Gender Differences and Critical Thinking: A Study on the Written Compositions of Primary Education Students

Domingo Albarracín-Vivo, Eduardo Encabo-Fernández (), Isabel Jerez-Martínez and Lourdes Hernández-Delgado
Additional contact information
Domingo Albarracín-Vivo: Department of Didactics of Language and Literature, Faculty of Education, University of Murcia, 30100 Murcia, Spain
Eduardo Encabo-Fernández: Department of Didactics of Language and Literature, Faculty of Education, University of Murcia, 30100 Murcia, Spain
Isabel Jerez-Martínez: Department of Didactics of Language and Literature, Faculty of Education, University of Murcia, 30100 Murcia, Spain
Lourdes Hernández-Delgado: Department of Didactics of Language and Literature, Faculty of Education, University of Murcia, 30100 Murcia, Spain

Societies, 2024, vol. 14, issue 7, 1-12

Abstract: The development of critical thinking is essential to the treatment of gender perspective in Primary Education. For this reason, this study focused on determining the critical ability of primary students depending on gender, analysing the possible connections between the participants’ breadth of thought and spelling competence. The methodology was based on a humanistic–interpretative ad hoc approach to categorical organisation. A total of 636 Primary Education students from the Region of Murcia (Spain) participated in a field activity in which they created a written composition based on a pretext that contained an image showing a controversial gender situation; this illustration incited a critical response in the creation of each story. The compositions were analysed individually and qualitatively using the Atlas.Ti software (v.8.4). The most relevant results appear to prove the higher critical ability of the girls who participated in this study, and additionally show connections with the spelling competence of these students. However, the critical thinking and spelling values shown were still far from what would be expected of a developed society.

Keywords: creative writing; short stories; gender stereotypes; spelling; sexism (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: A13 A14 P P0 P1 P2 P3 P4 P5 Z1 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2024
References: View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.mdpi.com/2075-4698/14/7/118/pdf (application/pdf)
https://www.mdpi.com/2075-4698/14/7/118/ (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:jsoctx:v:14:y:2024:i:7:p:118-:d:1435243

Access Statistics for this article

Societies is currently edited by Ms. Farrah Sun

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