Abstract:

The main idea of this paper was triggered by a particular pattern observed in middle and high school students, among different subjects, during an internship at Arquitecto Ventura Rodríguez secondary school in Boadilla del Monte, Madrid. The internship was part of my training as student of the MA programme in Teacher Training for Secondary Education, which I studied at the Universidad Europea. Therefore, the research that I present corresponds to my final project, which I successfully presented last June.

Although students tend to show a terribly passive attitude in general, whenever they step in at class, they usually refer to videos they have seen on the Internet, commonly in direct contradiction with the contents presented by the teacher.

That pattern shows us mainly two facts; on one hand, a serious lack of critical thinking capacity, on the other a long and uncontrolled daily exposure to the Internet. The former is inherent to the evolutive phase the teenagers are going through, the latter defines a new way in which individuals relate to each other in society, and to reality in general. But that two facts mixed together reveals a really dangerous combination.

So the aim of this study was to stimulate the students to take a leap from myth to logos, the same way the ancient Greeks did, from the irrational belief to the reasoned word (λóγος), so they start to critically analyze information.

For the fulfilment of this paper we have taken two seventh grade groups (one as study group, the other as control).

The theoretical framework of this study is mainly based in the innovative methodology developed by Robert Swartz (2015), Thinking Based Learning (TBL), and it forms it’s methodological core. This systematic set of techniques have shown to be perfect to improve the critical thinking capacity of the students, which constitutes the general action objective of this study. In order to achieve this goal, a set of five specific objectives were set. Also a detailed action plan in six phases were drawn following the six different objectives (the general one plus the five specific ones).

A first critical capacity test was taken on both groups in order to set the starting point, but also to prove the original perception was right, and justify in that way the work. Two specific TBL activities were selected to be completed by the study group (a part-whole analysis and a comparison between two structures) which took place along two of the sessions, but there were also meta-cognitive reinforcement during the rest of the classes. Also, in the study group qualitative data was gathered through the implementation of the TBL methodology. Moreover, in the last session a performance test (an exam) was taken by both groups, collecting qualitative (the way the students answer the questions) and quantitative (the grades) data.

Although there are some important limitations in the analysis of the gathered data, results can’t be construed as positive in any way. The limited time of the internship seems to be a handicap, and improving the students critical thinking capacities through just five sessions turned out in a too ambitious project.

In spite of the results, the initial test shows us a real problem in teenager’s critical thought aggravated by long Internet exposures, and led us to be aware of its importance in society in general.

Keywords:

Critical assessment, critical thinking capacity, innovation methodology, Internet exposure, secondary school, thinking-based learning.