This project aims to apply an interdisciplinary approach between education and neuroscience to investigate how mother tongue competencies contribute to the development of critical thinking in secondary school students. Critical thinking is considered an essential competency in the 21st century, crucial for personal development, social inclusion, and academic and professional success. However, students often demonstrate insufficient levels of critical thinking.

A sample of 75 secondary school students from public schools in Lisbon will be collected. Writing skills and critical thinking will be assessed using validated tests for the Portuguese population. Brain activity will be measured through functional neuroimaging and electroencephalography.

It is expected that the project results will contribute to the development of innovative educational strategies and policies.

Objectives

This project aims to explore the connection between writing skills and the cognitive skills of critical thinking. The main research question is: How do the skills in mother tongue contribute to critical thinking of high school students in public education?

There is a gap in the literature on mother tongue abilities and CT performance as also on interdisciplinary analysis of CT. To bring this gap, this project assumes the UNESCO’s (2022) recommendation to look for research in education jointly with the learning sciences, specially cognitive neurosciences, with epistemological humility and open mind.

We raise the following secondary research questions:

1. How do students perform in the cognitive skill dimension of CT during high school grades 10, 11 and 12?
2. How do language writing skills at grade 10 influence the rate of growth in CT cognitive abilities?
3. How does the neural activity underlying language comprehension, indexed using neuroimaging and electrophysiology, contribute to the cognitive skills of CT?

Conducted as an interdisciplinary study that bridges education and neuroscience, it employs a cognitive framework to synthesize data from social contexts, behavioral observations, and through controlled experiments.

Research Team

• Lucimar Dantas (PI), CeiED, Lusófona University
• Jorge Oliveira, Hei-LAB, Universidade Lusófona
• José Teles, Hei-LAB, Universidade Lusófona
• Marisa Filipe, Centro de Linguística da Universidade de Lisboa, Faculdade de Letras
• Carla Galego, CeiED, Universidade Lusófona
• Elsa Estrela, CeiED, Universidade Lusófona
• Vanessa Russo, CeiED, Universidade Lusófona
• Miguel Remondes, Gulbenkian Institute for Molecular Medicine
• Fernanda Candeias, CeiED, Universidade Lusófona
• Duarte Gaio, Hei-LAB, Universidade Lusófona
• Samuel Nastase, Princeton Neuroscience Institute

Partners

• HEI-Lab
• Gulbenkian Institute for Molecular Medicine
• Centro de Linguística da Universidade de Lisboa
• Princeton Neuroscience Institute

Associated ReLeCo's

• Learning & Innovation
• Public Policies and Governance in Education