Abstract:

Critical thinking is one of the key competencies of the 21st century, with a great support in the scientific literature of what are its characteristics, its theoretical dimensions, and its importance, however, the field of how to teach this thinking is still insufficient, emerging the need to systematize the factors of "Teaching critical thinking", to gather the most relevant and effective criteria of the trainer to develop critical thinking. Thus, the present study aimed to systematize the theoretical and methodological bases of "Teaching critical thinking" and to establish the competencies needed by the teacher for the development of CP of students in educational contexts. The methodology used was based on the updated guide for the publication of systematic reviews: PRISMA 2020. A search equation consisting of the descriptor "Teaching critical thinking" in the title of the article and filtering only studies in journals was used, resulting in a selection of 127 articles, all of which were considered for the analysis. The cutoff date for the review was October 1, 2022, and the 127 studies were ranked by the highest number of citations. The results show that the scientific literature on "Teaching critical thinking" is still considered dispersed and insufficient, also considering the insufficiency in Scopus of systematic reviews or meta-analyses that integrate the contributions of the existing scientific literature, which allows recognizing the importance of the present study. The scientific production on "Teaching critical thinking" in Scopus dates to 1945, since then the second manuscript appeared 9 years later in 1954 and after 30 years of silence, 1984 marked a new stage of more stable but relatively scarce production, with a greater takeoff after 2001 but with a tendency to decrease in recent years. The predominant language is English, with only one text in Spanish. They are found in the following types of study: Article (102), Note (7), and Conference Paper (3), and Review (15), being necessary to emphasize that none of the Reviews are systematic reviews. The USA is the country that leads the "Teaching critical thinking" studies with 77 productions, and all the other countries have less than 10 publications. The area of social sciences is where the largest production is located (47.6%), followed by arts and humanities (12.6%). Ten competencies associated with the "Teaching critical thinking" meta-competency were achieved. This study will serve as a precedent for the development of a new theoretical model and its concretion in an evaluation instrument for "Teaching critical thinking", offering a methodological, axiological, praxeological, epistemological and ontological route for an axiological-formative management of critical thinking in educational contexts, as a premise for forming an ethical, global, creative, and reflective citizen.

Keywords:

Teaching critical thinking, critical thinking, systematic review, meta-analysis.