An Analysis Of The Teaching Of Critical Thinking In English For Academic Purposes Programmes

Assignment Coversheet
UNIVERSITY OF SUSSEX
School of Education and Social Work
International Professional Doctorate in Education (EdD)
Phase 2, Module 3
NAME OF STUDENT:
Sara Maria Camacho Felix
SUBMISSION DATE:
21 April 2011
PROJECT TITLE:
An Analysis of the Teaching of Critical Thinking in English for Academic Purposes
Programmes
The number of words in this essay/project/dissertation is:
19,996
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concerning length.
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An Analysis of the Teaching of Critical Thinking in
English for Academic Purposes Programmes
Sara Maria Camacho Felix
April 2011
Word Count: 19,996
2

Table of Contents
Introduction to the Critical Analytical Study.................................................................................. 4
Problems faced in Higher Education in Kazakhstan.......................................................................4
Further Problems in Kazakhstan's Higher Education System: Critical Thinking.........................6
Reforming the Higher Education System and Nazarbayev University ...........................................8
Challenges in Foundation Year Programmes and English for Academic Purposes......................11
UCL's Foundation Year Programme at Nazarbayev University ................................................12
Purpose and Research Questions............................................................................................... 14
Methodology ................................................................................................................................ 14
Structure of the Study ..................................................................................................................16
Introduction to and Background on Critical Thinking.................................................................17
Dewey's Reflective Thinking.........................................................................................................17
Ennis and the De-politicization of Critical Thinking.......................................................................18
Research on Critical Thinking in EAP from Ennis's Theoretical Perspective .......................... 21
Critical Thinking as Emancipatory and Transformative Education ...........................................30
Foundations of Critical Theory..................................................................................................... 30
Freire and Conscientização..........................................................................................................31
Moving Beyond Freire to a More Contextual Understanding of Critical Thinking.........................33
Critical English for Academic Purposes........................................................................................ 35
Empirical Research on Critical Thinking in Critical EAP............................................................ 39
Concluding Remarks on Critical Thinking in EAP and a Look to Further Research ...............48
Reflecting on Critical Thinking in EAP.......................................................................................... 48
Suggesting Further Research in Integrating Critical Thinking in EAP..........................................51
Reference List................................................................................................................................. 55
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Introduction to the Critical Analytical Study
Problems faced in Higher Education in Kazakhstan
When Kazakhstan gained independence in December 1991, its education was based on
the soviet system. This legacy provided the country with a high value of education as well
as well educated population (World Bank, 2007). However, it also left a legacy of
bureaucratisation with a strict top-down management, which contributes to a lack of
academic freedom. Another problem arose--as the Soviet academics and research
centres returned to Russia, it left a void in research facilities and academic pursuits
outside of teaching in higher education. Along with a history of corruption within higher
education and a lack of focus on critical thinking in education, the Kazakhstani higher
education's quality began to devalue. So, through entering the Bologna Process in 2010,
the closing of corrupt universities, the creation of a national ranking system for
Kazakhstani universities, and the opening of a new state university with the partnership of
University College London, University of Wisconsin-Madison, and Carnegie Mellon, the
government has begun to develop and solidify their system of higher education.
Corruption in Kazakhstan's higher education stems from two problems: first, the high
bureaucratization of the system, and second, the lack of facilities and treatment of
academics. According to a joint World Bank and OECD report (2007), all management
functions of universities are dictated directly by the government and the Ministry of
Education and Science (MOES). This includes the setting of goals and policies, research
policies and objects, curriculum standards and controls, as well as student selection, and
setting up and maintaining the size and style of each university. While universities in the
UK enjoy a high amount of autonomy on how and when to build new buildings and acquire
new equipment as well as the structure of their academic courses, size of student
enrolment, and salary grades for employees, Kazakhstani universities are governed by
direct government decisions. Originally this level of government control was set up during
the soviet era as a means of the authoritarian regime maintaining control over educational
policies to minimizing descent against political power (World Bank, 2007). However, these
policies have actually created an environment that encourages corruption.
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Specifically, the lack of university autonomy causes corruption on two fronts. The first is
budgetary. In order to gain the funds for academics, equipment and buildings, all
universities must gain approval from the MOES (World Bank, 2007). However, this is a
slow drawn out process, which according to Heynemen et. al. (2008) leads to university
administrators seeking back channels such as bribing government officials or doctoring
equipment requests to ensure that they go through the system faster. The second front is
academic prestige. MOES controls the curriculum and design of all university courses.
However, they enforce this power by choosing a university that has ranked highly in the
success rates of its graduates and having them create the curriculum, tests and
assessments, and standards for all universities and their courses (World Bank, 2007). In
order to control the national curriculum as well as gain the prestige, universities have
allegedly underreported failures, corruption in academic behaviour and bribed government
officials (Heynemen et. al., 2008). While there is limited evidence of this and further
investigations have been restricted, there is a clear distrust in the system, regardless of
actual cheating the system.
Corruption also exists within institutions. Due to low funding for equipment and salaries for
lecturers (that as was stated earlier are not controlled by the universities themselves),
corruption within the university opens up as a means for these departments and
academics to supplement their current income. According to Damitov et. al. (2006), while
most OECD countries pay their university level teachers 1.37 the GDP per capita of a
country, in Kazakhstan, the average teacher is paid 0.58 of its GDP per capita. Therefore,
academics are forced to take on two full time teaching positions at universities in order to
meet their living expenses. However, the average full-time position at a university in
Kazakhstan runs at 900 teaching hours per year (World Bank, 2007). There, the average
academic has to teach 1800 hours a year in order to earn just over the GDP per capita of
Kazakhstan. This directly leads to the findings of both the World Bank as well as
Heynemen et. al. that bribery and corruption were high in Kazakhstani universities. The
World Bank (2007) as well as Rumyantseva (2004) discovered antidotal evidence that
teachers commonly requested or received bribes to pass students or aid them in cheating
in different assessments. However, these researchers were denied access for further
research on the problem. Also, Heynemen et. al. (2008), while conducting research at the
Kazakh-Turkish University, one of the major universities in Kazakhstan, found that over 7%
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of the students admitted to giving gifts in exchange for higher scores. These gifts are
viewed as acceptable and necessary to supplement the income of these teachers.
