grade Secondary School Students' Critical Thinking Skills

This research aimed to develop a proposed program for teaching composition using project-based blended learning to first-grade secondary school students and to measure its impact on developing their critical thinking skills. The experimental approach based on a quasi-experimental design with two groups—experimental and control—was employed. The research sample consisted of 46 female students from "El-Shahid Islam Mustafa Naguib Fawly Secondary School" in Safet El-Khamar village, Minia Educational Administration, during the second semester of the 2023/2024 academic year. The sample was randomly divided into two groups: an experimental group of 23 students who studied using the proposed program, and a control group of 23 students who studied using the usual approach. The research tool was critical thinking skills. The tool was applied to both groups to test the impact of the program on the development of this variable. The results indicated a statistically significant difference between the mean scores of the experimental and control groups in the post-test critical thinking test as a whole and its sub-skills individually, favoring the experimental group. It was also concluded that the effect size of the independent variable (the proposed program using project-based blended learning) on the dependent variables (critical thinking) was large, indicating the program's effectiveness in developing these skills among the experimental group. Finally, several recommendations and proposed future research were presented based on the results obtained.