Recently, a new article by Inés Mosquera Bargiela, Paloma Blanco Anaya and Blanca Puig, from the area of Didactics of Experimental Sciences, has just been published in the journal “Enseñanza de las Ciencias”. This article, entitled “Questions for inquiry and activation of critical thinking in Early Childhood Education”, was developed within the framework of the thesis of the first author, Inés M. Bargiela. It is a pioneering research on the practice of critical thinking in a cycle of inquiry by students in Early Childhood Education.
This work investigates the influence of a teacher’s questions on the activation of the critical thinking practice of infant students. The discursive interactions between the teacher and the students during an inquiry session about falling objects are analyzed in order to identify which critical thinking skills and dispositions are promoted in the students through the questions asked by the teacher. The results show that her questions activate the skills of explanation, inference and analysis. Among the dispositions that the teacher promotes, systematicity stands out. However, the performance of dispositions by the students is lacking, which could be explained by the fact that they require more time to develop. It is concluded that the formulation of questions by the teacher activates critical thinking skills and that this didactic strategy, if it were an integral part of the teaching of children, would bring benefits to the students.
