Abstract:

Critical thinking is one of the competencies that has been highlighted as essential, to be developed by all students. Learning to think and to question oneself is a requirement, long pointed out, for students to develop from the early years. To think reflectively, critically, it was necessary to question, to determine the nature of the problem under analysis, before going on to its resolution. The ability to question, organise and analyse information, draw conclusions, and support them with strong arguments is a difficult and slow skill to be developed.

Several authors point out different definitions of critical thinking. For Vincent-Lacrin et al. (2019) critical thinking "aims primarily to assess the strength and appropriateness of a statement, theory or idea, through a process of questioning and adopting a perspective, which in turn may (or may not) result in a new statement or theory" (p. 59). Critical thinking is organised into four dimensions: questioning, imagination, action, and reflection.

Critical thinking being a time-consuming and arduous skill to develop, it is necessary to start working with children and students from early years. For this reason, teacher training to kindergarten and primary school needs to integrate critical thinking in the organisation of their courses. Teacher training is increasingly a challenge due to the rapid evolution of science and technology, with the advent of artificial intelligence, and the lack of knowledge of tomorrow’s needs. Training citizens who are minimally prepared to face future vicissitudes is a school requirement, but a difficult task. What choices should be made? What knowledge to work with? What skills should be promoted? What attitudes should be developed? One thing is certain: the world will be increasingly complex. Citizens will be required to demonstrate multiple competences, combining different types of knowledge, skills, and attitudes.

Within the scope of an OECD-ECERI project, Fostering and assessing students' creativity and critical thinking, in which the Instituto Politécnico de Viana do Castelo participates, an experience was developed with pre-service teachers, for kindergarten and primary school, in the discipline of Mathematics Didactics, with the purpose of developing the critical thinking of pre-service teachers.

It was intended that pre-service teachers would be able to:
(a) formulate questions to guide the resolution of the proposed problems;
(b) design action plans to solve them;
(c) implement the designed plans;
(d) critically reflect on the developed actions.

A qualitative study of exploratory nature was developed, involving 11 pre-service teachers. To collect data, problem-solving tasks, participant observation and a final questionnaire were used. This paper will present only one of the explored tasks, which connects geometry and rational numbers. The results allow us to conclude that the participants were enthusiastically involved in the task, which they found challenging. They were questioning and active, creative in the different ways used to solve the task, but their degree of reflection and criticism was not always sufficient. Some participants did not present any strong arguments for their choices. The answers to the questionnaire showed the pre-service teachers' interest in developing this competence, recognising their difficulties in some cases, but intending to continue strengthening their critical thinking skills.

Keywords:

Critical thinking, pre-service teachers, didactics of mathematics.