Role playing for the development of the critical thinking in the pre-service teacher training

Critical thinking is not only one of the defining competences of the professional profile of future teachers, but also an unavoidable necessity for any educational action, since it includes the capacities and attitudes that play a fundamental role in the project of analyzing and dominating the large amount of information that characterizes the current social context. This article presents a teaching-learning technique that enables the training in critical thinking in an experiential and motivational way: the role playing. In order to evaluate its impact, the opinions issued by 331 students corresponding to the Degrees of Infant Education and Primary Education of the Faculty of Education and Sports of the University of the Basque Country (UPV/EHU) are collected through a questionnaire. According to these views, the participating students consider that the simulated activity of the academic debates supposes a motivating technique for the development of their critical thinking. At the same time, they states that the proposed role playing is a perfectly valid strategy for the development of their communicative and pedagogical competences, also resulting in the acquisition of the disciplinary and transversal competences of the degrees.