Critical Thinking in Science Education

Science is based on critical thinking. Science is defined as any system of knowledge that is concerned with the physical world and its phenomena and that entails unbiased observations and systematic experimentation.

Critical is to make an objective analysis and evaluation of an issue in order to form a judgement.

To be critical is very much to ask questions, either to oneself or to others. At the same time it is also important to be critical in a nuanced and well-argued way.

How should the students be critical during their climate change missions?

1. To be critical when identifying the problem that their science missions should solve.
Initially students could ask questions in order to identify the problem that their missions should solve, e.g. :
- Which kind of local issues needs to be addressed by a climate change mission?
- Why is addressing this topic important to my community?
- Why is this topic important to me?
2. To be critical about data/information collected during the mission and through Science learning on demand.
Regarding data from literature students could ask questions like:
- What is the author’s point of view?
- What is the author’s purpose?
- What is the intended audience?
- How reliable is the information?
- How do you know if something is right?
3. To be critical in choosing appropriate methods for data collection and analysis.
Regarding methods for data collection different questions can arise:
- Which variables do you need to explore?
- What are the relevant variables to control?
- How can you control or measure these variables?
- How is your investigation/mission from start to end designed?
- Do you need to change how you are collecting data?
- Which logistical issues associated with the data collection should you be aware of?
- Do you need more data?
- Do you need to take data from other sources?
- Do you need to reduce your uncertainty?
- How strong is you data supporting the conclusion?
4. To be critical when presenting results
- In which way would you present your results?
- In which extent would you graph your data, create figures and other models?
5. To be critical when looking back on your mission
- If you had to do the climate change mission over again, what would you change? Why?
- Do you see any weak spots in your climate change mission?
- In which ways can you improve your methods in order to, in a satisfactory way, complete your climate change mission?