The extent to which Productive Thinking Skills are included in Primary grades’ Science Curricula and the Constraints of their application (Analytical- Diagnostic study)

This study aimed to identify to which extent productive thinking skills are supposed to exist in the science curriculum in the fourth&  fifth grade of the primary stage in Egypt, and the obstacles to their application, to achieve this the researchers used a descriptive-analytical approach to achieve the objectives of the research, the researchers used the first tool which is a content analysis of the list of productive thinking skills which included 70 criteria, and prepared the data as well as analyze them to detect to which extend the two science curricula include the seventh skills of productive thinking skills, which are (Flexibility, originality, fluency, Imagination, Interpretation, conclusion and Expansion), the study found the following results based on the content analysis, the First place in the fourth grade science curriculum was the skill of “Flexibility” with a relative weight of 23.34% and the Second, Third, fourth& fifth place in descending order  were the skill of “Fluency, Conclusion, Interpretation& Expansion”, while the least one of these places is Imagination skill with a  relative weight of 5.99%. While those skills in the 5th-grade curriculum ordered the first place was the skill of “Interpretation” with a relative weight of 20.02%, then “Conclusion, Originality & fluency” skills in descending order, while the last two places place was Expansion with a relative weight of 8.16% and the last was Imagination skill with a relative weight 6.97%.
Then the second research tool was prepared, which is a questionnaire on the obstacles to productive thinking skills. The tool was applied to the research sample consisting of (67) science teachers from many national schools and (147) students from 4^th and 5^th grades. The research concluded a set of results, the most important of which is that the dimensions of productive thinking obstacles varied in the rate of their impact on the teachers& students and were arranged in descending order as follows: The dimension of the student constraints is an average higher than the rest of the obstacles, This is followed by the constraints of the curriculum,  then the obstacles related to the surrounding environment, while the dimension of the obstacles related to the teacher got The lowest rank. The study recommended the necessity of reviewing the curriculum elements with all the productive thinking skills, as well as the need to reconsider the development of the environment surrounding the students and teachers, as well as raising awareness among society about the need to take care of high order thinking skills instead of memorizing and encouraging for innovation and creativity.