The socratic question, didactic strategy to develop critical thinking in fifth grade
Abstract
The following scientific article, based on Pedagogical Action Research (PAR), presents findings on how to implement a Didactic Strategy based on the Socratic Question (DS-SQ), linked to a Cross-Curricular Pedagogical Routine (TRP-SC) consisting of five stages and applied three times a week across six curriculum areas has succeeded in fostering critical thinking processes and structures (to a quite significant degree) at the Los Morales Educational Institution in the municipality of Tierralta, in the department of Córdoba, Colombia. The theoretical foundation of the IAP is Philosophy for Children (P4C) by Matthew Lipman and Ann Margaret Sharp, an adaptation of Paulo Freire’s Pedagogy of Liberation, and its correlation with the Cambridge Pathway approach in Language and Mathematics, which fosters critical thinking through an international curriculum. Methodologically, the study employed a qualitative approach with a descriptive-interpretive scope, using instruments such as field journals, records of student work, and structured observation rubrics. It is considered that the systematic use of structured dialogue (SD) stimulates the categories, although it reveals specific cognitive gaps in areas such as mathematics and ethics and values. It is concluded that the problematization of the rural context through structured dialogue consolidates higher-order thinking skills in children aged 9 to 11. During the Scopus search, the search matrix yielded 100 research results in English and Spanish related to the terms “Socratic Question” and “Critical Thinking”; 79 were subsequently excluded, leaving a final corpus of 21 documents that matched the IAP’s keywords.
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