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Este trabajo investiga la influencia de las preguntas de una docente en la activación de la práctica de pensamiento crítico del alumnado de infantil. Se analizan las interacciones discursivas entre la docente y el alumnado durante una sesión de indagación sobre la caída de objetos con el fin de identificar qué destrezas y disposiciones de pensamiento crítico se promueven en el alumnado mediante las preguntas formuladas por la maestra. Los resultados muestran que sus preguntas activan las destrezas de explicación, inferencia y análisis. Entre las disposiciones que la maestra promueve, destaca la sistematicidad. No obstante, se echa en falta el desempeño de disposiciones por parte del alumnado, lo que podría explicarse porque requieren un mayor tiempo para desarrollarse. Se concluye que la formulación de preguntas por parte de la docente activa destrezas de pensamiento crítico y esta estrategia didáctica, si fuese parte integral de la enseñanza en infantil, reportaría beneficios al alumnado. This paper explores the influence of the questions posed by a teacher in the activation of critical thinking among early childhood education students. We analysed the discursive interactions between the teacher and the students during an inquiry-based task about the fall of objects in order to identify which critical thinking skills and dispositions would be promoted among the students through teacher's questions. The results show her questions activate the skills of explanation, inference, and analysis. Among the dispositions promoted by the teacher systematicity stands out. Nonetheless, the enactment on behalf of the children of some dispositions were not present, which might be explained by the fact that dispositions require more time to develop. It is concluded that the formulation of questions by the teacher activates critical thinking skills and that, were this teaching strategy an integral part of early childhood education, it would bring benefits to students.

Este artículo presenta un estudio de caso de corte cualitativo con alumnado de secundaria en el desempeño de una tarea de uso de datos y evaluación de un modelo determinista de expresión de los genes para explicar una enfermedad animal. Las preguntas de investigación son: 1) ¿cómo son las posiciones del alumnado en el discurso escrito a la hora de aplicar y evaluar un modelo de expresión de los genes para explicar una enfermedad animal? y 2) ¿cuál es la capacidad crítica mostrada en el discurso oral del alumnado para evaluar un modelo determinista en este contexto? Los resultados muestran dificultades para evaluar críticamente un modelo determinista y cambios en las posiciones del alumnado respecto al determinismo a lo largo de la tarea. El desarrollo de explicaciones deterministas se relaciona con la capacidad crítica en este estudio, lo que plantea futuras líneas de investigación. This article presents a qualitative case study with high school students involved in a task based on data and the evaluation of a deterministic model of gene expression to explain an animal disease. The research questions are: 1) How are students' positions in the written discourse when applying and evaluating a model of gene expression to explain an animal disease? and 2) what is the critical capacity shown in the oral discourse of the students to evaluate a deterministic model in this context? The results show students' difficulties to critically evaluate a deterministic model and changes in their positions regarding determinism throughout the task. Deterministic explanations are related to students' critical thinking in this study, which raises future lines of research.

This study provides a systematic review on the Critical Thinking (CT) intervention studies reported in the national literature of the countries involved in the CRITHINKEDU project. The aim ...

Few people question the important role of critical thinking in students becoming active citizens; however, the way science is taught in schools continues to be more oriented toward “what to think” rather than “how to think.” Researchers understand critical thinking as a tool and a higher-order thinking skill necessary for being an active citizen when dealing with socio-scientific information and making decisions that affect human life, which the pandemic of COVID-19 provides many opportunities for. The outbreak of COVID-19 has been accompanied by what the World Health Organization (WHO) has described as a “massive infodemic.” Fake news covering all aspects of the pandemic spread rapidly through social media, creating confusion and disinformation. This paper reports on an empirical study carried out during the lockdown in Spain (March–May 2020) with a group of secondary students (N = 20) engaged in diverse online activities that required them to practice critical thinking and argumentation for dealing with coronavirus information and disinformation. The main goal is to examine students’ competence at engaging in argumentation as critical assessment in this context. Discourse analysis allows for the exploration of the arguments and criteria applied by students to assess COVID-19 news headlines. The results show that participants were capable of identifying true and false headlines and assessing the credibility of headlines by appealing to different criteria, although most arguments were coded as needing only a basic epistemic level of assessment, and only a few appealed to the criterion of scientific procedure when assessing the headlines This work was supported by the project ESPIGA, funded by the Spanish Ministry of Science, Education and Universities, partly funded by the European Regional Development Fund (ERDF) Grant code: PGC2018-096581-B-C22 SI

