Abstract:

This paper presents the results of a research project carried out in Portuguese-speaking countries on the process of teaching and learning critical thinking in public secondary schools.

The aim of this exploratory study was:
1) identify the pedagogical practices used by Portuguese language teachers to develop the critical thinking skills of students in the final year of secondary school in Angola, Brazil, and Portugal, and
2) to understand how these practices are reflected in the student learning outcomes in critical thinking in the same year of schooling and the same countries.

The theoretical framework underpinning the research combines a socio-historical approach to language with a cognitive dimension of critical thinking, as outlined by Facionne (1990). Socio-historical theories of language argue that situated language practices are a product of human development and contribute to creating social and cognitive action (Bronckart, 2006). The cognitive dimension of critical thinking involves six increasing levels of complexity indicated by the cognitive activities of interpretation, analysis, evaluation, synthesis, explanation, and self-analysis.

The study involved 151 students and 6 Portuguese language teachers from the final year of secondary school at 1 secondary school in Angola, Brazil, and Portugal. Data was collected from the Portuguese language teachers' annual lesson plans, a focus group interview with the teachers, and a validated critical thinking test (Lopes, et al., 2018) for young Portuguese speakers that they administered to their students.

The results showed that the teachers understand the relevance of critical thinking in their classes and work on developing this skill, especially in activities in the literature sub-area. There is no explicit and intentional practice for teaching critical thinking in Portuguese language classes since it is understood by teachers as a general skill that is expected to be developed from general activities carried out in the classroom. The student's performance in critical thinking was low, with higher results from the Portuguese students and lower results from the Brazilian participants. Among the cognitive activities that make up the critical thinking test, those requiring lower levels of cognitive complexity (analysis and interpretation) had the best results in all participants, while those requiring higher levels (explanation and self-regulation) had the lowest scores in all participants. Comparing these results with the activities carried out in the classroom during Portuguese language lessons, we found that most of them require the same analysis and interpretation skills from the students. Only a few activities require students to have a higher level of cognitive complexity, such as the ability to explain and self-analyze. Our conclusions point to the existence of a relationship between teaching practice and student learning outcomes.

Keywords:

Pedagogical practices, Portuguese language, Critical thinking learning.