Abstract:

Today’s society needs people with skills that allow them to be, on one side, lifelong learners and on the other side, being able to adapt to a changing context. Some of these skills are related to the handling and analysis of information in order to build knowledge and apply it to problem solving, either individually or collaboratively.
To promote these skills into students, it is important that teachers integrate active learning strategies in their work. To this end, a program was developed for both, high school and undergraduate teachers, in Mexico and Chile, with the aim of enhancing effective educational strategies integration, supported by ICT (Innovation in university teaching).
This program is divided in two modules. On the first one, teachers are asked to reflect on the importance of searching and organizing information; what multiple representations is, critical thinking, collaborative work, problem-based learning, as well as evaluation of the ICT that might support them. During the second module, teachers receive the help of advisors, to design a didactic sequence supported by one or more of the strategies and ICT reviewed on the first module. They put into practice these didactic sequences and analyse the results.

This paper describes the activities that teachers work with, in order to reflect on the importance of critical thinking in their teaching work. The results and analyses obtained from applying two different didactic sequences that used the critical thinking strategy, are discussed.
As part of the general results, teachers’ critical thinking strategy appropriation is analysed as well as the way they apply it on their specific teaching and learning context. The analysis shows that students deploy a bigger motivation solving their activities in the classroom.

Keywords:

Critical thinking, training program, active learning.