THE INCIDENCE OF CRITICAL THINKING IN SECONDARY SCIENCE TEACHING

Critical thinking (CT) has been the subject of extensive and constant inquiry in different branches of knowledge, thus becoming a pillar of research in the formation of critical citizenship. Thus, critical thinking has been included as a central construct in the educational field, and this is particularly true in the case of science education (SE). This article examines the use of this construct in science didactics publications for the secondary education level during the period from 2012 to 2024, through a documentary review carried out in the Scopus and Google Scholar databases. A sample of 8226 documents was collected from which, through the PRISMA statement, 2235 were reviewed that related critical thinking in science teaching, finally 58 documents were selected that prioritize the criteria of critical thinking in science teaching in secondary education, this analysis constitutes the need to deepen the construction of critical thinking in the context of science teaching, allowing us to reflect on the importance attributed to critical thinking in science classrooms. This review is part of the research structure of the Ph.D. thesis that is being developed at the National Pedagogical University of Colombia in the research group Education in Sciences, Environment and Diversity (EduCADiverso).