The final area of corruption within Kazakhstan's system of higher education deals with
admissions, particularly the Unified National Test (UNT). This is the national exam that all
prospective students in Kazakhstan must take in order to enter university. It is a multiple
choice test focusing on four subjects: Kazakh or Russian, depending on the students'
choice and language of education, Kazakh history, Maths, and then the fourth subject is
chosen by the student depending on what they hope to study while at university. Each
section has 30 questions making a total of 120 questions, and a minimum of 50 must be
correct to be considered for admission into university. Until the opening of Nazarbayev
University, this test was the sole decider of admissions into university.
While there are other significant problems with the UNT such as its lack of emphasis on
critical thinking, corruption with the test remains a large problem. According to the World
Bank (2007), “some individuals have found ways to bypass exam security” (p. 63). This
means that prospective students have been able to gain access to test questions and
answers before examination dates, ensuring that their scores are at a level to guarantee
them admission into university. This could potentially explain why the number of gold
medal recipients for excellence on the UNT were five times higher in 2004 compared to
2003 (World Bank, 2007). However, not enough evidence is available to know if this is
indeed what happened. What is clear is that the system has space for potential corruption.
Further Problems in Kazakhstan's Higher Education System: Critical Thinking
However, while corruption is a dominant problem in the Kazakhstani education system and
the reason behind most of the change the system, it is not the only one. Critical thinking a
second weakness in Kazakhstan's universities. Regardless of an understanding of what
critical thinking is (be it from a practical employee needs perspective or from a civics and
societal equity perspective), its relevance to higher education is key to both universities as
well as future employers. International employers and even employers within Kazakhstan
(World Bank, 2007) have expressed an interest and need for new hires to have critical
thinking skills. So, there is a gap between the practical needs and what universities offer.
The origins of this problem are also in the UNT as well as two other exams that students
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are required to take on the national level to continue their studies and complete their
studies.
Since the UNT is the driving force to university admissions, secondary school education is
focused on the passing of this exam. Therefore, the exam serves as a model of the type
of knowledge with which students enter university. The World Bank (2007) found that the
UNT did not test either “reasoning ability” nor “learning potential” of students (p.73). In
other words, the focus of the UNT is on memorisable knowledge—facts and figures—
rather than on the interpretation or reasoning behind such knowledge. Also, this same
report found that because the exam focuses completely on multiple choice questions, its
potential to have reasoning based question is decreased. It does not give students the
ability to demonstrate what they have learned by showing judgement and does “not allow
candidates to show their range and depth of subject knowledge and their ability to apply it
as they could in an extended essay...” (p. 43). Therefore, no critical thinking is necessary
in order to pass the exam and enter into universities. This problem could be minimized
should university education begin to focus on the why behind the knowledge and its
relationships to other knowledge. However, the potential to teach critical thinking in
universities does not happen due to two more nationalized tests.
At the end of the second year and final (fourth) year of university, students are required to
take government designed and nationally standardized tests. The purpose of these tests
is to ensure that the national curriculum for the courses are being fully taught (and
learned). Aside from the obvious implications in restricting academic autonomy and
freedom, it means that universities are more focused on teaching students to pass the
tests rather than focusing on reasoning and thinking skills. The World Bank (2007)
accuses these tests of “tending to concentrate on measurable things and leaving little
room for less quantitative, more qualitative and reflective learning components of the
educational process, including those requiring critical thinking (p. 120-121)”. Therefore,
universities are not able offer a space to develop critical thinking before leaving their
institutions and entering their professions. They are not able to compensate for the lack of
critical thinking students have upon entrance into their institutions, and due to the high
level of government intervention and regulation, are incapable of offering this throughout
the students' years of study.
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Reforming the Higher Education System and Nazarbayev University
In response to the educational problems of corruption and standards, Kazakhstan has
begun a series of reforms in order to change the system and make it competitive with
internationally recognised institutions. In 2006, MOES closed down over 20% of its
universities, arguing that it would be easier to regulate corruptions at individual institutions
if there were less (Kalanova, 2008). At that same time, in the years 2005 to 2007, MOES
created and implemented a ranking system for universities in Kazakhstan. The rationale
behind this was that it would create competition among universities based on a ranking
system thereby increasing the quality of education at these universities. Ranking was
based on the quality of students, faculty and scientific research as well as students' grades
and their success rates in gaining and maintaining employments after graduation
(Kalanova, 2008). Also, starting in 2005, Kazakhstan began pursuing the Bologna process
with the view that it would allow its higher education system to operate on a level
competitive to those in Europe and the United States (Piven and Pak, 2006). Kazakhstan
finally officially joined the Bologna Process in March 2010.
However, the most recent move towards changing and overcoming the challenges of
higher education in Kazakhstan has been the opening of Nazarbayev University in July
2010. This new state university is a collaboration between the government of Kazakhstan
and several partner universities including University College London (UCL), Carnegie
Melon, and University of Wisconsin-Madison (UW-M). Each university is responsible for
setting up one of the faculties for Nazarbayev University (NU) to run programmes of the
same standards and levels as those at their home campuses. For example, UCL is in the
process of setting up the engineering faculty for NU as well as running the foundation year
programme, a year long course designed to aid students make the transition from the
Kazakhstan secondary school system (with only eleven required years) to the Anglo-
American university system, be it to improve their language skills as well as their critical
thinking and subject knowledge. The premise is that through the involvement of partners
with high standards and international reputations, NU will be able to lead the way as a
model for all other Kazakhstani universities to follow.
Already, changes to the education system in Kazakhstan are occurring due to NU as well
as UCL's foundation year programme. First of all, laws are being put into place to allow for
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the academic freedom and autonomy that NU's partner universities require in order to
function at a high standard. On 29 January 2011 Kazakhstan's President Nazarbayev
signed a new law called “On the Status of Nazarbayev University”. This law allows, among
other things, the university the academic freedom to create, maintain and change its own
curriculum (article 2), purchase all equipment and good based on its own needs rather
than state control (article 13), and it allows the university to control its own student
admissions regardless of the UNT and exempts the university from having to administer
the second year and final exams otherwise required by the state (article 9). As NU gains
success in educating young Kazakhstani students, the hope is that the laws will be
expanded to all universities, thereby improving the overall quality of higher education in the
country.
