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Background/purpose: This study aims at identifying differences in the level of critical thinking dispositions according to the sociodemographic (gender, age) and academic characteristics (study field) of undergraduate students in Portugal. Materials/methods: We conducted a cross-sectional, descriptive correlational study with a convenience random sample of 1017 students. Most of the participants were female (76.8%) and the average age of respondents was 21.8 ± 4.22. For data collection, we used the Critical Thinking Dispositions Scale (CTDS), consisting of 35 questions, validated for the Portuguese population. In the statistical analysis, we used the T-student, ANOVA and hierarchical multiple regression model. Results: The students showed an average positive disposition for critical thinking (the average score in the CTDS was 279.1 ± 27.1). The results demonstrated that gender, age and field of study influenced the dispositions for critical thinking. Older girls, attending courses in the field of Biomedicine were the ones with higher disposition to think critically. Conclusion: Female students generally show higher critical thinking scores dispositions regardless the study field.

This study investigated the effects of lecturing, cooperative learning and concept maps on the development of critical and creative thinking skills. A quasi-experimental non-randomized study involved a class of students from the 3rd year of Psychology and two classes from the 3rd year of Pre-service Elementary Teachers. The study ran for 15 weeks, one semester. In one of the Primary School Teaching classes, cooperative learning and concept maps were used and in the other only cooperative learning. The Critical and Creative Thinking test was applied to assess pre and post critical and creative thinking skills. The results show that students from the two classes that used cooperative learning and cooperative learning + concept maps improved further critical and creative thinking skills in relation to the lecturing class, with no significant differences between the first two. Pedagogical recommendations are made according to these results.

While there is a strong consensus on the importance of Critical and Creative Thinking (CCT) skills for the rise of participatory citizens and work-ready professionals, the extent to which university attendance by itself supports their development and acquisition remains controversial. This research presents a cohort, longitudinal follow-up study aimed at investigating the impact of university attendance by itself on the CCT skills development of 41 higher education students from two, 3-year Bachelor's programmes at a northeastern Portuguese university, namely Pre-Service Teaching and Psychology. Using Lopes et al.'s Critical and Creative Thinking Test, an open-access CCT assessment instrument validated for the Portuguese higher education population, data were collected at the beginning of the first and of the third academic years: 2016-2017 and 2018-2019, respectively. Non statistically significant differences were found for both cohorts, suggesting that the domain-specific training of these study programmes per se are not a sufficient condition to enhance students' domain-general CCT skills. Therefore, further research is still needed to better identify the moderating variables influencing the development of students' CCT skills during their attendance in undergraduate higher education.

In higher education, engineering students have to be prepared for their future jobs, with knowledge but also with several soft skills, among them creativity. In this paper, we present a study carried on with 128 engineering undergraduate students on their understanding of mathematical creativity. The students were in the first year of different engineering first degrees in a north-eastern Portuguese university and we analysed the content of their texts for the question 'What do you understand by mathematical creativity?'. Data collection was done in the first semester of the academic years 2014/2015 and 2016/2017 in a Linear Algebra course. The results showed that 'problem solving' category had the majority of the references in 2014/2015, but not in the academic year 2016/2017 were 'involving mathematics' category had the majority. This exploratory study pointed out for 'problem solving' and 'involving mathematics' categories and gave us hints for teaching mathematics courses in engineering degrees.

Considering the results of research on the benefits and difficulties of peer review, this paper describes how teaching faculty, interested in endorsing the acquisition of communication and critical thinking (CT) skills among engineering students, has been implementing a learning methodology throughout online peer review activities. While introducing a new methodology, it is important to weight the advantages found and the conditions that might have restrained the activity outcomes, thereby modulating its overall efficiency. Our results show that several factors are decisive for the success of the methodology: the use of specific and detailed orientation guidelines for CT skills, the students' training on how to deliver a meaningful feedback, the opportunity to counter-argument, the selection of good assignments' examples, and the constant teacher's monitoring of the activity. Results also tackle other aspects of the methodology such as the thinking skills evaluation tools (grades and tests) that most suit our reality. An improved methodology is proposed taking in account the encountered limitations, thus offering the possibility to other interested institutions to use/test and/or improve it.

The COVID-19 pandemic forced Portuguese higher education institutions to go home and teach online. Therefore, we had an online experience teaching the Statistics course to the Social Service degree. Viewing this school year experience, we decided to make some changes in the Statistical courses of Informatics, Mechanical and Civil Engineering degrees. Our main concern is still the uncertainty of what is yet to come in the next first semester: face-to face or emergency remote education. In this work we present our ideas in order to develop our students’ skills – collaboration, communication, citizenship/culture, creativity, and critical thinking – through their probability and statistics course and as part of their degree’s curricula.

Copyright of REICE. Ibero-American Journal on Quality, Effectiveness & Change in Education / REICE. Revista Iberoamericana Sobre Calidad, Eficacia y Cambio en Educación is the property of Red Iberoamericana de Investigacion sobre Cambio y Eficacia en Educacion and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Copyright of Revista Lusofona de Educacao is the property of Universidade Lusofona de Humanidades e Tecnologias, CEIEF and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Copyright of Revista Lusofona de Educacao is the property of Universidade Lusofona de Humanidades e Tecnologias, CEIEF and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Copyright of Revista Lusofona de Educacao is the property of Universidade Lusofona de Humanidades e Tecnologias, CEIEF and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)