Abstract
This chapter addresses the relationships between argumentation and critical thinking. The underlying questions are how argumentation supports the capacity to discriminate between claims justified by evidence and mere opinion, and how argumentation can contribute to two types of objectives related to learning science and to citizenship. First, various meanings for critical thinking in different communities are reviewed. Then, we propose our characterisation of critical thinking, which assumes that evidence evaluation is an essential component, but that there are other components related to the capacities of reflecting on the world around us and of participating in it (e.g. developing an independent opinion, including challenging the ideas of one’s own community). This characterisation draws both from the notion of commitment to evidence and from critical theorists. Using this frame, the chapter examines the contributions of argumentation in science education to the components of critical thinking, and also discusses the evaluation of evidence and the different factors influencing or even hampering it. The chapter concludes with consideration of the development of critical thinking in the science classroom.
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Acknowledgements
This work was supported by the Spanish Ministerio de Educación y Ciencia (MEC), partly funded by the European Regional Development Fund (ERDF), code SEJ2006-15589-C02-01/EDUC. The authors are grateful to Glen Aikenhead for his valuable feedback on the first draft.
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Jiménez-Aleixandre, M.P., Puig, B. (2012). Argumentation, Evidence Evaluation and Critical Thinking. In: Fraser, B., Tobin, K., McRobbie, C. (eds) Second International Handbook of Science Education. Springer International Handbooks of Education, vol 24. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4020-9041-7_66
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