Research article | Open Access
International Journal of Contemporary Approaches in Education Volume 5 (2026)
An Examination of the Thinking Education Course Curriculum in Turkey within the Framework of Multidimensional Thinking
pp. 1 - 23 | DOI: https://doi.org/10.29329/ijcae.2026.1476.2
Publish Date: September 25, 2026 | Single/Total View: 0/0 | Single/Total Download: 0/0
Abstract
The aim of this study is to examine the Thinking Education Course Curriculum for Secondary Education (TECC) within the framework of Matthew Lipman’s multidimensional thinking approach. The study examines the extent to which the learning outcomes and their explanations in TECC reflect the dimensions of critical, creative, and caring thinking. Directed content analysis, a qualitative research method, was used in the study, and the data were obtained through document analysis. The study’s data source is TECC, which was developed in Turkey by the Board of Education and Discipline of the Ministry of National Education. In the coding process, Lipman’s multidimensional thinking approach was taken as the basis, and keywords related to the dimensions of critical, creative, and caring thinking were identified. The findings reveal that critical thinking is clearly represented in TECC through reasoning, argument evaluation, fallacy detection, inference-making, analysis, evaluation, and self-criticism processes, and, in this respect, it strongly overlaps with the critical thinking dimension in Lipman’s multidimensional thinking approach. Creative thinking was mostly associated with concept generation, product/text creation, and the evaluation of its importance in problem-solving. Caring thinking was represented through the relationship between thinking and morality, as well as the importance of moral values in decision-making. In line with these findings, it is recommended that the dimensions of creative and caring thinking be addressed more visibly and in a more balanced way in curriculum development studies.
Keywords: Multidimensional Thinking, Critical Thinking, Creative Thinking, Caring Thinking, Thinking Education, Curriculum
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