There is another significant area within Kazakhstan's education system that has been
affected by the opening of NU, specifically by UCL's foundation year programme (FYP).
In order to gain admittance into UCL's FYP, students are required to take the International
English Language Testing System (IELTS) exam and two subject tests for the areas that
they wish to study. In particular, students who might hope to go on to study the natural
sciences will be taking chemistry and biology as their two subject courses during the FYP.
Therefore, in order to be admitted into the programme, prospective students take a
chemistry and a biology test designed by UCL to ensure that they have enough base
knowledge to then study these subjects on a deeper level needed to prepare them for
university study. In the case of students that might want to study in the social sciences,
they are required to take a maths test (to ensure they understand enough math to take
economics as a subject course) and a test measuring critical thinking. These tests are not
aimed as testing if students know enough to enter into university, but rather to test whether
they have the basics to be brought to a university level by the end of a year of study.
The critical thinking test proved to be an unexpected obstacle. The test is a critical
thinking test where half the questions deal with argumentation and critical thinking. The
other half act as disposition questions, check students basic reading comprehension as
well as basic informal logic. Therefore, it is possible to pass the test with a 15/30 without
having answered any of the critical thinking questions correctly. Rather than simply test
the current critical thinking ability of the students, the test attempts to measure the
possibility students have to open up to the rigour of this kind of thinking. Just over three
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hundred students took the critical thinking test, but as I analysed these tests, it became
evident that only 23% of them scored the 50% needed to be able to considered for the
programme. The average score was a 29.75%, and 27.13% scored below 15% on the
test. At least 17 students scored a 3% or lower on the exam, meaning that they only
earned one point or less on their answers to these open-ended questions. The results are
phenomenally low considering the level of the students' maths scores and IELTS scores.
This caught the attention of both Kazakhstan school teachers who were asked by students
returning from the UCL admissions tests about critical thinking as well as the MOES. In an
attempt to re-adjust the educational system in Kazakhstan to prepare the students with the
necessary skills to enter into the FYP, much less the first year programmes of UCL, UW-M
and Carnegie Melon, the MOES and NU have begun teacher-training programmes to offer
secondary school teachers the tools to encourage critical thinking in their classes. In
partnership with the University of Cambridge, training courses began in March 2011 to
certify teachers in teaching critical thinking, thereby changing the secondary school
system's focus from memorised knowledge needed to pass the UNT to critical thinking
skills needed to pass UCL's entrance tests. Therefore the short coming of Kazakhstan’s
higher educational system are being changed by the driving force of a new prestigious
university tied with international partners.
However, the issues of critical thinking is not solved simply by having it taught at the
secondary level in order to pass an entrance exam, especially since there has been no
consultation between the training of teachers and the FYP test in critical thinking. This test
is designed only to ensure students have a disposition for critical thinking. That means
that the students still fall short of the skill itself, and UCL's FYP views as part of its
responsibility to increase students' critical thinking skills to the level needed for Anglo-
American university expectations within a year of intensive study. Therefore, it is important
to look at the FYP as well as the specific courses and purposes of the programme to
evaluate the challenges of meeting these critical thinking needs as well as the seriousness
taken in achieving the goal.
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Challenges in Foundation Year Programmes and English for Academic
Purposes
Foundation year programmes (FYP) are pre-university programmes found throughout the
United Kingdom, Ireland and Australia (and are becoming increasingly popular in the
United States as well). They are designed with the purpose of providing international
students with the skills needed to study at British, Australian, and American universities
that they did not have access to within secondary schools in their home countries. FYP
take on the task of providing basic subject knowledge and understandings along with
increasing students level of academic English to be able to survive and succeed at these
universities. While different FYPs focus on a variety of different subject courses, all of
them offer English for Academic Purposes (EAP).
According to the British Association of Lecturers in English for Academic Purposes
(BALEAP), the purpose of EAP courses within FYPs are to prepare students linguistically,
academically, socially and psychologically to study at British universities (BALEAP, n.d.).
This includes the teaching of writing academic papers, reading of academic texts, note-
taking and academic presentations. Also included are skills to help students learn to be
autonomous in their studies. Despite this explicitly stated goal of EAP programmes, they
have come under some criticism by academics and lecturers (Vangermensbrugghe, 2004;
Moore & Morton, 2005; Miller, 2011) within universities for failing to do just that—prepare
students with the academic skills necessary to learn and succeed in British (as well as
American and Australian) universities.
Moore & Morton (2005) found that there was a large gap between the writing taught in
EAP courses and the type of writing that students were expected to write within their first
year of university. EAP writing focused on five paragraph essays and answering general
knowledge, unseen exam questions based on simple structures similar to IELTS testing.
These are compare and contrast, advantages and disadvantages as well as cause and
effect essays. However, universities expected students to be able to critically evaluate
previously read knowledge to show advanced deeper reasoning and an understanding of
how differing ideas are interconnected. Also, universities expected students to write at
home longer pieces of research that also focused on evaluation and argumentation rather
than descriptive essays written in the classroom. So, EAP failed to prepare students to
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demonstrate critical thinking in writing by focusing on smaller, descriptive in-class writings
rather than pushing students to create arguments and evaluate ideas.
Miller (2011) found similar gaps between EAP courses and expectations from first year
university programmes in terms of readings expectations. He discovered that most EAP
courses focused on short readings at a journalistic level, whereas first year university
students were expected to read academic texts with specialized language of considerable
lengths. This gap created difficulties not just in understanding the readings students now
needed to analyse, but also created issues in students being able to manage time. Finally,
Miller also discovered that students were unable to read texts critically and link new ideas
from recent texts to texts that had been read earlier in the course. Once again, EAP failed
to prepare students to read at a cognitive level necessary for their first year in the
American university system.
Both Miller (2011) and Moore & Morton (2005) indirectly touched on EAP's failure to teach
critical thinking as part of their learning outcomes, thereby failing to prepare international
students to study in UK and American universities. Vangermensbrugghe (2004) directly
addressed this issue in her research of international students in Australian universities.
