Teaching performance and critical thinking in university education

Abstract

The development of learning in the university education process has its own characteristics, in which two concomitant categories come together. The objective of this study is to characterize and evaluate the teaching performance in relation to the critical thinking of students in the 8th cycle in the specialty of Historical Social Sciences and Philosophy at “Pedro Ruiz Gallo” National University, Lambayeque (2019). The research correlate with the qualitative epistemological approach, of correlational type, applied to 25 students of the same specialty. We conducted 15 focus groups with meticulous interviews. Categorization has allowed us to identify two aspects. Firstly, teachers do not usually apply didactic tools, such as discussion, explanation and brainstorming. Secondly, teachers do not relate their own performance to analysis, interpretation, and inference as critical thinking skills when executing a teaching-learning session. The study has been able to determine that 2.5% of students express their views; however, 87.5% manifest a learning by repetition. In brief, there is a direct relationship between teaching performance and critical thinking. These are interdependent categories because critical thinking precedes and is present in teaching performance.