Abstract:

The curriculum reform in Slovakia, which was officially put into educational practice of schools by adopting the new Act No. 245/2008 Coll. on Upbringing and Education (School Act) and on amendments and supplements to certain Acts, has brought plenty of expectations and visions. However, the preparation itself and the process of the reform were from its beginning marked by a number of issues, which resulted in failure to meet the expected objectives and resistance of educators to any changes. Maybe the most important idea was to introduce a two-level curriculum model with its focus on the development of key competencies, including critical thinking as one of their important parts. The development of critical thinking is one of the priorities of the state educational policy in the Slovak Republic. In order to apply this challenge in their educational practice, the future teachers should be systematically led to acquire the capability to think critically within the comprehensive characteristics of the personality.
The aim of the empirical focus was to experimentally verify the Programme of Development of Critical Thinking within university education of students of teacher programmes at the University of Prešov in Prešov. To meet the set target we implemented the experiment (a single-factor technique of parallel groups). The intervention programme was compiled and applied within the framework of compulsory study subjects: General Didactics, Interpersonal Competences and Cultural Anthropology and Multicultural Education. Teaching in these subjects was based on the basic communication model of teaching and learning - on the complex E-U-R strategy. Within the individual parts of E-U-R (evocation, awareness of meaning, reflection), we realized the programme of 4 hours a week during the entire semester (13 weeks).
The selected file consisted of 3 groups of students (control, n = 21; experimental 1, n = 21; experimental 2, n = 20). Based on the statistical One-way ANOVA, we ensured the equality of the groups included in the experiment in the ante situation (p = 0.889). The main measurement means of input and output measurements was the Watson-Glaser Critical Thinking Appraisal Test and the Test of logical and argumentation skills.
The conclusions of the experiment pointed out the effectiveness of the intervention programme. A statistical t-test comparing the average showed that the intervention Programme for the Development of Critical Thinking in ES 1 (p = 0.000) and ES 2 (p = 0.001) increased the ability of analytical reasoning and argumentation skills at a significance level of 0.01 compared to KS (p = 0.477), where the traditional form of teaching took place - the encyclopedic model of education.

Keywords:

Critical thinking, theoretical and empirical knowledge, experimental verification of development of critical thinking.