Critical and Creative Thinking for Science-Technology-Society Education

Abstract

The social, economic, and scientific-technological challenges that humanity faces are uncertain and increasingly volatile. Science, technology and society (STS) interactions are multiple and increasingly complex. As a corollary, the relevance of critical and creative thinking (CCT) has been progressively emphasized and reiterated so that everyone can help to minimize the problems of this present-future, achieve quality of life and fulfill themselves as persons. It is important that school curricula, teacher education and didactic-pedagogical practices consider the development of students’ CCT potential, and, therefore, contribute to make their learning useful and usable in different spheres of life. Emphasizing its focus on teacher education, this article aims at advancing towards an operative frame of reference for the intentional and explicit promotion of CCT and STS education from the first years of schooling. Indeed, and as evidenced by many studies, teacher training is a key aspect to develop didactic-pedagogical practices that explicitly and intentionally promote these two types of thinking. Another fundamental axis lies in the type of training and training opportunities for teachers, a crucial foundation in operational references on CCT.