ON READING AND TEXTUAL INTERPRETATION: PILLARS FOR THE DEVELOPMENT OF CRITICAL THINKING

Abstract

This essay analyzes the fundamental relationship between critical reading, textual interpretation, and the development of critical thinking in the context of lower secondary education in Colombia. The relevance of this topic lies in the pressing need to educate students capable of analyzing, interpreting, and critically evaluating textual information in a society characterized by an overabundance of information and the proliferation of content of questionable veracity. The main objective of this essay is to examine how critical reading and textual interpretation processes constitute essential pillars for the development of critical thinking, going beyond mere text decoding to become tools for intellectual and civic formation. The methodology used corresponds to analytical documentary research, based on a systematic review of specialized literature from academic databases such as SciELO, Dialnet, university repositories, and indexed scientific journals. Recent studies on critical reading, reading comprehension, textual interpretation, and the development of critical thinking in education were analyzed, with particular emphasis on research carried out in Latin American and Colombian contexts. The main findings show that critical reading and textual interpretation function as complex cognitive processes that transcend literal and inferential levels of comprehension to reach evaluative and reflective dimensions. It is observed that students who develop strong critical reading skills demonstrate greater capacity for analysis, synthesis, evaluation of arguments, and construction of well-founded judgments. Likewise, it is confirmed that the implementation of active teaching strategies focused on textual interpretation has positive effects on the development of metacognitive skills and the formation of autonomous thinking.