University of Magallanes

Faculty of Education and Social Sciences

Department of Education and Humanities
Career: Pedagogy in Basic General Education
Subject: Professional Practice

Monograph

“FOSTERING CRITICAL THINKING IN THE CLASSROOM”

Student:

Carmen Gloria Gallardo Díaz

Director:

Grisel Valdes Romano

20/05/2020
 INDEX

INTRODUCTION...............................................................................................................................................4

THE THOUGHT................................................................................................................................................. 5

Definitions of Thought.............................................................................................................................5

Critical thinking.......................................................................................................................................... 6

HOW TO DEVELOP CRITICAL THINKING IN THE CLASSROOM?...............................................8

HOW TO EVALUATE CRITICAL THINKING?.....................................................................................11

CHALLENGE OF TEACHERS IN PROMOTING THE CRITICAL THINKING OF THEIR

STUDENTS....................................................................................................................................................................... 13

CHALLENGE OF STUDENTS IN THE DEVELOPMENT OF CRITICAL THINKING...............14

CHALLENGE OF THE CHILEAN EDUCATIONAL SYSTEM...........................................................16

CONCLUSIONS............................................................................................................................................... 18

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 ABSTRAC

This work addresses a reflection on the importance of developing critical thinking in

the classroom, and going beyond knowledge and purely rote aspects.

Thinking is developed through various strategies and daily work; it will also depend
on the type of cognitive activities that are carried out to ensure that the student reflects
adequately. Thought itself is the result of the action of thinking based on what is seen,
known and felt. Hence the importance of working on it in the classrooms with the
appropriate strategies.

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 INTRODUCTION

Over time, the work carried out by teachers in the classrooms has evolved
positively. In the past, greater importance was given to memorizing content, the student
was a passive subject and the teacher was the one who taught the classes.

Currently, emphasis is placed on how students learn, that they be builders of their
own learning with the guidance of the teacher, who is a mediator throughout the entire
process. The aim is to develop students' skills that allow them to achieve all types of
learning; they are intended to be able to analyze, think, question and reflect.

Critical thinking is a mental process that allows you to reason and evaluate available
evidence regarding a problem you want to solve. This process can and should be facilitated
through teaching action, thus enhancing the learning capabilities of students.

In the current reality of the world and our country, it is necessary that in the
classrooms, through the mediating role of the teacher, students from an early age learn to
make good decisions, be intelligent, critical, creative, reflective and autonomous. It is
essential to train and challenge the brain, through various activities and exercises that
provide the practice of thought processes, so that it is carried out in the best possible
conditions.

The teacher's objective in classes should be to teach his students to think, learn to
learn, to ensure that the student develops skills that allow him to access learning in a more
autonomous way.

This work provides a reflection on how necessary the role of teachers is in the
learning process from the point of view of forming intelligent beings, who have and
develop their ability to think critically and do, so that it goes in favor of society and the life
itself of each person.

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 THE THOUGHT
Definitions of Thought

Thought is a particular gift of the human being and its origin is due to sensory
intervention and reason, reasoning, logical inference and demonstration are abilities of
thought to immediately reflect the reality, problems and needs of the subject. (Left, 2006)

Bloom (2001) suggests that memorizing something is not thinking. It is simply an

act that denotes that the person has a minimum learning capacity, but it is not everything.
Thinking involves some higher notions:

 Know: for which it is necessary to memorize basic and superior information. It is

the moment in which the data is collected by any means: reading, conversation,
observation, etc.
 Understand: be able to say in other words the information that has been acquired. At
this level it is demonstrated that what has been learned is understood. The
information is confirmed.
 Apply: be able to use the information that is known and understood in another area.
It's about being able to incorporate, especially in new situations, the data you have.
 Analyze: ability to separate information into its constituent parts, differentiating the
data. At this level the ability to find patterns, recognize hidden meanings is
demonstrated; identify components; and, organize the parts.
 Synthesize: ability to summarize information, for which it is necessary to categorize
the data that has been received into primary and secondary concepts. In the skill of
synthesis you can create new ideas, generalize, relate, extrapolate and/or predict.
 Evaluate: level where criteria have been developed to be able to reject incorrect
information based on the data that has been acquired, and validate other antecedents
as true. It is evaluated by comparing, discriminating, judging theories, verifying
evidence and recognizing the subjectivity of some argument or situation.

“Thought is above all, a process of generalized cognition of reality, to form

concepts in which they are reflected in a particular way” (Villalba, 2006).

