Promuovere e valutare le abilità di pensiero critico nella formazione iniziale degli insegnanti

This paper presents a research that investigates and evaluates a training program to future teachers of primary and children's school, for developing critical thinking skills during the third year of university internships. The aim of this work is to probe the outcomes achieved by 200 subjects, who are going to teach in school, when they plan and execute educational actions in the classroom, and what possi-ble difficulties they encountered during the development of the planned teaching action. Teaching planning was used by students both as a structure and as a guide for the action; the design prepared the sequence of education activities, anticipated the organization and as well as the carrying out of events and experiences, stimulated the evaluation of the results learning and process. The training course, lasting nine months, and tools created ad hoc resulted to be effective for increasing the performance of the sample group, consisting of under-graduate students attending the degree course in

Primary Education Sciences of the University of Palermo. Although the findings concern only experimental situations that cannot be generalized, the interventions taken confirmed the efficacy of the procedures used. The results showed an appreciable increase of critical skills in the group of trainee teachers by use of educational planning strategies. It was found that teachers en-hanced reflective practice and communicative interaction, through well-designed teaching activities. [Publisher's text].