Through extended surveys, she found that the number one complaint that university
lecturers had of international students were their lack of critical thinking skills. From there,
she recommended the need to explicitly teach this in FYP. However, despite
Vangermensbrugghe's recommendations (as well as those of Moore & Morton and Miller)
little research has been conducted on the inclusion of critical thinking skills in EAP as well
as a focus of critical thinking in EAP learning outcomes.
UCL's Foundation Year Programme at Nazarbayev University
As I stated earlier, UCL's FYP does begin to look at critical thinking as part of its
programme, at least for students interested in studying in the social sciences. All
Humanities or social science students studying for their University Preparatory Certificate
(UPC) both in London and Kazakhstan are expected to take and pass the critical thinking
test to gain admittance. Therefore the programme appears to take into account the gaps
discovered by researchers regarding the need for critical thinking as a way of preparing
international students to study at British universities.
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Critical thinking is also mentioned explicitly in the UPC student and teacher handbooks. It
is listed as the second aim and objective of the course, and according to the UPC in
Kazakhstan's “Information about the course and Educational Policy” (Centre for
Preparatory Studies, 2010a), students are expected to be “Analysing concepts, assessing
and interpreting evidence, examining connections between ideas, asking critical questions
and forming informed opinions and developing arguments in a range of academic subject
areas” (p.2) as a part of this foundation year programme. Once again, the needs of
students upon entering university appear to have been considered and the gap between
EAP and university should be filled by this programme.
However, evaluation of the EAP scheme of work within UCL's UPC course shows that
while the aims of the overall course include critical thinking, it is not actually being taught
anywhere within its EAP programme. Nowhere in the reading skills scheme of work
(Centre for Preparatory Studies, 2010b) is critical reading, evaluation, analysis, or
synthesis mentioned as part of the weekly learning outcomes. Also, arguments are
mentioned only once in week 5 of term two as teaching students to recognise them. In the
writing scheme of work, there is a similar lack of criticality in any of the weekly learning
outcomes. Nowhere are students taught to critically evaluate, analysis or synthesis ideas
in their writing. Arguments once again, are only mentioned once in week 8 as separate
five paragraph essay type differing from compare and contrast, cause and effect, problem-
solution, and advantages and disadvantages. The problems that Moore & Morton (2005)
identified with EAP writing programmes are evident in UCL's EAP programme. While on
paper there is an attempt to focus on this skill, it has not been transferred into what
teachers are expected to offer in the classroom.
The general gaps in EAP exist within UCL's EAP programme in Kazakhstan as well,
doubling the issue students will face entering their degree programmes. Not only are they
not currently being taught critical thinking in secondary schools, but now this gap is not
being filled by the Foundation Year programme which is by design meant to prepare
students for their first year of university at these American or British universities.
Therefore, a change seems to be needed within the EAP programme at UCL's UPC
course to ensure that this gap in critical thinking expectations can be filled, thereby
increasing the chances that these students will succeed in their educational studies.
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Purpose and Research Questions
In light of the problems facing Kazakhstan's higher education, students of Nazarbayev
University and University College London's EAP programme regarding critical thinking, the
purpose of this critical analysis study (CAS) is to attempt to define critical thinking,
understand the perspectives on these definitions, analyse its application to EAP and then
evaluate the limited research available of teaching critical thinking in EAP. BALEAP has
identified the purpose of EAP as preparing international students academically for their
studies in British universities, while Miller (2010), Moore & Morton (2005), and
Vangermensbrugghe (2004) claim that EAP is failing in this purpose because it does not
teach students to think critically. Therefore this CAS offers a place to understand how this
gap between EAP's purpose and EAP's practice is being filled. This is done to create an
understanding of what still needs to be researched in relation to teaching critical thinking in
EAP and propose a piece of action research to take place at UCL's NU EAP programme
with the intent of increasing students' access to critical thinking.
Throughout the CAS, I attempt to answer the following research questions:
• What is critical thinking?
◦ What are the competing definitions within education?
◦ Is critical thinking being defined in EAP?
◦ What are those definitions?
• How is critical thinking being taught (or not) in EAP programmes (depending on
these competing definitions of critical thinking)?
◦ What research has been done to foster critical thinking in the EAP classroom?
◦ What research still needs to be done to foster critical thinking further in EAP?
Methodology
In order to find research and answer the questions this CAS sets out, I focused my
searches on two different areas. The first was on the defining of critical thinking and its
role in higher education, while the other focused on finding research on teaching critical
thinking in English for Academic Purposes.
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For the theoretical focus, I began my research by looking at Dewey (1910, 1916, 1933)
and works citing both Dewey and critical thinking. Dewey began a movement on reflective
thinking and critical thinking in education in the early 20th
century. From there, I continued
my search strings to include the work of Ennis (1962, 1985, 1987, 1991), who since the
late 1960s has been heavily interested in researching critical thinking in education,
specifically higher education. I also searched for work done by McPeck (1981), who
focused on the role of argumentation in critical thinking. By research work by these
educationalists as well as work citing them, I began to create a larger understanding of the
dominant definition of critical thinking along with its role in education in general.
However, in order to create a more complex understanding of critical thinking and attempt
to redefine it through a more critical perspective, I also searched for the works of Freire
(1970, 1974, 1998), Kincheloe (2000, 2008), and Brookfield (2005, 2010), all
educationalists that build on the school of critical theory within their educational
philosophies. This gave me an alternative theoretical framework to understand critical
thinking and therefore provide a deeper understanding of this focus in higher education. It
is deeper because it provides a wider purpose behind critical thinking—offering a expected
outcome of a society that is made up of individuals who are able to think critically. I also
looked at Benesch (1999, 2001), who applied these ideas of critical pedagogy to the field
of EAP. Most of the theoretical texts that I found and used were books dedicated to
deconstructing and explaining the complexity of the theories.
In order to find empirical research on the teaching of critical thinking within English for
Academic purposes, I focused my search on specific journals such as the Journal for EAP,
the Journal for ESP, TESOL Quarterly and TESOL Journal. These are the leading peer-
review journals in the field of Teaching English as a Second Language generally as well as
EAP specifically. By focusing on these journals, I was more likely to find work directly
related to EAP. I also searched Scopus database as well as Science Direct in case some
research was published in general education journals. While searching these journals and
databased, I focused on the following search strings: reflection OR critical reflection OR
critical thinking AND English for Academic Purposes OR Foundation programmes OR
Intensive English programmes OR University English as a Second / Foreign Language.
