This volume seeks to broaden current ideas about the role of critical thinking (CT) in biology and environmental education considering educational challenges in the post-truth era. The chapters are distributed into three sections, perspectives of a theoretical character (part I), empirical research about CT in the context of biology and health education (part II), and empirical research on CT in the context of environmental and sustainability education (part III). The volume includes studies reporting students engagement in the practice of critical thinking, and displays how CT can be integrated in biology and environmental education and why biology and environmental issues are privileged contexts for the development of CT. The chapters examine a range of dimensions of CT, such as skills, dispositions, emotions, agency, open-mindedness, or personal epistemologies. In addition, they explore topics such as climate change, sustainable diets, genetically modified food, vaccination, acceptance of evolution, homeopathy, and gene cloning.
Concluding remarks regarding the connections between the chapters and future directions for the integration of critical thinking in biology and environmental education are presented in a final chapter.
Part I. Perspectives on Critical Thinking.-
1. Educating critical
citizens to face post-truth: the time is now.-
2. Critical thinking in the
flesh: movement and metaphors in a world in flux.-
3. Emotional sense-making
and critical thinking in the era of post-truth: The case of climate change.-
4. Culturally relevant science education and critical thinking in Indigenous
groups: bridging the gap between community and school science.- Part II.
Research about Critical Thinking in Biology and Health Education.-
5. The
role of evidence evaluation in critical thinking.-
6. Supporting critical
thinking through engagement in dialogic argumentation: The case of discussing
genetically modified food.-
7. Critical thinking to decide what to believe
and what to do regarding vaccination in schools. A case study with primary
pre-service teachers.-
8. Students' thinking strategies and the role of
arguments as a shared thinking tool.-
9. Fostering critical thinking about
health issues. Facts of success and failure in the case of homeopathy.- Part
III. Research about Critical Thinking in Environmental and Sustainability
Education.-
10. Teaching science in environmentally degraded areas: An
analysis from critical and ecofeminist perspective.-
11. Spatial and temporal
dynamics in climate change education discourse: An ecolinguistic
perspective.-
12. Social responsibility and critical disposition for
considering and acting upon conflicting evidence in argumentation about
sustainable diets.-
13. Epistemic beliefs as a means of understanding
critical thinking in a socioscientific environmental debate.-
14. Primary
school teachers understanding of critical thinking in the context of
education for sustainable development.- Part IV. Concluding Remarks.-
15. The
integration of critical thinking in biology and environmental education.
Contributions and further directions.
Blanca Puig is assistant professor in science education at the Faculty of Education, Universidade de Santiago de Compostela (USC), Spain. Her research interest focusses on the analysis of argumentation and the practice of critical thinking in the context of socio-scientific instruction. She is the main investigator of RODA (Reasoning, Argumentation and Discourse) research group and the leader of a National project on critical thinking and epistemic practices in contexts related with the post-truth era . She serves on the ERIDOB academic committee and as associate editor in the Journal of Research in Science Teaching board.
Maria Pilar Jiménez-Aleixandre is Ad Honorem Professor of science education in the Universidade de Santiago de Compostela, Spain. Her research program explores the development of argumentation and critical thinking in the science classroom. Author of highly cited publications, her h Index is 40. She has received awards in the field, the last one NARST Distinguished Contribution to Science Education through Research award, in 2019. She serves on the board of Science Education and other WoS journals.
Under the pen name of Marilar Aleixandre, she has also published fiction and poetry; some books and a sample of her work in short stories and poems is collected in anthologies in English.
