Explanation and analysis of the critical thinking approach in the field of education and training and its evaluation based on the teachings of Islamic education.

Dissertation to receive the degree of Master (M.A.) major: Philosophy of Islamic Education

Abstract:

The general purpose of this research is to explain the approach of critical thinking in the field of education and comparative analysis of its foundations based on the teachings of Islamic education. According to the nature of the research topic, a descriptive-analytical research method was used, and the sources used in this research included the Holy Quran, Nahj al-Balaghah, as well as educational books, psychology, educational articles, magazines and related websites. The method of collecting information that the researcher has used in this research is the library method. In this research, the researcher seeks to answer this question: What are the philosophical principles and foundations, method and content of the critical thinking approach in the field of education and training, and what are the areas of commonality and difference of the philosophical foundations of the approach of teaching critical thinking with the teachings of Islamic education? Fundamentals of Islamic Education has come to the conclusion that there is a noticeable difference in the fundamentals of the common critical thinking approach with the fundamentals of cosmology and anthropology in Islamic education. The lack of comprehensiveness of educational goals in the approach of critical thinking, limiting the definition of the world to the visible world and neglecting the facts that are outside the scope of our empirical senses, and limiting the definition of human life to the life of this world and other things in this approach, are among the fundamental differences of the two educational perspectives. We will discuss the whole of it, such as stating the problem and purpose, general and detailed questions of the research, and explaining the key concepts of the research. 

Every educational system imagines goals in advance and designs programs to fulfill those goals according to the requirements of the time and its cultural and social commitments. The current age has unique characteristics, the current age is the age of information explosion and data attack, the age of media rule over public opinion, the age of accelerating scientific progress, the age of complexity of social developments, the age of the emergence of different schools of thought. In this era, it is necessary to educate a generation with desirable characteristics; A generation that has the power to analyze and criticize mental and sensory inputs, has the skill of philosophizing and correct judgment, is a lifelong learner, and knows more than just wanting to know; to think and produce knowledge. To achieve this goal, we have no choice but to strengthen the skill of critical and evaluative thinking, of course, taking into account the environmental, social and cultural requirements. In order to localize this method while explaining this educational approach in detail, it is necessary to identify the inconsistencies in this method with the basics of Islamic education.

1-2- Statement of the problem

Cultivating thinking is one of the tasks of any educational system, and addressing it requires designing and applying models for developing thinking skills and strengthening reasoning and criticism in educators. What is the focus of learning specialists today, especially in the field of philosophical concepts and fundamental questions, is that all human beings have the characteristic of thinking and thinking, and thinking and thinking above all else require the acquisition of thinking skills. As students learn to read and write, it is necessary to learn how to reason and judge correctly and criticize their observations and information, especially in the field of basic life issues, and to evaluate their way of thinking at a higher level. Considering the increasing spread of critical thinking education in the world and the inclusion of this subject in the form of study units in some universities and in the form of the curriculum "Teaching philosophy for children" in some educational centers, it is important to pay attention to some points. The development of today's model of education based on the method of critical thinking in the western culture has, willy-nilly, accompanied it with certain cultural, social and political requirements. It is clear that every structured educational system is formed on the basis of philosophical and anthropological foundations arising from the cultural subject and according to its specific social components.Therefore, without recognizing and analyzing the presuppositions and philosophical foundations of this educational approach, and also without considering the philosophical foundations of Islamic education and training arising from the revelation texts and the words of religious elders and thinkers in this field, and without considering the cultural and social components of today's Islamic Iranian society and the upstream documents codified in recent years, such as the philosophy of the National Education Document of the Islamic Republic, this model cannot be purely applied in the education and training system of Islamic Iran and expect favorable results. In this research, the researcher seeks to answer the following question: What are the philosophical principles and foundations of the critical thinking approach in the field of education and training, and what are the areas of commonality and difference between the philosophical foundations of the critical thinking approach and Islamic education teachings? Research: Explanation of the approach of critical thinking in the field of education and comparative analysis of its foundations based on the teachings of Islamic education. The partial objectives of this research are: 1- Investigating the goals and philosophical foundations of the approach of teaching critical thinking in the field of education. 2- Investigating the goals and philosophical foundations of the approach of Islamic education. Philosophical goals and foundations of the approach of critical thinking and Islamic education 4- Explanation of the concept of critical thinking in Islamic sources 1-4- Research questions Arising from the goals of the research and to achieve the mentioned goals, the main questions of the current research are: 1- What is the approach of critical thinking in the field of education and the analytical application of its basics? What are the results based on the teachings of Islamic education?

The detailed questions of the present research based on the objectives of the research are:

What are the goals and principles and philosophical foundations of the critical thinking approach in the field of education? And what are the goals and what are the results of the evaluation of the critical thinking approach based on the teachings of Islamic education?

What is the explanation of the concept of critical thinking in Islamic sources?

1-5- The necessity of research

It seems that what makes the cultivation of critical thinking in schools necessary is the lack of a correct model of thinking arising from the philosophical foundations of Islamic education and the lack of a correct general view of the world and the human self and the goal. Life and other basic questions, on the one hand, and on the other hand, the inability of educators to face the variety of issues that arise in each person's life situations. But what can be done for their preparation? Is it possible to create real life situations in the education process and express the solutions for each one? Is it possible to predict the life of the teachers moment by moment and provide correct solutions for each of them? Is it possible to fully predict the requirements of the future society and provide efficient instructions for it? Today's continuous social changes and challenges on basic questions and individual differences of educators prevent providing single and stereotyped solutions in responding to everyday problems of educators. Therefore, the cultivation of thinking is considered one of the essential needs of the current generation, and at the same time, the formal education system, in the first rank and the family in the second rank, are the institutions that respond to this basic need, and for this reason, the correct cultivation of thinking is one of the most important missions of the formal education system. Since it is necessary to cultivate thinking and make it fertile in the educational system, dealing with its diverse and different methods is inevitable. Therefore, teaching critical thinking is important as one of the methods of enriching the thinking of educators, and several models with different and diverse approaches are proposed in the educational systems of the world. Among these, we can mention the "Philosophy Education for Children" program, which was first designed by "Matthew Lipman" and implemented in many countries with the aim of "strengthening the reasoning power and expanding the methods of teaching intellectual skills" (Lipman, 1984, quoted by Zarghami, 2018). The widespread use of this educational program and the positive results of research on increasing the indicators of the teachers' thinking skills and their academic progress have resulted in the greater efficiency of this model compared to other methods of teaching critical thinking. Applying this approach in more than one hundred and fifty countries of the world, in addition to indicating its relative validity, has brought about many changes in this plan.