An Analysis of the Position of Critical Thinking in the High Level Documents of Iranian Education in Terms of the Application of the Critical Thinking Components of Peter Facione

This paper aims to investigate the position of critical thinking in the high level documents of Iranian education in terms of the application of components of Peter Facione's critical thinking. To this end, the researcher has used a qualitative paradigm. From among the research population, national curriculum documents and theoretical foundations of fundamental change were selected in a purposeful way, taking into account the rules of maximum diversity and reaching the level of theoretical saturation. This research used the method of qualitative content analysis of the deductive categorization system and focused on two tendency and skill dimensions of critical thinking from Facione's point of view. Findings obtained from the analysis of the content of documents show that in the tendency dimension, the most attention is paid to the tendency of confidence in one’s rationality, and the least attention is paid to the tendency of curiosity. In the skill dimension, the most attention is paid to evaluation skills and the least attention is paid to explanation skills. The research findings indicate a relatively close relationship between these two dimensions in these documents. It is suggested that, based on the necessity for the principle of amendment and revision of the documents of the fundamental transformation of education in different time periods, the national curriculum document be revised and amended in terms of critical thinking tendencies.