Analysis of Critical Thinking Through Scientific Thinking in the Design of Inquiries by Preservice Preschool Teachers

The development of critical thinking and scientific thinking skills is essential in science education, as these competencies enable students to effectively address and solve problems. This chapter discusses the distinction between these two types of thinking, highlighting similarities and singularities. It also examines the competence of preservice preschool teachers in scientific thinking skills when developing inquiry as a preliminary step toward developing critical thinking. The study involved 121 preservice preschool teachers from two different centers at the University of Malaga (Spain). The intervention used an inquiry-based teaching approach, and the preservice teachers’ final assignment was a report designed to assess their progress in scientific thinking skills. This report helped establish a link between the stages of inquiry and the development of scientific thinking skills. The Friedman and Wilcoxon tests revealed statistically significant differences between the problem statement and other stages of inquiry, as well as among different aspects of scientific thinking, such as creating and testing hypotheses and constructing explanations from evidence related to understanding causes and effects. These findings suggest the need to incorporate strategies that encourage argumentation and decision-making in the design and development of inquiry sequences, basing these not only on curricular terms but also considering moral, ethical, political, and other dimensions, in addition to scientific ones.