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 According to these definitions, it can be seen that when referring to the term
thinking it is complex to give only one definition as the correct one, since it involves
various considerations, internal and external aspects of the human being must be taken into
account, thinking is a cognitive process, emotional, social and critical; It is an intrinsic
mental act that arises in our mind as a reflection of interactions with the environment that
surrounds us, linked to problem solving and our own interiority. It must be taken into
account that thinking involves a general activity of the cognitive system with the
intervention of: memory, attention, comprehension processes, learning, etc. It is an internal
and subjective experience of each person. Thinking allows you to solve problems and
reason.

It is important to highlight the importance of thinking in daily life, however,

thinking is an individual and complex activity, there is a daily challenge in the classrooms
for teachers to get their students to think critically, that is, who are able to ask questions,
collect and evaluate relevant information, reach well-thought-out conclusions based on
certain criteria, and communicate effectively to offer practical solutions to complex
problems.

Critical thinking

Ennis (2011) and Vargas (2013) express that “critical thinking is an acquired
capacity that allows reflective reasoning focusing on deciding and what to do. They
emphasize that critical thinking is propositional, it is a self-regulated judgment resulting

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from interpretation, analysis and the use of strategies that facilitate the stimulation of
thinking in the construction of knowledge.

The work that the teacher develops inside the classroom is therefore of great
relevance, where he must seek that his students make assertive decisions when solving
problems, what do I mean by this, basically that if pedagogical activities based on analyze
information, apply, synthesize and evaluate, the student will be developing superior
cognitive skills, which will allow him to face academic challenges in a more optimal way.
And we will be giving students tools that will impact their lives in the future.

The foundations of education must be based on training people capable of thinking

for themselves, defending their points of view, innovating, criticizing, working
collaboratively with others, imagining and creating, in this way the teacher who trains
generations. It will be impacting and being a contribution to the transformation of current
society and its requirements. .

Torrance (1977) stated “The schools of the future will be planned, not only to learn,
but also to think. With greater insistence, today's schools and colleges are asked to produce
men and women who know how to think, who can make new scientific discoveries, who
can find adequate solutions to the most pressing world problems, which cannot be
committed to a brain Wash; men and women, in short, who know how to adapt to change
and know how to maintain their sanity in this time of constant movement. This is the
creative challenge that education poses.”

Jean Piaget states: “The first objective of education is not to increase the amount of
knowledge, but to create the possibilities for the child to invent and discover, to form men
who are capable of doing new things.”

“The second objective of education is to form minds capable of criticism, who can
verify for themselves what is presented to them and not simply accept it without further
ado.”

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 Torrance and Piaget confirm in their sayings the importance of the work done in
schools, in classes with students, where the teacher must be able to present cognitive
challenges, where they are constantly encouraged to reflect and question information, to
defend their opinion with grounds.

Students need to verify that what they are learning has application in daily life and
that they have the skills and tools to learn to learn and learn to think, in this way they will
be able to respond successfully to the various challenges that are presented to them.

The goal of education is for students to use and apply the information they receive,
therefore, the challenge for educators is to train and develop critical, creative, autonomous,
thinking and productive people.

Now, it is important to keep in mind that teachers must carry out systematic and
constant work using various activities and strategies to develop critical thinking in their
students.

HOW TO DEVELOP CRITICAL THINKING IN THE CLASSROOM?

The philosopher Robert Swartz, director of The National Center for Teaching
Thinking, of the United States, graduate of Harvard University, professor emeritus at the
University of Massachusetts in Boston, and author of numerous works and articles on
critical thinking, is a reference world when it comes to proposing a radical change in the
approaches to education from early childhood levels.

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 This teacher proposes, in addition to motivating children to think from an early age,
awakening their minds when they leave the Preschool stage. After a few years in which
their minds have begun the learning process progressively, the child's natural ability to
think begins to become numb and begins to be limited by everything that surrounds the
child, that which tells him what he should think and how you should do it. (Teaching to
think, children's critical thinking; rescued from
https://www.hacerfamilia.com/educacion/noticia-ensenar-pensar-pensamiento-critico-
ninos-20141212065933.html )

So, how can teachers contribute from their role to the development of their students'
critical thinking? They must promote, through various daily activities, that students
socialize, share with their peers, work collaboratively to enhance their reasoning capacity
and encourage them to question everything around them.

Nickerson (1988) “although knowledge is essential for the development of

thinking, this does not guarantee the development of critical thinking.”

