Abstract

TAMAYO ALZATE, Óscar Eugenio. Critical thinking as specific domain in sciences didactics. Rev. Fac. Cienc. Tecnol. [online]. 2014, n.36, pp.25-46. ISSN 0121-3814.

It is the purpose of this paper to briefly discuss the object of study in Sciences Didactics and its relation to pedagogy, so that, teachers can establish some limits and tensions between education and critical thinking in specific domains of knowledge, which represent bases for science learning and teaching. The study proposes critical thinking as a learned skill that needs instruction and practice in a specific domain and presents research results of a study regarding elementary students and teachers critical thinking skills in 56 public schools from Manizales. The categories taken into consideration for this study were: problem solving, metacognition and argumentation, because they are considered the core to start the critical thinking development. Data was collected by using ten workshops which presented problematic situations regarding different sciences topics. The participants were 224 children and five teachers who actively worked in three different moments that were intended to develop the three proposed categories as well their relations. The results were analyzed for each of the three categories and a comprehensive analysis was done to establish the relationship between them so that we can understand the critical thinking development in the participants. Finally, teachers and students conceptions of critical thinking are described within the context of science education.

Keywords : Teaching; science; learning; critical thinking.

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