The choice of teaching strategies made by teachers is one of the elements that influence how well students learn. The teacher-centered method causes less meaningful learning for students. Learning is still largely theoretical and infrequently relates what students are taught to their everyday lives. The purpose of this study is to evaluate how well students learn physics utilizing a participatory learning model and critical problem-solving skills. The study used an experimental design (control group pre-test post-test design) involving class VIII SMPN 3 Batukliang, with the research sample being class VIII A students as the experimental class and class VIII B students as the control class. A straightforward random sample method was used for sampling. Learning outcomes determined by testing are used to determine student achievement. A descriptive and statistical analysis of student achievement in two classrooms (experimental and control) was conducted. Average scores for each treatment group are used in the descriptive analysis, whereas variance is questioned in the statistical analysis using the t-test. The effect of the participatory learning model using critical problem-solving techniques (experimental group) was measured by the difference in student achievement when compared to the control group after analysis using a t-test. The t-test findings show that, at the 95 percent confidence level, the t-count value (4.249) is higher than the t-table (1.675). Based on these results, it can be concluded that the participatory learning model using critical problem-solving techniques has a significant impact on increasing students' learning achievement in physics.