These search strings accounted for different terms used to describe critical thinking as well
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as different terms used to describe the teaching of academic English in the pre-university
level.
Structure of the Study
This CAS is structured as follows:
First it aims to introduce a dominant definition in critical thinking within education by
focusing on some of the more cited names in empirical research. This includes looking at
Dewey's (1910) initial introduction of reflective thinking. From there, I also consider Ennis
(1962, 1985, 1987, 1991) and McPeck's (1981)continual research on expanding the
concept of critical thinking, specifically the role of informal logic and argumentation as
parts of critical thinking. I also problemitise Ennis and McPeck's de-politicalisation of
Dewey's understanding of critical thinking as well their lack of consideration of the thinker
within their understanding of critical thinking. After establishing this definition of critical
thinking, I analyse current research on critical thinking in the field of EAP. This research
that I analyse is written with a similar theoretical understanding to Ennis and McPeck.
In the following section of the CAS, I introduce the theoretical underpinnings of critical
theory and its place in education. I specifically focus on Freire (1970, 1974, 1998) and his
concept of conscientização as an alternative definition of critical thinking. From there, I
consider input from other theorists such as hooks (1994, 2010) and Brookfield (2004,
2010). Also, I discuss Benesch (1999, 2001) who attempts to bring the ideas of critical
pedagogy into the field of EAP, one of the first researchers to do this. By doing this, I
create a more thorough and in depth definition of critical thinking and critical thinking in
EAP. With new theoretical understanding, I analyse and critique critical thinking research
in EAP that works from the theoretical understanding of Critical-EAP as established by
Benesch.
Finally, I take this analysis of critical thinking in EAP and the gaps found to propose a piece
of critical action research at NU with focus on student self evaluations to monitor students
critical thinking as redefined through critical pedagogy.
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Introduction to and Background on Critical Thinking
Dewey's Reflective Thinking
John Dewey introduced the idea of reflective thinking in his 1910 work titled How We
Think. He defined it as “active, persistent, and careful consideration of any belief or
supposed form of knowledge in the light of the grounds that support it and further
conclusions to which it tends.” (Dewey, 1910, p. 9) He argued that there are several levels
of thought, reflective being the highest order and the goal of education. He believed that
knowledge continues to change as people continually question in order to gain deeper
understanding of the order of he world. Through this process a better more
comprehensive view could be developed on reasoning (similar to Kant's pure reasoning)
rather than uncontested acceptance.
Dewey (1933) argued that there are four criteria to reflective thinking. First, it moves the
thinker into a deeper recognition of the connections between different ideas and
experiences. Experiences are not isolated occurrences devoid of meaning outside of
context. Rather they are connected and interrelated to others ideas and experiences. By
seeing the web of connection, the thinker begins to construct the meanings and purposes
behind the experience. Secondly, reflection is careful and systematic. Therefore it
requires constant awareness and diligence in order to ensure that events are being
questioned. Thirdly, it is not done in isolation. Reflective thinking is done in the context of
a community, with the purpose of improving it by reaching to achieve common goals.
Finally, reflective thinking is based on a notion that individual and societal improvement is
the ultimate goal of any action, experience, or thought process.
The third and fourth criteria in Dewey's definition of reflective thinking directly tie into his
understanding and philosophy of education in general. He viewed education as a place for
the intellectual, social, emotional, and moral development of the individual within a
democratic society (Dewey, 1916). The last point in the previous sentence deserves
particular attention. Education was perceived to be the starting point for democracies to
form, develop, grow, and be held accountable for these democratic ideals. Education was
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seen as accountable to society, and through education societies became more egalitarian
through democratic ideals. He believed that
A society marked off into classes need be specially attentive only to the education
of its ruling elements. A society which is mobile, which is full of channels for the
distribution of a change occurring anywhere, must see to it that its members are
educated to personal initiative and adaptability. Otherwise, they will be
overwhelmed by the changes in which they are caught and whose significance or
connections they do not perceive. The result will be a confusion in which a few will
appropriate to themselves the results of the blind and externally directed activities
of others. (p.96)
In other words, he believed that societies are most successful when they allow space for
members of society to be able to move into a more into more equitable circumstances.
According to Dewey, the best way to achieve this is through democracy. He wrote “A
democracy is more than a form of government; it is primarily a mode of associated living,
of conjoint communicated experiences” (p. 34) and therefore education is accountable to
this joint living by focusing on “social relationships and control, and the habits of the mind
which secure social changes without introducing social disorder” (p. 99). It is at this point
that reflection finds its role in education. Therefore, reflective thinking, based on Dewey's
writings, is constant inquiry into experiences and ideas to further understand them and
better develop understanding in order to allow for a more equitable democratic society
where there is less social and economic stratification.
Ennis and the De-politicization of Critical Thinking
By the 1960s, Dewey's idea of reflective thinking was manifested in education's focus on
critical thinking (Ennis, 1962). Ennis (1962, 1985, 1987, 1991) took Dewey's concept and
began to develop a modernized understanding of critical thinking in order to be applied to
at a practical level in education. He defined critical thinking as “reasonable, reflective
thinking about what to do and believe" (Ennis & Norris, 1989, p.46). Specifically, Ennis
lists the following twelve points as key criteria for recognizing critical thinking:
1. Grasping the meaning of a statement;
2. Judging whether there is ambiguity in a line of reasoning;
3. Judging whether certain statements contradict each other;
4. Judging whether a conclusion follows necessarily;
5. Judging whether a statement is actually the application of a certain principle;
6. Judging whether a statement is specific enough;
7. Judging whether an observation statement is reliable;
8. Judging whether an inductive conclusion is warranted;
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9. Judging whether the problem has been identified;
10. Judging whether something is an assumption;
11. Judging whether a definition is adequate;
12. Judging whether a statement made by an allege authority is acceptable.
(Ennis, 1962, p. 89)
These twelve criteria are an expansion of the first two point's in Dewey's own criteria for
reflective thinking. Dewey's first point of how reflection offers a way of recognizing the
deep interactions between ideas are made more specific through Ennis's second, third
fourth and fifth criteria. By judging the reasoning, the final conclusions, and the principles
that these conclusions are made, an individual is able to come to the understanding of the
connections between ideas. Dewey's second point, claiming that reflective thinking is
careful and systematic, requiring discipline and rigour, is evident in all of Ennis's list of
criteria. At this point, Ennis is once again, explicitly pointing out specifically how this rigour
is obtained.
