Abstract:

Critical thinking is one of the skills to be developed in students from the first years of schooling, as proposed in official documents of the Portuguese educational system and of other European educational systems. The importance given to critical thinking as a fundamental skill to be developed in all individuals goes back to Socrates. In contemporary terms, John Dewey is considered the promoter of the modern critical thinking approach, and he defines it as an active process that seeks to examine any belief or supposed form of knowledge in the light of the supporting evidence. More recently, the most widespread definition of critical thinking is perhaps that of Robert Ennis, who defines it as a form of thinking centered on deciding what to believe or what to do. Consequently, teacher training must include ways of working on this skill, with an approach to socio-scientific issues, many of them controversial, being one of the relevant ways to develop critical thinking, since it promotes argumentation, the defense of positions or an analysis of the credibility of sources, but also stimulates the predisposition to respect others’ ideas and to reflect on the consistency of the positions taken.

The Discussiō project, started in October 2022, aims to contribute to the development of critical thinking in a formal learning context, precisely by addressing controversial topics. To this end, the project aimed to design educational resources which supported an approach to socio-educational issues centred on the relationship between humans and other animals, as well as their subsequent testing in primary schools and free availability on the project website.

Many digital resources used in Science Education are designed as instruments to check learning. Thus, they focus on the assessment of factual or conceptual knowledge memorized by students, through the inclusion of closed questions, using the filling of spaces with terms provided, multiple choice or true or false questions. This typology of questions, though unique, proves to have little relevance, or even to be inappropriate for the stimulation of critical thinking. Therefore, the great challenge of the present project was to design digital resources that enable the discussion of ideas and the confrontation of different points of view, while keeping in sight the aim to raise the awareness of students about animal welfare.

Using software such as Learningapps, Slides, Googleforms and Genially, and with the inclusion of varied multimedia content (video, images, audio and graphics), the resources were designed by students of a professional master's degree, with tutorial support from the teachers promoting the Discussiō Project, to explore the following topics: the life behind food (animals in food), shows with aquatic mammals, use of animals in the circus, wild animals as pets, animals in zoos.
This presentation aims to highlight the processes that led to the creation of five digital resources, taking into account three general parameters (content, learning design and multimedia design), subdivided into more specific indicators. Given that the testing process in schools is being implemented, some of the potentialities of the idealized resources are also systematized as well as suggestions made as to the use of these resources by teachers.

Keywords:

Critical thinking, Controversial issues, Digital Resources, Animal Welfare.