Experimentation as a teaching-learning strategy to promote critical thinking skills

Abstract

Critical thinking has been an object of interest in educational research, especially in science areas, with a view to training citizens capable of making rational decisions and solving personal and social problems involving science and technology. The aspects of the teaching-learning strategy - experimentation - are considered by researchers as favourable to the development of critical thinking skills. It was established as a general objective to analyze the effectiveness of experimentation, as a teaching-learning strategy in the teaching of Sciences, for the manifestation of critical thinking skills in students at Elementary School. The approach of this study is of qualitative nature of the research-action type. It was held at a private school in the state of São Paulo. The intervention was carried out with 23 students in a class of the 5th year of Elementary School, in the second half of 2019. The results demonstrate that the students, when participating in the proposed strategy, manifested thinking abilities of the set of elementary capacities, of the Taxonomy of critical thinking by Ennis. Most students (55.5%) considered their level of interest to be very good. Also, 38.8% of the students indicated that they found little or no difficulty in carrying out the activities. It is considered plausible, both concerning the level of interest and the degree of difficulty, the fact that the strategy used favours the exposure of ideas and enables their sharing, as well as the argumentation, formulation of hypotheses and expression of errors, allowing their active participation in the learning process.