Abstract:

Slovak education has recently begun to focus on a new era of education, namely the integrity of critical thinking and character education. The Ministry of Education, Science, Research and Sport of the Slovak Republic has supported several grants in order to change teacher training mainly. Our long-term goal is to change undergraduate preparation for teaching with an orientation on the quality of educational results in the area of critical and moral reasoning. A part of the extensive research carried out at the University of Prešov in Prešov was an experimental intervention. Its aim was to apply a programme of development of critical and moral thinking into three study subjects within the bachelor's degree of a teacher programme. The experimental procedure lasted 13 weeks (6 hours weekly) including three balanced groups (control group - n = 21; experimental group 1 - n = 21; experimental group 2 - n = 20). The teaching process was realized in the traditional way and presented in individual information sheets of the study subjects. The innovative teaching was focused on the development of critical and moral thinking according to a prearranged plan. We found out students' opinions on the given type of teaching using a two-factor semantic differential. In the energy factor (9 items) and the evaluation factor (5 items) the students evaluated three components - seminar, experience and self-reflection ones using a 7-point scale. The Bonferroni post hoc test has showed the existence of statistically significant differences between the control and experimental groups. Overall, it can be concluded that the experimental group have evaluated the innovative teaching as demanding, but more active, more valuable, more relaxed, more interesting in terms of experience as better , friendlier , more effective and in terms of self-reflection as strict, demanding, but effective. The conclusions of the study are focused on the change of the content and performance standard of information sheets of study subjects of the pedagogical-psychological basis of teacher study programmes with a focus on critical and moral reasoning.

Keywords:

Critical and moral thinking, semantic differential, energy factor, evaluation factor.