Critical Thinking and Problem Solving Skills: How these Skills are needed in Educational Psychology?

Critical thinking skills and problem solving ability is very helpful in educational psychology courses to train student teachers in solving complex problems of education, especially in the classroom. This study aimed to describe the ability of critical thinking and problem solving ability of students in educational psychology lecture. Methods empirically using a quasi-experimental method with data analysis techniques using quantitative descriptive. Samples in this study were 30 students in the subject of educational psychology. The results showed that the thinking skills of students included in the category sufficient to score an average of 306. critical thinking skills based on the indicator indicates that the indicator 3 (I-3) gives a good conclusion is the highest score and indicator 2 (I-2) to build the fundamental skills is the lowest score. Problem solving ability of students included in both categories with an average score of 2.99. Pearson correlation test results (r) between the critical thinking skills and problem solving ability of students did not show a strong relationship even contradictory (-.05). based on the results of data analysis can be concluded that the ability of critical thinking and problem solving ability of students still have to be improved in the future.