Trends in educational research indicate an increasing interest in how learning environments and teaching strategies may influence the development of critical thinking (CT) . E-learning environments facilitate the opportunity to use constructivist perspectives and personalized learning regardless of time and space boundaries. Moreover, they foster CT since students have to deal with unlimited access to knowledge. This chapter presents a systematic review on CT interventions through e-learning to answer two research questions: (1) What are the characteristics of e-learning environments interventions intended to promote CT in higher education (HE)? (2) Which characteristics of those e-learning environments contribute most to successful instructional models for the development of CT? For addressing these research questions, a systematic review was done through a content analysis from a corpus of 19 papers. Results of the first research question show that blended learning is the most common approach and e-learning activities are based, predominantly, on asynchronous discussions about real-life situations. Concerning the second research question, we pay attention to those papers that assess CT explicitly to get a clear idea about how CT skills and dispositions improve. Forums, cooperative or collaborative learning and discussions about real-life problems seems to promote students’ development of CT. Drawing from this review, some challenges are identified related to CT assessment, dispositions, and diverse variables that might affect CT development, which should be considered in further research.

Se presenta el diseño de una unidad didáctica para secundaria que tiene como objetivo principal el aprendizaje de genética y enfermedades humanas en interacción con el desempeño de prácticas científicas de argumentación y modelización. La secuencia aborda diversas enfermedades con componente genético que requieren la transferencia del modelo de expresión de los genes para su adecuada comprensión. La secuencia pretende servir como recurso al profesorado de ciencias interesado en introducir las prácticas científicas y el pensamiento crítico para promover la toma de decisiones. Se presentan algunos resultados relevantes de la puesta en práctica de la secuencia para su implementación efectiva por el profesorado., We present the design of a teaching sequence for secondary education, which has as primary goal learning genetics and human diseases in interaction with the practices of modelling and argumentation. The unit addresses different diseases with genetic component that present different level of complexity and require the application of the model of gene expression for its appropriate understanding. We propose resource for science teachers who are interested in the introduction of scientific practices and critical thinking for decision-making. Relevant results for teachers’ effective implementation of the unit are presented.

This chapter addresses the relationships between argumentation and critical thinking. The underlying questions are how argumentation supports the capacity to discriminate between claims justified by evidence and mere opinion, and how argumentation can contribute to two types of objectives related to learning science and to citizenship. First, various meanings for critical thinking in different communities are reviewed. Then, we propose our characterisation of critical thinking, which assumes that evidence evaluation is an essential component, but that there are other components related to the capacities of reflecting on the world around us and of participating in it (e.g. developing an independent opinion, including challenging the ideas of one’s own community). This characterisation draws both from the notion of commitment to evidence and from critical theorists. Using this frame, the chapter examines the contributions of argumentation in science education to the components of critical thinking, and also discusses the evaluation of evidence and the different factors influencing or even hampering it. The chapter concludes with consideration of the development of critical thinking in the science classroom.

There is agreement within the science education community on the contributions of argumentation about socio-scientific issues (SSI) to scientific literacy and to the development of critical thinking (Kolsto, 2006). SSI involves scientific arguments in addition to political, personal or ethical questions about what action to choose (Kolsto, 2006). It is suggested that argumentation about SSI makes scientific learning meaningful, as it provides a context that connects science with everyday problems where citizens are expected to make decisions, and requires taking an active role to solve controversies. Argumentation in these contexts involves not only applying scientific knowledge, but also developing an independent opinion in order to critically examine scientific claims and arguments, in other words, becoming a critical thinker (Jimenez-Aleixandre & Puig, 2010).