However, Ennis seems to have completely dismissed the third and fourth criteria of
reflective thinking presented by Dewey. Nowhere in Ennis's twelve points is there any
evidence of the community involvement and overall goals achieving of said community as
part of the process of critical thinking. Also, there is no mention of why the activity is
occurring in terms of its role in society. Ennis seems to be seeing critical thinking as a
simple isolated activity devoid of purpose or societal meaning—devoid of the society and
educational system for which is it involved in. It is a cognitive process simply for thinking's
sake. The political and social have now been stripped clean as Ennis sterilized Dewey's
reflective thinking into his notion of critical thinking. To be fair, Ennis was not the first to do
this; Glaser (1941) had already begun the process in his work to create a test to measure
the extent of an individual's critical thinking skills based on multiple choice questions and
informal logic. However, it was arguably Ennis's work that laid the ground work for
continued research on critical thinking in education from this apolitical and asocial
understanding—a skill that simply exists for the individual's use that is universal regardless
of context.
Building on the work by Ennis, continuous research (McPeck, 1981; Furedy & Furedy,
1985; Lipman, 1988; Seige, 1988) and vision of the depoliticized version of critical thinking
dominated the field of education. McPeck (1981, p. 12) views critical thinking as the
“intelligent use of all available evidence for the solution of a problem” with a focus on the
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creation of argumentation. In other words, critical thinking is simply a way of reasoning.
Once again, McPeck continues working from a framework that lacks an understanding of a
larger purpose aside from the individual and the act of thinking. There is no reference to
the role of thought for society nor the social context and implications for that context of
which the individual is a part. Lipman (1988) along with Seige (1988) also share McPeck's
understanding of critical thinking. It is a means of analysing a situation, discerning the
problem, and then creating a solution to the problem. It is a form of informal logic.
In these views of critical thinking, the term critical simply refers to the ability to recognize
logical fallacies, biases, uninformed judgements, and becoming skilled at using reasoning.
Half of Dewey's original argument for reflective thinking has been lost in the research as
dominant scholars in the field that has sought to remove the political implications from
education and thinking. This level of de contextualisation disassociates the thinker from
that which is being thought about as well as where it is being thought. It becomes
exploitable and of no use for a society's desire to care for its citizens. Dewey's desire to
further society through the democratic principles in order to minimize social inequity no
longer matters, making reflective or critical thinking simple cognition. While Dewey
recognised the place of cognition in critical thinking, he saw critical thinking as moving
beyond that to include the socio-political.
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Research on Critical Thinking in EAP from Ennis's
Theoretical Perspective
As English for Academic Purposes has tried as a field to begin to fill the gap between
foundation year programmes which include EAP as a central module and the first year of
university, research has been done by teachers in hopes of creating a sense of good
practice for this skill-set. However, just as Pennycook (1997) states, a great deal of these
begin with the assumption that English is a neutral language de-contextualised from any
particular understanding—that it is a mode of communication between individuals to make
work easier. This perspective has lead to research focused on specific tasks that can be
done in the EAP classroom with a behaviourist understanding of teaching. By
behaviourist, I mean viewing teaching as an in-put out-put process. The means that
learning occurs through the constant re-enforcement of certain behaviour. The instructor
provides the student with a stimuli in order to receive the correct response. (Ertmer &
Newby, 1993) The teacher behaves in a prescribed manner (in-put) and the results of this
task or behaviour leads to the students developing critical thinking (out-put). So, all a
teacher must do is find the correct set of stimulus in order to build and develop the correct
skills—in this case, critical thinking.
Research on critical thinking in EAP from this perspective has been conducted by
Thompson (2002), Beaumont (2010), Evens (2008), Lo (2010) and Bacha (2010).
Thompson, Beaumont, Evans and Lo focus their research on specific tasks and
assignments designed to elicit critical thinking from students, whereas Bacha takes a wider
approach, looking at the development of a syllabus for an EAP writing course designed to
focus on students' cognitive skills.
Thompson's (2002) research looks at the use of texts in order to stimulate thinking in her
students. This is a single lesson proposed as a way of working with foundation year
students hoping to enter into Australian universities. This activity involves having students
work into groups to define critical thinking, discuss applying this skill to their studies, read a
series of texts by indigenous and non-indigenous Australian writers, write a paragraph
synthesizing the texts together, discuss which texts they chose to focus on and why, and
finally present these paragraphs to the class. She goes on to present the responses from
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students to the lesson. Specifically looking at her analysis of the students' critical thinking,
Thompson states that students were able to analyse the worth of the texts at different
levels, most choosing to focus on the European centric writings, while several (no numbers
are offered) students faced the tasks with “blank faces and silence.” However, she does
not address how she dealt with these stares nor offers any attempt to understand why
certain students faced the challenge.
Beaumont (2010) offers a similar style of research on how to teach critical thinking in EAP.
He too works with text analysis, and presents a specific lesson plan on how this could be
achieved. He offers a more in depth plan, using Bloom's taxonomy (1956) as a way of
defining and explaining critical thinking. So, this means that critical thinking is using higher
order thinking towards reading comprehension and literacy. Specifically, it is the ability to
analyse a text and synthesise it with previous knowledge and judging its value. So, in
many ways, this reiterates Ennis's own views on critical thinking. Beaumont goes on to
offer a series of seven tasks, with a set of three variations on each task that could be used
to teach critical thinking through reading, using The House on Mango Street as an
example of a text. The tasks are divided into three types: pre-reading, during the reading,
and post-reading. The seven tasks are as follows:
Task Name Description Type of Task
Observing Students look or listen to stimuli related to the
text and identify what they hear/ see.
Pre-reading
Identifying
Assumptions
Students are now asked to react to what they
saw or heard: gives them a chance state their
own opinions and thinking on the issue.
