El desarrollo de habilidades de pensamiento crítico mediante el diseño, implementación y evaluación de una secuencia de enseñanza-aprendizaje para la Educación Secundaria Obligatoria sobre la contaminación medioambiental por plásticos

Resumo

The problem of environmental pollution by plastics generates a great deal of controversy in our society. They solve important issues in our daily lives, but their manufacture consumes fossil resources and plastic waste causes great environmental degradation. Faced with this issue, the school is seen as a generator of attitudes to solve this problem. To do this, it is essential that students understand the whole problem of plastics, form an independent opinion, develop personal autonomy skills, critically analyse information, etc., in short, develop critical thinking skills. This doctoral thesis presents a teachinglearning sequence on plastics and pollution to develop critical thinking skills with secondary school students and is presented in the form of a compendium of articles, specifically with a total of four publications, each of which constitutes a chapter of this report. The first chapter reviews the literature on the subject of plastics in the teaching of experimental sciences. The second chapter continues with a reflection on how socioscientific problems can contribute to the development of critical thinking skills in secondary school students. The next two chapters present the results of two activities included in the teaching-learning sequence: an enquiry on plastic degradation and a roleplay on the ban of single-use plastics. Despite the importance of plastics and their pollution, the results indicate that the number of publications that contribute to create an awareness-raising school is low, the works signed by teachers outside the university environment are scarce and there are hardly any collaborations between teachers from different educational levels. In addition to this, the contents are centered on propaedeutic knowledge. The socio-scientific problem of plastics, using tasks such as role-playing and enquiry, has helped students to progress in the development of critical thinking skills. Specifically, in decision-making and argumentation skills in the task on banning singleuse plastics, and in chemistry insight and knowledge acquisition in the enquiry task of plastics degradation.