That is the situation that must be considered core in the teaching and learning
process, knowledge will always be present, because it is the existing information that is
used in classes, however, the central issue is the way in which the Will the teacher deal
with knowledge, or rather the content, in his classes? What challenges will he pose to the
students? Will he encourage them to criticize that information? What do you reflect? Or
will it just be limited to understanding it and answering questions?

As mediators in learning, teachers must implement certain daily activities and

strategies in their classes to encourage their students to think and do so critically, for
example:

-Ask questions during classes, to stimulate curiosity: “What would happen if…”?,
“How is it possible that…?”, “What would you do in that case…?”, “What do you know
about… ?, and design guiding questions that help reflect and clarify the most important
concepts.

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 - Present different points of view about the same topic.

-Activate the participation of all students using some “random participation”

technique.

- Talk less to make students think more , by taking breaks in class so that they
can work and reflect on the topics that have been discussed.

-Encourage collaborative work , through work in small groups, where in addition

to completing the requested task they have to previously describe the objectives, explain
what strategies they used and how they solved their problems.

-Encourage activities that encourage their curiosity . This will help children
experience and understand how the world works. Encourage them to explore, ask questions,
test their theories, think critically about the results obtained, and think about changes so
they can do things differently.

-Help children evaluate information . Sometimes you receive a lot of information

at the same time and it is necessary to know how to evaluate it and choose the most
important one, determine if it is true and know if you should believe it or not. Children
need to think about where the information comes from, how it relates to what they already
know, and evaluate whether or not it is important.

-Teach problem-solving skills . When dealing with problems or conflicts, it is

important to use critical thinking skills to understand the problem and come up with
possible solutions, so it is important to teach children in problem solving so that they learn
how to deal with problems. possible adversities of life.

-Promote an environment where the student can describe and explore their own
beliefs, freely express their feelings and communicate their opinions.

-Explain the purposes, methodology and forms of evaluation of the learning

objectives before starting classes.

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 -Encourage debate out loud so that students gain confidence in their reasoning
ability.

-Present complex topics with their concepts and possible problems to solve.

These are some of the strategies that can be used daily in classes, and over time you
can see significant progress in the students. When a way of working, a way of asking and
interrogating the children is installed, they adapt. and they try to give their best in their
answers. It is a job that must be trained and practiced daily to achieve positive long-term
effects.

Now, it is important to monitor the learning process and skill development, since
ensuring that students are able to think critically is not something that is taught as content,
but rather prior skills are developed to finally achieve it. Therefore, it is relevant to have
certain measurement parameters as teachers to accompany the process and know if the
objective is being achieved, it is necessary to evaluate.

HOW TO EVALUATE CRITICAL THINKING?

A very important aspect within the teaching-learning process is knowing if the

student managed to achieve the learning objective, develop a certain skill, or transversal
objective proposed by the teacher during class. This is achieved through the evaluation of
the educational activities carried out. To evaluate students' critical thinking, a rubric can be
used, which is an assessment matrix, in which criteria and competence indicators are
established through the use of scales to determine the quality of students' execution of
tasks. specific within a continuum. It allows obtaining an approximate measurement of both
the student's product and the process. (Cordero Nadia, Fuentes Chamary, Rodríguez Julio;
04/27/2015; Rubric Development. Available at

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http://oeae.uprrp.edu/wp-content/uploads/2015/02/Webinar-Desarrollo-de-R
%C3%BAbricas-27-abril-2015.pdf )

Criteria to evaluate Critical Thinking:

• Information analysis (inductive or deductive method).

• Application of procedures, rules, principles.

• Proposing solutions or varied perspectives.

• Presentation of conclusions or inferences based on the facts (decision

making).

• Synthesis of ideas.

• Identification and characterization of arguments.

• Evaluation of the arguments.

• Evaluation of information sources.

Indicators to evaluate Critical Thinking:

• Identify the central idea and patterns.

• Break it down into parts, establish relationships between them.

• Indicates the principle that integrates them.

• Contrast ideas.

• Interprets and points out causes and effects.

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 • Makes inferences.

By evaluating critical thinking positively, the teacher will be able to demonstrate a

student who formulates questions clearly, being curious; is well informed and is able to
accumulate and evaluate the information he receives as well as interpret it; argues his
judgments and opinions; effectively communicates your reasoning process, conclusions and
solutions; and is willing to reconsider and retract if necessary.

