Panagiota Christodoulou & Anastasios Papanikolaou

Critical Reflections: Student Teachers' Critical Thinking Competencies in the Context of Education for Sustainable Development

Critical Reflections: Student Teachers' Critical Thinking Competencies in the Context of Education for Sustainable Development

Panagiota Christodoulou & Anastasios Papanikolaou

University of Western Macedonia, Department of Primary Education, Greece

Abstract

UNESCO's 2030 Agenda for Education for Sustainable Development (ESD) emphasises critical thinking (CT) among the necessary competencies that prospective teachers should have to tackle global challenges like environmental sustainability and social justice. At the same time, CT is crucial for nurturing informed, responsible global citizens ready to contribute to a just society. Meeting these demands requires higher education instructors to transform their teaching by employing active, student-centred methods like case-based teaching. Still, this transformation is challenging for higher education instructors and the empirical evidence remains scarce. The aim of the current study was to explore CT in teacher education through Education for Sustainable Development (ESD), analysing nine undergraduates' responses in case studies for practicum preparation.

Our bottom-up content analysis revealed eight higher order categories. The analysis indicates that student-teachers engage with thinking processes akin to established CT models proposed by scholars like Dewey, Brookfield, and Garrison. That notwithstanding, student-teachers encountered challenges while engaging with the case studies, such as difficulties in comprehending complex problems and reasoning sufficiently. As a second step, we used the Critical Thinking Quality of Response Rubric (CTQRR) to assess the quality of student-teacher CT. The interrater agreement was high (k=.86) and after discussion, the two raters reached full consensus. Three CT competence levels emerged from the rubric assessment: the deficient, emerging, and competent critical thinkers.

Our findings have practical implications for teacher education. Higher education instructors can enhance student-teacher CT through scaffolded interventions that refine their epistemological beliefs and boost their comprehension and argumentation skills. The rubric assessment highlights the necessity for higher education instructors to implement structured CT development strategies that are tailored to different student-teacher CT profiles.

Keywords: Critical thinking, education for sustainable development, teacher education, case studies, Critical Thinking Quality of Response Rubric.

Biographies

Panagiota Christodoulou: Ph.D. student in applied developmental psychology at the Department of Primary Education, School of Social Sciences and Humanities, University of Western Macedonia, Greece. Panagiota has been involved in research projects at the national and European levels (e.g., ARISTEIA, Erasmus+, HORIZON 2020). During the Think4Jobs project (2020-1-EL01-KA203-078797), she was engaged in the participatory co-design and development of Critical Thinking Blended Apprenticeships Curricula for Teacher Education through University Business Collaboration. Email: .

Anastasios Papanikolaou: Assistant Professor of Environmental Education at the Department of Primary Education, School of Social Sciences and Humanities, University of Western Macedonia, Greece. Anastasios teaches undergraduate and postgraduate courses relevant to environmental education. His research revolves around the topics of sustainability and environmental education/education for sustainable development. Email: .