Abstract
ABSTRACTCritical thinking is brought to the fore as a central competence in today’s society and in school curricula, but what may be emphasised as a general skill may also differ across school subjects. Using a mixed methods approach we identify general formulations regarding critical thinking in the Swedish curriculum of school year nine and seven more subject-specific categories of critical thinking in the syllabi and national tests in history, physics, mathematics and Swedish. By analysing 76 individual students’ critical thinking as expressed in national tests we find that a student that thinks critically in one subjects does not necessarily do so in other subjects. We find that students’ grades in different subjects are closely linked to their abilities to answer questions designed to test critical thinking in the subjects. We also find that the same formulations of critical thinking in two subjects may mean very different things when translated into assessments. Our findings suggest that critical thinking among students comprise different, subject-specific skills. The complexity of our findings highlights a need for future research to help clarify to students and researchers what it means to think critically in school.
Highlights
Critical thinking today is underscored as a pivotal skill in society and in curricula
To empirically test whether a student noted for critical thinking in history was noted for this in mathematics, physics, and Swedish, and vice versa we studied individual students’ national tests results within and across the different subjects
What we find in this study when we analyse the syllabi and test questions are seven different ways in which critical thinking is operationalized and tested, dimensions we have labelled: (1) critical thinkingin the science of physics, (2) critical thinking regarding physics in society, (3) critical historical thinking, (4) critical thinking about uses of history, (5) critical thinking in interpreting and integrating ideas in Swedish, (6) critical thinking in examining and evaluating content and form in Swedish, and (7) critical thinking in mathematics
Summary
Critical thinking today is underscored as a pivotal skill in society and in curricula. In the syllabi, critical thinking is interpreted and operationalised in different subject-specific ways At this point, research has not managed to establish to what degree critical thinking is a matter of distinct skills in different school subjects and to what degree it is primarily a general ability
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