Critical reading, epistemic thinking and academic writing. A four-voice approach

Abstract

This research, as a result of a documentary review with a qualitative approach, aimed to establish a theoretical dialogue between three important processes for intellectual life: critical reading, epistemic thinking and academic writing, taking as references the contributions derived from the review of the classic works of the authors Edgar Morin, Paulo Freire, Hugo Zemelman and Matthew Lipman, as well as the consultation of secondary sources (specialized journals). Content analysis was used to identify underlying elements and the criteria used were the following: common positions, shared tangential approaches, mental activities that operationalize the production of knowledge, as well as the complementarity between theoretical positions. The results indicate that a deep approach to knowledge depends on rigorous interactions that allow one to dive into the underlying, the implicit, specifying ideological, theoretical and conceptual intentions; through which the epistemic operation of thought reaches to establish novel relationships that, organized through the conventions of academic writing, give rise to the communicative function as well as to the structured, logical and coherent presentation of scientific discourse; this supposes the transcendence of the transformation of accumulated knowledge into useful and novel knowledge that responds to the parameters of social relevance. It is concluded that accounting for reality and interacting with the underlying units of meaning requires a critical spirit, which, assisted by the epistemic process of thought and writing, seeks to break outdated explanatory limits and give way to renewed knowledge.