Critical Thinking and Artificial Intelligence. Challenges in Ibero American Secondary Education to strengthen Algorithmic Literacy and Ethical Judgment
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.18114767Keywords:
Critical Thinking, Artificial Intelligence, Secondary Education, Systematic Review, PRISMA 2020, LiteracyAbstract
This study presents a systematic review of scientific production on critical thinking and its articulation with artificial intelligence (AI) in secondary education, published in Scopus between 2017 and 2024. The research was conducted in accordance with the PRISMA 2020 statement, with a protocol registered in PROSPERO. It included 821 documents, analyzed using categorical and co-occurrence criteria, supplemented by Bradford’s Law to examine editorial concentration. The results show sustained growth, with an accelerated increase in studies on AI since 2020. The corpus shows that critical thinking is mainly linked to active methodologies such as problem-based learning, projects, and games, and to emerging digital skills such as STEM and computational thinking; gaps still persist in the metacognitive and ethical dimensions. The hegemony of English, editorial dispersion, and low participation from Latin America were confirmed. In synthesis, it is concluded that critical thinking is a cross-cutting competency for addressing the challenges of AI in secondary education. Furthermore, this study proposes challenges for Iberoamerica to work on promoting critical thinking using AI in interdisciplinary contexts to combine three relevant dimensions in digital training: cognitive, metacognitive, and ethical. To achieve this, it is necessary to promote pedagogical strategies, teacher training, and communication, as well as advances in educational policy to promote critical algorithmic literacy.
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