Desde la Lectura de la Realidad a la Acción Problematizadora: Un Análisis del Nivel de Consciencia en el Desarrollo del Pensamiento Crítico

One of the topics recently investigated is critical thinking, and one way to promote it is to organize teaching from a Freirean perspective, taking the stages of consciousness as part of the critical awareness of reality and the willingness to social transformation. This research aimed to characterize students' consciousness stages from reading the real problem to materializing the problematizing action. We propose activities to identify and elect the problem and a sequence of activities to foster critical thinking. The study was developed with 42 students in a chemistry class at a public school, and data collection was carried out through questionnaires, field notes, and audio recordings. The discourses were characterized by an analysis instrument that considered the dimensions of the notion of critical thinking. When choosing the problem of the lack of basic sanitation, we observed a transition from naïve to transitivenaïve consciousness, with simplistic readings of reality and weak arguments with often individualistic positions, without expressing a willingness to change. Based on the theme, a sequence of 4 activities was
planned and analyzed, developed over four months. At this stage, we observed an advance towards a level of critical awareness since access to basic sanitation and drinking water began to be recognized as a right, and lack of access to water can be considered a form of oppression. The analysis instrument proved adequate to monitor the process of developing critical thinking, and the theoretical bases were coherent from an epistemological point of view.