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In an era of rapid changes, when innovation and creativity become key, developed critical thinking is a component of a successful personality. It promotes the development of the ability to analyze information, distinguish facts from assumptions, establish connections between events, draw objective conclusions, effectively use available resources, and look for new ways to achieve a goal. The purpose of the article is to highlight the essence of critical thinking, justify the diagnostic criteria, and describe the results of the development of its foundations in older preschool children. Methods applied: analysis of psychological-pedagogical and methodical literature, game method («Find the differences», «Yes or no?»), conversation based on the pictures «Nonsense», «What will happen next?», resolution of pedagogical situations, and observation of children during joint activities. Critical thinking is evaluative thinking that is aimed at analyzing the situation, finding several options for solving the problem, and choosing the optimal one based on the experience gained and new knowledge that is superimposed on this experience. We singled out the following criteria for his diagnosis: the ability to think logically, the presence of one’s own opinion, divergent thinking, the ability to cooperate and discuss ideas with others, and the ability to forecast. Since critical thinking in older preschool age is just emerging in connection with the peculiarities of thinking processes, we distinguished 3 levels of its development: the emergence of criticality (low level), elementary level, and positive level. The conducted research showed that the majority of children are at low (30.5%) and elementary (47.8%) levels; only 21.7% have a positive level. Work on the development of critical thinking in children requires additional attention from educators.
Maksimova et al. (Mon,) studied this question.