Critical thinking in science education publications: the research contexts

This article presents a literature review on critical thinking in Science Education, in articles published in the period (2010-2019). The objectives were: to identify articles involving critical thinking in Science Education; and to characterize the research contexts in which critical thinking was present in the articles. The analytical procedures were performed from the stages of the systematic literature review, described by Okoli (2015) and from the assumptions of content analysis of Bardin (2011). The articles were selected from the ERIC- Education Resources Information Center database and the results show a moderate number of articles involving this theme (60 articles). Through the analysis, the articles were grouped into 8 categories (C1-C8) that express the different research contexts in which critical thinking is presented in the articles. Such contexts are related to the elaboration and/or investigation of teaching proposals that promote critical thinking; investigations of the ideas and/or skills of students and/or teachers regarding critical thinking; theoretical studies; and studies that investigate the relationship between assessment and critical thinking. Such results point to a trend in research that addresses critical thinking and opens up possibilities for new studies that explore other contexts that have not been investigated yet.