Abstract:

Critical thinking is considered one of the fundamental skills to be developed in pupils, given the features of today's society: rapid technological development, increase in available information not always with a reliable origin, and complexity of the working world. Critical thinking involves a set of dispositions and skills that can be stimulated at school. In this way, a quantitative study was implemented, which aimed to verify the contribution of a set of science activities to the development of critical thinking skills in a group of students of the 5th year of schooling (mean age 11 years).

The study had a quasi-experimental design and involved two groups of pupils (experimental group and control group) who were studying the curricular unit about “the air”. Both groups worked on the following topics:
(1) Constitution and functions of the atmosphere;
(2) Importance of the atmosphere for living beings;
(3) Properties of air;
(4) Constitution of air;
(5) Properties of air constituents; and
(6) Atmospheric pollution: causes, consequences and solutions, but with a different approach.

The experimental group was given a set of activities expressly designed to develop the following skills: elementary clarification, elaborate clarification, source credibility assessment and inference. The control group was given a traditional practice based on the activities proposed in the text book adopted. Before and after teaching the topic, both classes performed a pre-test and a post-test to assess and compare their critical thinking skills. The pre- and post-test had an innovative character, given that although they followed a similar design, since the questions included assessed the same critical thinking skills, they addressed different scientific topics. To compare the results, inferential statistics were used. The classes were compared in the pre-test results, and it was found that they were at the same level of critical thinking. Subsequently, both classes were compared again in the post-test. There was also an assessment of the progress shown by each group separately between the two stages. The statistical analysis of the results supports the conclusion that the activities specifically designed to develop critical thinking skills were effective, since in the experimental group the gains were statistically significant, both at the general level of critical thinking, and in three of the four specific skills being tested.

The same did not occur in the control group, which allows us to conclude that the textbook activities did not have this intention and the only critical thinking skills detected were elementary and elaborate clarification. Only in the case of source credibility assessment did the two groups not differ in a statistically significant way, although the experimental group showed greater improvement in this skill. It should be noted that the study focused on a limited range of critical thinking skills, but this was intentional since the attempt to work on too many skills at the same time would have an impact on the quality and coherence of the activities designed.

Keywords:

Critical thinking, Science Education, Primary school.