Pre-Service Early Childhood Teachers’ Perceptions of Critical Thinking and Sustainability: A Comparative Study Between Spain and Poland

Lourdes Aragón (), Robert Opora and Juan Casanova
Additional contact information
Lourdes Aragón: Department of Didactics, Faculty of Education Sciences, University of Cádiz, 11519 Cádiz, Spain
Robert Opora: Institute of Education, Faculty of Social Science, University of Gdansk, Bażyńskiego 4 St., 80-309 Gdansk, Poland
Juan Casanova: Department of Didactics, Faculty of Education Sciences, University of Cádiz, 11519 Cádiz, Spain

Sustainability, 2025, vol. 17, issue 15, 1-21

Abstract: This study explores the perceptions of future educators, specifically Early Childhood Education students at the Universities of Cádiz and Gdansk, regarding the interconnections between critical thinking and sustainability. The work aims to provide valuable insights into general teacher training, examining how these students’ experiences are contextualized within their respective educational systems and cultural contexts. To achieve this, eleven group interviews (three in Cádiz, eight in Gdansk) were conducted using a structured and expert-validated script. The transcribed data were qualitatively analyzed using QDA MINER v.6 software. Key findings reveal divergent perceptions of critical thinking among pre-service teachers: while Spanish students leaned towards a subjective understanding, Polish students emphasized an objective, data-driven approach. This distinction has significant implications for the conceptualization and teaching of critical thinking in educator training. Despite these differences, both groups of participants highlighted the necessity of implementing active methodologies in higher education (such as cooperative learning, problem-solving, and debates) to foster critical thinking, both for their own development and for preparing for their future practice with young children. This study also identified an excessive emphasis on theoretical aspects of sustainability in these future teachers’ training and a limited understanding of their practical application in the classroom. Furthermore, explicit connections between critical thinking and sustainability were scarce in student responses, highlighting a gap in current educator training in these areas. Collectively, the results suggest significant weaknesses in current teacher training efforts regarding the development of critical thinking and its effective integration with sustainability competencies.

Keywords: initial teacher training; critical thinking; perceptions; sustainability (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: O13 Q Q0 Q2 Q3 Q5 Q56 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2025
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/17/15/7129/pdf (application/pdf)
https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/17/15/7129/ (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:gam:jsusta:v:17:y:2025:i:15:p:7129-:d:1718682

Access Statistics for this article

Sustainability is currently edited by Ms. Alexandra Wu

More articles in Sustainability from MDPI
Bibliographic data for series maintained by MDPI Indexing Manager ().