Pre-reading
Understanding
and Organizing
Students order the information in the text and
classify them.
During reading
Interpreting Students infer different ideas from the text and
try to respond to it. They develop a theory of
what might happen next.
During reading
Inquiring further Students find the relationship between different
ideas and try to imagine what else could be
suggested by the facts.
Post-reading
Analysing and The students are introduced to other information Post-reading
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Evaluating related to the texts, and they analyse the
different points of view and consider why.
Making
Decisions
Students are asked to achieve a goal outside of
class (i.e. “identify a problem in your home and
learn how to fix it” (p. 445) )
Post-reading
(Beaumont, 2010)
After presenting these different tasks with examples from The House of Mango, Beaumont
offers no analysis of how the students reacted and learned from these tasks. There is an
assumption that the simple act of having created the tasks using Bloom's Taxonomy as a
guide automatically began the critical thinking process within students—the input was
correct, and therefore, the output must be of equal correctness.
Evans (2008) also adds to the budding research on critical thinking in EAP through the
teaching of reading-to-writing at a university in Japan. He proposes the use of Reading
Reaction Journals (RRJ) to activate reading strategies in students and to prepare them for
two writing activities: an academic reaction paper and an argumentative essay. He begins
by stating the problems students face when reading expository texts: first, the students
often do not have prior knowledge of the topic addressed in the text; second, students are
commonly unfamiliar with the rhetorical style of academic writing; and finally, students
have not yet been exposed to the organisational style of expository writing. From there,
Evans provides a definition of critical thinking as a “deep cognitive process” (p. 242) and
uses Allen (2003) to develop six skills used in critical thinking about a reading:
1. Deciding the main points
2. Relating the readings to the student's own lives
3. Summarising
4. Filling in points not explicitly made
5. Making inferences
6. Asking questions (Evans, 2008, p. 242)
Evans claims that the uses of RRJ were directed to aid the students in writing their
Academic Reaction Paper (a critical review of an expository text) and their Argumentative
Essay. He showed students examples of the ways in which the RRJ can be kept, including
outlining, colour coding, and the use of abbreviations, rather than paragraphing. He also
gave examples of questions for the students to answer for themselves about the texts and
encouraged them to respond to the ideas and arguments in the text rather than simply
describe them. Also, the RRJ were used to peer-review each other's ideas about the texts.
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Evans used a student survey at the end of the course to determine the usefulness of the
RRJ. The results of the survey with the twenty two students demonstrated that students
felt the RRJ aided with their comprehension of the texts, helped them review their initial
reactions to an issue, allowed them to prepare for classroom discussions, and finally
helped them begin their outlining and writing for their two written assignments.
Similar to Evans (2008), Lo (2010) looks at reading skills in conjunction with the reflective
writing process. In this research, Lo set out to discover the role that reflective portfolios of
news articles could encourage reflective/critical thinking in students as well as their
autonomous learning. He conducted his study with 101 students in their third or fourth
year, majoring in English at a national university in Taiwan. Students were required to read
and reflect on six different newspaper articles in English. Then they needed to fill in a
“portfolio” form asking two open questions: 1) they were asked to identify any problems
with the reading that they were not able to solve (regarding comprehension), and 2) they
were asked to reflect on what they learned from the article and why. Lo collected his data
based on 1) a pre-course closed questionnaire where students were asked about their
issues with readings news articles in English, their issues with reading comprehension of
news articles and their perceptions of portfolios and autonomous learning; 2)
improvements between the first two reflections of the portfolios which were due before the
midterm and the last 4 reflections at the end of term; and 3) a post-course closed
questionnaire asking students to assess their own understandings of autonomous learning
and critical thinking.
At the end of his study, Lo finds that the students had “improved in terms of evidence of
reflection” (2010, p. 87) when evaluating the difference between the first two portfolios and
the final four. However, he fails to explain how he came to this determination nor to
provide qualitative examples of this. Then, based on the post-course closed questionnaire,
Lo argues that students increased their awareness of their autonomous learning skills,
their critical reflection skills, and their ability to self evaluate their own learning. However,
in his appendix he provides his actual survey along with the results. The survey consists
of six statements for the students to choose from the following options: strongly agree,
agree, undecided, disagree, strongly disagree. The highest percentage of answers circled
was the agree for all questions, all of which were above 50%. The questions were all
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stated the same way and all in the positive. Because Lo did not follow up the results
interviews of open-ended questions to the students, there is no ability to ask why the
students feel that their awarenesses have increased. And since the questions were written
and stated the same way, and the same answer was the majority answer for all the
questions raises a particular concern—did the students simply answer the easiest way
possible without actually reflecting on the meaning of the questions? So, while the
research shows some positive results on how to integrate critical thinking into the EAP
classroom, there are some gaps left for further research to see why students perceive to
have developed these skills.
All four of these pieces of research have their strengths. They offer practical advice and
specific tasks that can be used to elicit critical thought from students. Regardless of
theoretical positioning, they clearly consider the skills set needed to begin to introduce
students to analysis and deeper understandings of potentially complex issues. Thompson
draws from different texts for the students to gain a wider perspective to develop their
paragraph writing, while Beaumont has the students look at alternative texts after the main
reading in order to understand that there are potentially different understandings of how
the facts impact reality. Evans has students exploring their thinking and making inferences
about texts read in order to gain deeper understandings of the author's purposes. Finally,
Lo integrates reflective thinking into students' developing their reading comprehension
skills by looking at news articles in English and creating portfolios. These ideas fit in with
either Ennis and McPeck's de-contextualized understanding of critical thinking as well as
with Dewey, Freire, Kincheloe and Benesch's view of critical thinking as part of
emancipatory education.
However, all four pieces of research fall short. Thompson, Beaumont and Evans fail to
analyse the extent that their interventions impacted students and their critical thinking.
