Promoting Critical and Creative Thinking in Science Teaching: Educational Proposals and their Contributions in Portuguese Students

Contemporary society currently shows several scientific and technological advances that have contributed to improve the quality of life of human beings. However, they have also exacerbated problems and the asymmetries between them, such as the scarcity of drinking water and food production, access to basic health care and disinformation. As a result, education, in general, and in science teaching, in particular, need to be reconsidered and to respond effectively to these complex challenges. One of the demands relates to changes in educational and curricular policies. Among these is the need to focus the curriculum and programs of all disciplines on areas of competency, such as critical and creative thinking (CCT). One way to achieve this is by investing in the development of didactic proposals for students to experience responsible citizen participation, explicitly mobilizing CCT skills. In this context, a study was developed with the purpose of elaborating, implementing and evaluating didactic proposals for science teaching with a focus on CCT, designed for students aged 8-12. Accordingly, the research question of the present study was: “Do the didactic proposals developed and implemented contribute to the improvement of students' CCT”? This study followed a mixed-approach combining, on the one hand, an action-research plan for the elaboration and implementation of didactic proposals for science teaching and, on the other hand, a pre and post-test with a non-randomized selection of participants. The results obtained support the conclusion that the didactic proposals that were designed and implemented promoted students' CCT. Thus, these proposals show significant potential for students of these age groups and close, given the transversal themes on which they focused, serving also as examples to be used in teacher education, so that they start to promote more explicitly and intentionally these two types of thinking.