The modernization of Chinese-style teacher education requires the cultivation of"new generation"with critical thinking skills.Critical thinking is not only a key component of talent cultivation goals,but also an important indicator reflecting the comprehensive quality of teachers.The development of critical thinking marks the inheritance and development of traditional critical thinking in discourse system,thinking paradigm,and methodology.The connotation of critical thinking in pre-service teacher education is characterized by the key abilities that run through the cognition,skills and actions orientation of teacher educators,an important link that bridges the theoretical and practical gap of pre-service teacher education,and a sociological method that explores the high-quality development path of pre-service teacher education.It has basic characteristics such as authenticity,relevance,generativity,and scientificity.Based on this,the necessary path to effectively cultivate critical thinking in teacher education is to establish a sound support system for critical thinking in"teaching research evaluation",build a theoretical and discourse foundation for critical thinking that integrates Chinese culture,use artificial intelligence to promote innovative development of critical thinking training mod-els,and deepen the innovative cultivation and scientific evaluation of critical thinking in digital education.