<![CDATA[Islamic Religious Education (PAI) learning at the senior high school level is still dominated by conventional, memorization-oriented methods, which are suboptimal for fostering students’ critical thinking skills, even though 21st-century competency demands emphasise more active, participatory, and reflective learning. This study aimed to develop a Critical Thinking-based Small Group Discussion strategy for students using the 4D (Define, Design, Develop, Disseminate) development model. The research subjects were 25 eleventh-grade students of SMAN 2 Padang Panjang. The development procedure comprised: the Define stage through needs analysis and analysis of student characteristics; the Design stage through designing a Critical Thinking-based Small Group Discussion strategy; the Develop stage through validation by strategy experts, subject-matter experts, and instructional design experts; and the Disseminate stage through implementing the strategy in PAI learning. The research instruments consisted of expert validation questionnaires, teacher response questionnaires, and student response questionnaires. The results showed that the developed strategy was rated as very feasible by experts with an average score of 88.3%, obtained 100% positive responses from teachers, and received 78% positive responses from students. These findings indicate that the Critical Thinking-based Small Group Discussion strategy developed using the 4D model is feasible to be used as an alternative PAI learning strategy to support the enhancement of students’ critical thinking skills.]]>
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