What can a teacher observe when students put critical thinking into action? The
ISTE Standards Students organization points out that students will be able to:

• Identify and define a problem and the questions that make sense for the research.
• Plan and manage activities to obtain a solution to a problem or complete a project.
• Obtain and analyze useful data in solving a situation and/or in making informed decisions.
• Make informed decisions using the appropriate tools and resources.
(Encouraging Critical Thinking. Educarchile. Available at
https://www.educachile.cl/fomentando-el-pensamiento-critico )

Ensuring that students become critical thinkers is a complex task for teachers, but
not impossible; it requires organized work on a daily basis, where through appropriate
questions, relevant activities aimed at reflection and analysis, and the use of efficient
strategies and methodologies, achieves.

CHALLENGE OF TEACHERS IN PROMOTING THE CRITICAL

THINKING OF THEIR STUDENTS

Taking into account that critical thinking encompasses skills such as analyzing and
evaluating information related to certain reasoning, that is, it means questioning everything
about everyday life. And to achieve this skill it is essential that teachers develop many
others, such as the ability to interpret ideas and situations, analysis and evaluation, and

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mainly the teacher must be a critical thinker to teach strategies and develop these skills in
their students. A teacher who has developed critical thinking in him will have a much
broader vision of his environment, will be able to solve various problems inside and outside
the classroom, will be creative and innovative and will seek for his students to be creative
and innovative as well.

Teachers have various challenges, among them they must constantly improve
themselves, be competent in the technological field and in new teaching methodologies,
and be able to face and resolve new educational situations arising from the new social and
cultural realities of the environment. They must be constantly renewed at a professional
level.

The teacher is an agent of change, and it is necessary that he be innovative in his

pedagogical work, encourage and inspire his students with his work, he must be a
transformer of reality, many of his students may go far on a professional and personal level.
, and to a large extent it may be due to the inspiration that this teacher sowed in them. You
must have the skills to develop training processes where students are the main protagonists
and learning is facilitated.

CHALLENGE OF STUDENTS IN THE DEVELOPMENT OF CRITICAL

THINKING

Although the work that teachers do with their students in the development of critical
thinking is of utmost importance, the role that the student plays is vital, since they must
have certain intrinsic characteristics, abilities, aptitudes, skills and attitudes, which lead
them to to demonstrate interest and willingness to learn, to have the motivation to learn, to
improve, to be disciplined in the activities they carry out, curious, inquiring, rigorous,
persevering, autonomous, they must also be capable of knowing how to do things and the
ability to integrate and transfer diverse learning in new contexts.

Critical thinking is also part of a select group of skills that are known by various
names - soft, socio-emotional or 21st century skills - and that have gained great relevance

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in the last decade. The Youth Employment Funders Group YEFG (is a network of more
than twenty multilateral organizations and international donors, including private
foundations, working together to generate and share more and better evidence-based
knowledge about what works in the field of youth employment) defined as the set of skills,
attitudes, behaviors and personal qualities that allow people to relate to their context, work
well with other people and achieve their goals. And they group them into five groups of
skills: 1) self-esteem or positive self-concept, 2) self-control, 3) communication, 4) social
skills, and 5) complex thinking that includes problem solving, critical thinking. and
decision making. (12/04/2018. The challenges of critical thinking in 21st century education;
https://blogs.iadb.org/educacion/es/educacionsigloxxi/ )

The contribution of YEFG is interesting, since it considers critical thinking among

the skills necessary to face today's world, taking into account the labor market, teaching
how to make assertive decisions and solve problems, that is, it becomes totally relevant in
educational establishments. critical thinking is developed in students, because it has a direct
impact on their future. The other skills mentioned by this group of experts undoubtedly
come to accompany the training process of students; self-esteem, for example, is something
that must be reinforced daily in students, so that they feel that they are capable of achieving
the goals that are proposed; Self-control and communication go hand in hand, teaching
students to recognize their emotions, sensations and feelings, teaching them to control their
impulses and adapt according to the context, to use dialogue or other means to
communicate their interiority is necessary for the emotional well-being of the person; and
social skills play a very important role in the entire academic process and mainly in the
development of critical thinking, it is in peer groups, in social interaction, in collaborative
learning, where ideas arise, points of view are defended , it is shared and a space is
generated where each person validates themselves in front of others based on what they
know, reaffirming their self-esteem, that is, all skills are related to each other.

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 CHALLENGE OF THE CHILEAN EDUCATIONAL SYSTEM

If we refer to the role that teachers and students have in the development of critical
thinking in the classroom, we cannot leave out the system that involves everything, the
educational system of our country, which has been improving and undergoing various
changes over time. over the years, all for the benefit of the students, however, are there
challenges regarding the development of critical thinking in classrooms in Chile?

