Critical thinking as a leading competence of specialists in preschool and primary education

Abstract

Based on the synthesis of approaches to defining critical thinking, it is concluded that critical thinking is a universal skill of a 21st-century individual, it is the ability, readiness, and capacity to possess high-level cognitive operations and information processing technologies, thereby achieving autonomy, awareness, freedom of thought, courage in defending one’s views, systematic overcoming of cognitive distortions, and independence, characterizing the developed, modern, and harmonious personality of an educator, who deliberately evaluates and determines the paths of their further professional development and formation, thereby influencing the world around them: parents, children, and colleagues. It has been demonstrated that the emphasis in higher education, in the formation of critical thinking in future educators of preschool and primary education, should be placed on interaction, interactive methods, and techniques used during the educational process for learners of the “Preschool Education” and “Primary Education” specialties that includes the formation of the following competencies in future kindergarten teachers and primary school teachers: the ability to identify a problem; the capacity to select acceptable, relevant, and non-ontradictory arguments, find counter-arguments, as well as the ability and readiness to substantiate, evaluate, refute, generalize, hypothesize, and draw conclusions.
An analysis has been conducted regarding the reflection of critical thinking components in the realities of pedagogical practice to refine the practical component and consider the specifics of presenting this phenomenon in teaching.
The properties of critical thinking have been correlated with the pedagogical interactive toolkit. The main regularities of forming critical thinking in future educators are characterized: the student’s active cognitive activity, motivation to acquire critical thinking competencies, the gradual and systematic introduction of interactive methods and techniques into the higher education process, the principle of the relevance of knowledge and issues, and partnership and cooperation with the student audience. Further research is needed on questions related to teaching teachers the skills of critical thinking and the effective introduction of managed discussion methods and projects into higher education.