Pensamento crítico na adolescência: revisão de escopo e construção de uma medida

Abstract

Critical thinking (CT) is an essential skill for the 21st century, being associated with civic participation, informed decision-making, and personal and social development. It is the ability to examine information, analyze evidence, identify assumptions, make inferences, and make reasoned judgments. Despite its relevance, scientific production on the subject, when considering adolescence, is fragmented and marked by conceptual heterogeneity, methodological limitations, and a scarcity of assessment instruments sensitive to the developmental specificities of this stage of life. Thus, this dissertation aimed to investigate CT in adolescence. Specifically, a scoping review was conducted and a CT test was constructed. Following the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses (PRISMA-ScR), the scoping review included 36 empirical publications on CP in adolescents. The results showed a growing field, but quantitatively insufficient to consistently support the development and assessment of CP in adolescents. A recurring theoretical duality was observed between cognitive and dispositional approaches, as well as the predominance of instruments originally developed for adults, with adaptations for adolescents. There was a concentration of studies in countries of the Global North, frequent use of unrepresentative samples, and a scarcity of psychometrically constructed measures for this population. Considering these gaps, the second study constructed the Cogitum et Mythologia: Critical Thinking Test, an instrument based on vignettes of Greek myths, designed to assess CP in adolescents. The instrument was designed based on contemporary recommendations for the assessment of CT, prioritizing audiovisual narrative stimuli, central themes of the adolescent experience, and an open-ended task focused on spontaneous discursive production. Five sub-skills—analysis, comparison, evaluation, inference, and synthesis—are assessed on a three-point scale: 0—Low; 1—Medium; and 3—High. The construction of Cogitum et Mythologia sought to minimize biases associated with formal schooling, especially those related to reading and writing, which are often present in traditional CT assessment instruments. By adopting vignettes in the form of subtitled videos, the instrument has the potential to broaden access to the assessment of this construct, favoring engagement and its manifestation in adolescents. It is important to highlight the need for continued development of Cogitum et Mythologia, with the expansion of its materials, the conduct of empirical studies with representative samples, and the collection of evidence of validity and reliability estimates, in order to consolidate its psychometric properties and its use in educational and research contexts.