The answer is affirmative, on many occasions other types of skills to be developed

by students are prioritized, the administrative work that teachers must do and few hours to
plan, often times when classes are not in-depth and work is not done. efficiently in terms of
developing critical thinking in students. Until very recently, teachers allocated 75% of their
contract hours to teaching classes, and the other 25% to their preparation and other
pedagogical and administrative tasks . Faced with this, a new law was established, which
establishes that non-teaching time is increased, increasing it, then reaching a proportion of
65% of teaching hours and 35% of non-teaching hours . This shows that little by little
progress has been made in terms of granting the necessary time to teachers for the
preparation of teaching, which is not a simple task, it requires a lot of time to search for the
appropriate material, plan accordingly. to the established objectives and to be able to
monitor the learning process appropriately, among many other points to consider.

To support my reflection I cite as a source Education 2020, which is a civil society

organization that works to ensure quality, equitable and inclusive education for children
and young people in Chile. It was born in 2008 as a citizen movement, and is based on the
principle that a good educational system is the cornerstone of a more democratic,
participatory and fair society. Today Education 2020 also promotes transformation from the
classroom, through educational innovation projects that allow our students to learn and be
prepared for the 21st century.

Faced with the challenges that exist in the field of Education in Chile, they propose
the following: improving the basic conditions in access to technologies, developing skills
such as critical thinking, in addition to digital ones, and working on teacher training are

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some of the tasks urgent to improve the quality of learning and advance the development of
the country.

That is, everything is related in current education, where we find ourselves in a

more digital and technological era, where we must take advantage of the accessibility of the
Internet, for example, of programs and media to address the development of skills such as
thinking. critical in the classrooms. Taking into account that as teachers we are training
people to impact the future and improve it.

Teachers must promote the use of technology as a positive tool for learning, for
example, for searching for information, using programs and preparing tasks, all framed in
the learning process; This will allow us to strengthen a more reflective, active and critical
approach in classes among students. They are the ones who are closest to technology from
an early age, and are easily motivated by its use. The issue is to teach them to use it
appropriately to to benefit their learning, in essence, it is about moving from a more passive
vision of the use of technology to a more active one, in which it is a tool for critical,
creative, innovative learning, which encourages the participation of all students,
communication and problem solving. That is, according to the skills required in this era and
in this changing society.

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 CONCLUSIONS

According to everything stated above, the following are conclusive and final
reflections:

 Critical thinking is one of the fundamental skills to develop in students, and

it is because it directly influences the role that the person can play in the
future in society. Being a critical thinker will have a range of skills that will
allow them to face the various daily challenges, solve problems in various
ways and have freedom of thought to defend their ideas. This is why it is
important that from an early age we work constantly; teachers can make a
difference in the lives of their students, training them for the changing and
challenging future of society.

 An important challenge for teachers is to learn from the use of technology

and constantly update themselves on this topic. For the benefit of their
classes, it is necessary to incorporate more teaching experiences that bring
students closer to more active learning, which allows them to develop higher
cognitive skills, such as critical thinking. The teacher must use all types of
material and pedagogical strategies to make his students become critical, he
must carry out this work daily, so that it becomes a habit in the students to
always go further, not just remain satisfied with what presented by the
teacher. In this way, students will become more autonomous and
independent in their learning, achieving high performance in terms of
personal, academic and social skills.

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 Linked to the previous point, if we talk about the role of the teacher, Chilean
Education must move towards new forms of teaching, perhaps beginning by
training future teachers under the premise of generating an impact in the
classroom, who are capable of innovate, develop creativity, imagination and
thinking in their students. Suddenly there are many teachers who only limit
themselves to working on the curricular coverage in each subject with
simple activities that do not represent a major challenge for their students,
which causes demotivation on their part and finally a series of weak classes
in terms of develop strong skills in students.

 Without a doubt, the greatest reflection based on the topic discussed is that
when choosing the profession of teacher, you choose to educate and train
other people so that one day they will be able to transform the future, it is
one of the most important professions in the world. By choosing to be a
teacher, you choose to stand up every day in the classroom with motivation
and enthusiasm, to be able to give your best to the group of students who
observe you and receive you with a smile, who raise their concerns, fears,
joys, thanks, but above all to give them tools through learning so that they
can face their future and change their reality if it is not adequate.

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