Descripción

This article reports on the design and application of a didactic unit on the conservation of Tolima’s biodiversity, aimed at promoting critical thinking in menvironmental education in boys and girls from a public educational institution in the municipality of Ibagué. The research problem was located in the absence of didactic processes for the development of critical thinking in environmental education in the institution. To favor the study, we worked on the ability of argumentation. The methodology was qualitative with an action-research approach; the sample consisted of ten students; the information was collected mthrough the different activities proposed in the didactic unit, whose treatment was made from the adaptation of the argumentative text analysis model. The results showed that the students in the initial stage had shortcomings in the construction of argumentative texts since the majority were incomplete. This difficulty evidenced not only the little knowledge they had about their territory but also the argumentative flaws. The didactic unit enabled its evolution, so that the texts went, to a large extent, from being incomplete to complete. By way of conclusion, argumentation is a constituent dimension of critical thinking in environmental education. Developing this way of thinking requires scriptural knowledge and ability.