The influence of virtual teaching in teacher trainee´s critical thinking

Resumo

The aim of this paper is to analyze the change in teacher trainee´s critical thinking after working in a virtual learning environment. The design was based on the use of two virtual learning activities (on line forums and discussions) that enable the students to build, in a collaborative way, new knowledge. This work combines quantitative and qualitative methodological strategies.To measure changes it was applied Pintrich’s Questionnaire (Motivated Strategies Learning Questionnaire) and personal interviews were conducted. The results don’t reveal a clear increase respect to critical thinking but in the semi-structured interviews it was found some changes in the capacity for reflection of the students. Thanks to the use of ICTs, future teachers have had to reconceptualise learning, making it more active, more autonomous, more reflective and critical