Methodology design for developing critical thinking in students of technical and vocational education

The Partnership for 21st Century Learning (P21) proposed a set of skills for the 21st century, including collaboration, creativity, communication and critical thinking (2015). These skills have subsequently been studied in tremendous depth. Although a number of studies have looked at developing crit...

Descripción completa

Detalles Bibliográficos
Autor: Contreras Soto, Mayra Selenne
Tipo de recurso: tesis de maestría
Estado:Versión publicada
Fecha de publicación:2021
País:Chile
OAI Identifier:oai:repositorio.anid.cl:10533/246587
Acceso en línea:https://hdl.handle.net/10533/246587
Access Level:acceso abierto
Palabra clave:Ingeniería y Tecnología
Otras Ingenierías y Tecnologías
Descripción
Sumario:The Partnership for 21st Century Learning (P21) proposed a set of skills for the 21st century, including collaboration, creativity, communication and critical thinking (2015). These skills have subsequently been studied in tremendous depth. Although a number of studies have looked at developing critical thinking skills, very few of these have focused on vocational education. Our study therefore proposes a methodology for developing critical thinking among students enrolled in vocational education in Chile. To do so, a proper definition of critical thinking was proposed, considering the skills of interpretation, analysis, inference, evaluation, argumentation and metacognition. This definition was made based on the Delphi Report (Facione, 1990) and the taxonomy reviewed by Anderson et al. (2001). The methodology stems from an analysis of a program of study at a Chilean vocational college and the aforementioned critical thinking skills. The foundations of our proposed methodology include the use of multimodal resources, current topics, peer discussion, questions for self-reflection and low-cost technology. The sample comprised 149 students from the engineering school who were split into experimental and control groups. All participants sat a pre- and post-test to measure their critical thinking skills. The control group followed the traditional program, while the experimental group received classes based on the proposed methodology. A Bayesian linear regression was performed considering the pre-test and post-test scores (both of which were statistically valid instruments), the type of group and the students’ final GPA. The results show that the proposed methodology boosted students’ critical thinking skills. This work was funded by FONDECYT 1180024 Project and ANID BECAS / MAGISTER NACIONAL 22180903