This volume seeks to broaden current ideas about the role of critical thinking (CT) in biology and environmental education considering educational challenges in the post-truth era. The chapters are distributed into three sections, perspectives of a theoretical character (part I), empirical research about CT in the context of biology and health education (part II), and empirical research on CT in the context of environmental and sustainability education (part III). The volume includes studies reporting students' engagement in the practice of critical thinking, and displays how CT can be integrated in biology and environmental education and why biology and environmental issues are privileged contexts for the development of CT. The chapters examine a range of dimensions of CT, such as skills, dispositions, emotions, agency, open-mindedness, or personal epistemologies. In addition, they explore topics such as climate change, sustainable diets, genetically modified food, vaccination, acceptance of evolution, homeopathy, and gene cloning.
Concluding remarks regarding the connections between the chapters and future directions for the integration of critical thinking in biology and environmental education are presented in a final chapter.
About the Author: Blanca Puig is assistant professor in science education at the Faculty of Education, Universidade de Santiago de Compostela (USC), Spain. Her research interest focusses on the analysis of argumentation and the practice of critical thinking in the context of socio-scientific instruction. She is the main investigator of RODA (Reasoning, Argumentation and Discourse) research group and the leader of a National project on critical thinking and epistemic practices in contexts related with the post-truth era . She serves on the ERIDOB academic committee and as associate editor in the Journal of Research in Science Teaching board.
Maria Pilar Jiménez-Aleixandre is Ad Honorem Professor of science education in the Universidade de Santiago de Compostela, Spain. Her research program explores the development of argumentation and critical thinking in the science classroom. Author of highly cited publications, her h Index is 40. She has received awards in the field, the last one NARST Distinguished Contribution to Science Education through Research award, in 2019. She serves on the board of Science Education and other WoS journals.
Under the pen name of Marilar Aleixandre, she has also published fiction and poetry; some books and a sample of her work in short stories and poems is collected in anthologies in English.
