Development of Critical Thinking in Secondary School Students through STEM Education
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.63437/3083-6433-2026-1(36)-14Keywords:
critical thinking, STEM methods, engineering design, project-based learning, data analysis, error-based cases, research mini-experiments, students, general secondary education institutions, pedagogical experimentAbstract
The article presents the analysis, synthesis, generalization, and systematization of scientific sources regarding the formation of critical thinking and the implementation of STEM education in general secondary education institutions. A comparative analysis of approaches to interpreting critical thinking made it possible to distinguish its cognitive and dispositional components and to substantiate the need for their comprehensive assessment. Structural and functional analysis was applied to determine the correspondence between specific STEM methods and particular components of critical thinking. The main empirical method was a pedagogical experiment consisting of diagnostic and formative stages.
The diagnostic stage involved the primary assessment of critical thinking levels among 10th-grade students aged 15–16 using adapted instruments: the Watson–Glaser Critical Thinking Appraisal, which assesses cognitive skills such as interpretation, analysis, evaluation of arguments, and logical conclusions; and the UF/EMI-CTDI questionnaire, which assesses dispositions such as Engagement, Maturity, and Innovativeness. The adaptation of these tools considered the age characteristics of senior high school students: simplification of wording, contextualization of examples within school life and STEM practices, and expert validation of content.
For the formative stage, the systematic implementation of a set of STEM methods – engineering design, Problem-Based Learning, Data Literacy, error-based learning, and research mini-experiments – was proposed for implementation in the educational process of the experimental group over one academic semester. The control group followed traditional teaching methods. To record changes, a pre-test/post-test design was used, alongside pedagogical observation, analysis of student work products, including projects, prototypes, research reports, and analytical works, expert evaluation of the reasoning, logic, and evidence-based nature of student decisions, and surveys regarding attitudes toward learning and complex problem-solving tasks.
The research results indicate that the systematic implementation of STEM methods in 10th-grade education contributes not only to the development of specific cognitive skills but also to the formation of a stable disposition toward critical thinking. The combination of activity-based, research, and engineering formats creates pedagogical conditions for the transition from the situational use of logical operations to an integrated intellectual position, which is a key characteristic of a mature personality in the modern information society.
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