Critical Thinking as a Resilience Factor in an Engineering Program

In the current context of technical higher education in Mexico, there have been changes affecting the school community. The massification phenomenon and the implementation of a competence-based model are both challenges that college students must face. We present the preliminary results of the following research “Resilience skills development through protective and risk factors in engineering students”. In social sciences, resilience is presented as the individual’s ability to identify and solve problems, which impacts their own transformation and growth (Cyrulnik, 2004; Vanistendael, 2006; Melillo & Suarez, 2004). Developing resilience depends on certain resilience skills which through critical thinking strengthen students’ analysis and decision making. We used a mixed methodology because resilience emanates from the individual’s subjectivity. A quantitative study was applied to a sample of 105 students of which 23 were identified as having resilient characteristics. In the qualitative study the results show that 12 of these students had critical thinking as a protective factor.