Critical Thinking in Science Education: Nurturing Inquiry, Socio-Scientific Issues, and Innovation

Dear Colleagues,

We consider critical thinking (CT) to be a distinctive way of reasoning, aimed at investigating the veracity of arguments, formulating evidence-based judgments, making informed decisions, and actively participating in socio-environmental situations. CT contains elements of emancipation and components of argumentation, which make the questioning of authority possible.

However, despite the impact of science on our well-being and development, it is increasingly common to encounter personal, political, and institutional positions that challenge scientific claims on various topics (climate change, vaccination, nutrition, etc.), promoting pseudoscientific and denialist attitudes, opinions, and actions that threaten the present and future well-being of society. These attitudes are widely disseminated through mobile phones, the Internet, and, in particular, social media.

Science education should aim to create a scientifically literate citizenry capable of responding to scientific and technological advances, such as those offered by STEM education. As UNESCO highlights in its 2021 Science Report, “Scientific literacy can be an effective buffer against anti-scientific movements that seek to sow doubt in the public mind by spreading information they know to be false”.

It is crucial to emphasize the importance of inquiry-based science education, which promotes the search for and use of evidence, and this type of education should foster a citizenry that develops science-based critical thinking to face the challenges and needs of democratic societies.

Moreover, it has been demonstrated that socio-scientific issues (SSIs), due to their controversial nature, facilitate the development of CT by enabling dominant discourses to be questioned, contributing to problem-solving, formulating inferences, and making decisions. These contributions highlight the need to question the validity of arguments, reject unfounded conclusions, detect reasoning errors, and evaluate the credibility of information sources, promoting citizens’ scientific argumentation skills and their promotion through science education.

Therefore, CT requires controversial scenarios to develop intellectual independence skills and motivate active student participation. This enables them to engage in public discussions about pseudoscientific or denialist ideas and consider the legal, political, and environmental aspects of socio-scientific issues and, in turn, provides elements of critical rationality and fosters awareness of social responsibility. Thus, SSIs serve as contexts for practicing critical competencies.

Several suggested themes could be considered:

1. Defining and measuring critical thinking in science education;
2. The effectiveness of inquiry-based learning in fostering critical thinking;
3. Critical thinking and socio-scientific issues;
4. Critical thinking vs. ideas not based on scientific evidence (pseudoscience, denialism, and anti-science);
5. Integrating critical thinking, problem-solving, and inquiry into STEM education;
6. The adequate training of teachers to foster critical thinking in students;
7. Digital tools, social media, and critical thinking.

Prof. Dr. Jordi Solbes
Prof. Dr. Teresa Lupión-Cobos
Guest Editors

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• critical thinking
• socio-scientific issues
• sciences inquiry