New Perspectives in Science Education

Critical thinking is a complex construct to address in the classroom. One of the dimensions that make it up is communication. By communication, we mean the transmission of decisions made using scientific language appropriate to the context and intentions [1]. Activities where students participate by playing other different roles, are suitable for developing communication [2]. In this research, we present  an activity analysis with 15 grade-10 students (15-16 years) from a high school in Malaga, Spain, who acted out a science congress in their school. They pretended to be research scientists in inorganic chemistry. To do so, they first conducted an experimentation session about chemistry and collected data, and then they wrote their papers on a template provided by the congress. The teacher acted as a reviewer of the papers. Finally, the conference was held with the oral papers. The teacher evaluated the oral communications as data collection instruments , and the students completed an activity evaluation questionnaire. The oral presentations improved compared to previous times. Students incorporated more technicality in their speeches and used more scientific vocabulary, more diverse and more precise than on previous occasions. The students rated this activity with an average of 9 points out of 10. They considered that it improved their learning by 3 points out of 10, and they rated it as quite interesting, useful, attractive and simple. School science conferences can be an experience to develop communication skills, one of the dimensions that make up critical thinking. Funding Project PID2019-105765GA-I00.