975 young people participate in “Agencia de NanoCrític@s”, an INMA educational project to promote critical thinking in Aragonese schoolchildren
The Institute of Nanoscience and Materials of Aragon (INMA), a joint centre of the CSIC and the University of Zaragoza, has achieved a participation of 975 Aragonese students, with more than 40 workshops taught, in its project “NanoCritics Agency”, an educational project highly demanded by teachers and non-existent in the current educational curriculum.
This project, successfully developed in 17 different centres in Aragon, was born with the aim of promoting critical thinking and supporting actions aimed at training students in Primary Education, Secondary Education and Baccalaureate in the process of generating scientific knowledge and providing them with the necessary tools to develop their critical thinking and evidence-based decision making. It is important to note that in this project there is no one right solution and the same conclusion is not always reached.
However, the key to the NanoCrític@s Agency is that the almost one thousand participants have learned to discern between potentially false data and previously contrasted truthful data, discovering the key steps of the scientific method.
Nanoscience is a multidisciplinary area that encompasses research in fields as varied as medicine, the environment and food, among others. These areas are exposed to a multitude of information that, on many occasions, is not contrasted and gives rise to false beliefs, myths or even pseudoscientific theories. For this reason, at our Institute, we consider it essential to disseminate this branch and the advances in this discipline to educational groups in Aragon through the generation of tools, such as this one, which encourage critical thinking. Our extensive experience in dissemination has shown us that the dissemination of results is as important as research. Therefore, in this activity, the 975 students have participated in the scientific method in first person. This involvement on the part of the participants favours the main objective of the project, which is that they learn to discern between potentially false data and previously contrasted truthful data.
Proyecto “Agencia de NanoCrític@s”
28/06/2021
