Abstract
Critical thinking is present in the educational intentions in higher education with more or less programmatic development. In the training of social educators, such thinking is considered a fundamental pillar for a good performance of their functions in the social field. By means of qualitative and quantitative instruments, we set ourselves the objective of knowing the opinions of 72 Social Education degree students of the University of Huelva (Spain) about critical thinking, higher education, and their position on the subject. The results obtained showed that students have an approximate general knowledge of what critical thinking is, but a clear lack of knowledge of how it is developed. In addition, it is observed that there is a great contradiction between what they say and what they actually do, as, although they value its development in the degree and professional performance, they do not develop or commit themselves de facto to this competence. Moreover, they recognize that the university is a context that favors critical competence, but at the same time they are very critical about the teachings offered in this regard.
Highlights
Critical thinking has gained popularity, having been identified as one of the 21st century skills that people need to succeed in modern society
When examining the frequencies of responses of the sample to the different questions, the following results were obtained: 95.8% of the sample considers critical thinking to be very important; in turn, 12.5% say that their degree of knowledge about critical thinking is very low, with most of opinions being that they know something about critical thinking
As for the opinion they have about the university on the subject in question, 27.8% think that the university does not encourage critical thinking, with the remaining proportion having a positive opinion in this regard (72.2%)
Summary
Critical thinking has gained popularity, having been identified as one of the 21st century skills that people need to succeed in modern society In this sense, its importance has been claimed as a basic process related with the capacity to give answers to the changing and complex reality of our current world. The approach to the knowledge of critical thinking has been made from different perspectives, disciplines, schools, and fields of knowledge, developing and applying each of them that they have considered relevant [12,14,15,16] Disciplines such as philosophy, social sciences, education, psychology, science didactics, sociology, and political science, among others, have addressed and reflected on critical thinking, seeking their specific and own purpose while maintaining this lack of epistemological and conceptual consensus of what it is. Sustainability 2021, 13, 6865 a reflective and intentional way of thinking alternative to the usual way in which cognitive resources are activated [24]; a barrier against excessive information that tries to convince us of anything [25]; a thinking that seeks, in a persistent way, the exploration of what appears [26]; and a type of thinking that is oriented to the understanding of problems and to their resolution, evaluating alternatives for decision making [2,27]
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