Initial conceptions of Critical and Creative Thinking by science teachers

Abstract

The aim of this paper is to analyze the initial conceptions of Critical and Creative Thinking of prospective secondary school science teachers. This research is the starting point of a broader project that considers different aspects for the analysis of the strategies applied for the development of Critical and Creative Thinking (CCrT) in the didactic units elaborated by teachers in their initial training stage. Thirty students from the Master's Degree in Teacher Training for Secondary Education in experimental sciences at the Autonomous University of Barcelona participated in this study. The instrument used for the analysis was a semi-structured questionnaire based on a Critical and Creative Thinking Skills Scale (CCrTSS) developed in a previous work and made up of 3 components that group 8 skills: Context (understanding), Reasoning (analysis, evaluation, inference, explanation, and approach to context) and Metacognition (self-regulation and intellectual autonomy), organized in increasing order of complexity. A mixed analysis of the data (quantitative and qualitative) was carried out, resulting in a characterization of the students' conceptions of Critical and Creative Thinking that shows a clear tendency to consider only Reasoning and its component skills. With this result, a first validation of the functionality of the scale as a diagnostic instrument was also achieved.