The picturebook as a promoter of critical thinking in Primary Education: a tool for its analysis

Abstract

To develop critical thinking in the educational field, one of the core principles of living in a democracy, there are numerous resources, among which are texts, of diverse nature. Students must be trained to critically examine them, and the materials themselves can contribute to this using presentational strategies that promote critical thinking. This article focuses on a literary genre in which such a circumstance occurs, the picturebook. Since the textual examination requires guides, what is proposed here is the development and validation of an analysis model, which is offered to both the scientific community and teachers. The objective is to identify the mechanisms employed in picturebooks to foster critical thinking in their readers. After the final validation and design process, a manageable and operational tool has been obtained that is applied to the works, accompanied by a critical analysis. The research staff participating in the evaluation has given it a good score, and its application to the texts yields results in line with those of previous works. This design is part of a larger-scale study on the ability of this genre to deal with democratic citizenship education in the formal education environment, specifically in the Primary Education classroom.