Development of Critical Thinking in the Construction of Conclusions in Academic Work

Abstract

This paper presents an intervention carried out with students in the last grade of a bachelor's degree program in education, in whom Critical Thinking limitations were identified when drawing up the conclusions of their degree work. The objective of this intervention was to evaluate the effectiveness of a program to strengthen the critical thinking of these students. This program was integrated with two strategies: the permanent analysis of cognitive fallacies, in addition to a table to guide the analysis of arguments. This intervention was applied to a group of students, whose results were compared with a control group, validated by a homoscedasticity test. To analyze the data on the potential efficacy of the program, a quantitative method with a quasi-experimental design was followed, using Wilcoxon tests to compare the internal measurements of each group, and subsequently, the Mann Whitney U test was administered to compare the results of the experimental group, versus the results of the control group. At the end of the data analysis, a significant difference was found in favor of the experimental group, with a medium effect size, establishing the hypothetical efficacy of the intervention.