Thompson focuses her analysis on immediate student responses, and even in that arena,
fails to follow up to discover why students responded as they did. This fairs better than
Beaumont who does not even consider the students' responses, assuming simply that his
intervention is enough because it is based on Bloom's taxonomy. Evans is better than
both Thompson and Beaumont, and he does consider students' responses through his
survey. But it is a closed survey that does not allow the students to explain how the RRJ
aided in these areas of their learning. Lo's use of a post-course survey that is poorly
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designed and then not following up with an interview to explore why the students
answered the questions as they did fail to understand the extend to which critical thinking
was developed. All four seem to be limited by their belief that the teacher's input is enough
to ensure that it results in students thinking critically. Regardless of theoretical positioning,
this is a flaw in all their works. Only through evaluating and questioning the student
responses would these researchers then be able to determine if the teacher's intervention
was enough to create an awareness of critical thinking from the students.
I would like to add one final critique, specifically to Beaumont's research. Specifically,
looking at his final task which is to make students think critically outside of the classroom.
In principle, this is a sound idea that begins to take into account the idea of thought
informing action that one find's in Dewey's understanding of reflective thinking. However,
when analysing his specific examples of this task, it becomes clear that Beaumont does
not consider this. He suggests students do tasks such as “identify a problem in your home,
such as a leaky faucet, and learn how to fix it” and “talk with your partner or family, make
an achievable goal, and pursue it” (p. 445). While these are fair suggestions that could
help to improve students life as well as get them to work on their English proficiency
(should they then be discussing the process in class), it can hardly be considered a part of
critical thinking as Dewey would recognise it. The actions that are suggested are simply
about practical activities that students would eventually be dealing with on a daily basis. It
does not involve thinking about a problem or socio-political issue in a new way, recognising
the history of the issue and taking on alternative perspectives to inform new behaviour.
This is not the thoughtful action that Dewey desired when he associated reflective thinking
with democracy and equity. Here, Beaumont shows a watered down, socially de-
contextualised misunderstanding of the role of the term “critical” in critical thinking.
The only other major research done looking at critical thinking in EAP from a strict skills
perspective has attempted to look at a wider course implementation of critical thinking.
There are limitations of only producing ideas that are task based is not enough to develop
critical thinking at the rigourous level needed, as stated by Dewey (1910). So Bacha, has
decided to look more at syllabus and curriculum design to integrate critical thinking
throughout the entire course. From there, students could begin to build up the skill through
continual development and study.
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Bacha's research was conducted at Lebanese American University (2010). Bacha looks at
critical thinking in the context of writing arguments, specifically using Toulmin (1958), Yeh
(1998) and Ramage & Bean (1998). Here critical thinking is defined as the ability to make
rational arguments. The Toulmin Model (Toulmin, Rieke, and Janik, 1984) deals with rules
of rational argumentation. It presents a six-step system of argument: a claim, the grounds
for the claim, a warrant that connects the grounds to the claim, backing for this claim which
is based on theoretical or experimental ideas, the use of hedging to ensure that the claim
is not overstated, and finally the consideration and response to any rebuttals that could be
made against the claim. This view of critical thinking ties it very closely to McPeck's
definition as a de-contextualised cognitive skill closely associated with writing arguments.
Bacha sets out to create a syllabus for an EAP writing course focused on argument
development. She describes the syllabus in great detail, giving a week by week plan of
specific tasks and texts given to the students. A summary of the course is as follows:
during the 8th
week of a fifteen week course, the students were asked to write a timed 4-5
paragraph argumentative essay in two hours. At this point, they had not yet been exposed
to arguments. After the in-class unseen essay, students were exposed to some reading
selection that allowed them to examine the basic structure of arguments. In week nine,
student deconstructed texts in order to analyse arguments and discover strengths and
weaknesses of these different examples. They looked at different organisation strategies,
as well as cohesive and lexical phrases. Finally, some attention was given to logical
fallacies. During the tenth and eleventh weeks of the course, the students worked
together to write a joint argument. In the twelfth week, students worked on their own to
construct their own argumentative essays and then worked in groups to peer-edit and
evaluate the essays. Finally, during the last two weeks of the course, the students wrote
two more unseen argumentative essays based on topics that they had not been exposed
to during the course.
From there, Bacha analysed the work of two students—one that scored highly on their first
unseen essay (above a 75%) and one that scored low on the first unseen essay (below a
65%). She then qualitatively assessed the differences between the two students' first and
last unseen essay based on complexity of the argument, support, structure, cohesion and
lexical devices. In the high scoring student's first essay, Bacha found that the student
27

focused on advantages and disadvantages without taking a stand on the argument until
the conclusion. However, for the final essay, this student had a clear statement, a well
organized argument that considered counter-arguments and introduced refutation with
appropriate hedging and lexical devices. For the low scoring student, the first essay
demonstrated repetition of the same idea, description of the issues and no attempt at
taking a side in the argument. However, for this student's last essay, Bacha detected the
attempts at making an argument (taking a side), but admits that the organization and
refutation were still lacking in the final essay. She ends her analysis by stating that the low
scoring student's final essay did have much more hedging and less redundancy compared
to the first essay. Bacha concludes that overall, there was an increase in the students'
abilities to make arguments, and therefore an increase in their critical thinking skills (since
it is defined as the ability to make coherent arguments.)
Compared to the other task-based research, Bacha provides a more comprehensive
understanding of critical thinking. She takes into account the need for academic rigour as
well as the idea that students need to build up their thinking skills over a period of time.
Therefore, students would need the continual guidance of a course that was designed with
critical thinking as one of its learning outcomes. Also, her reliance on Toulmin as her
foundation for critical thinking as argumentation is justified based on the work of McPeck.
Her research can be critiqued due to her not stating the amount of students that were
involved in her pilot course as well as her focusing on the results of two students. Also,
she does not state how many students went from low scoring to high scoring as well as
how the class as a whole did in terms of their improvement (or lack there of) in writing well
developed arguments.
Bacha use of the unseen essay as a means of assessment in EAP is another short coming
of her research. While this may have less to do with critical thinking directly, it does
address the common concern that EAP is failing to fill the gap between foundation year
programmes and the first year of university. It is from this concern that the justification for
teaching critical thinking comes into play for those who view critical thinking as a cognitive
skill (not only—critical pragmatist, Pennycook (1997) also express concern over this gap
due to expectations of professors for students to begin to see the world from critical
complex contexts). Moore & Morton (2005) and Leki & Carson (1997) research the
differences between first year writing and the unseen essay style of EAP courses and
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conclude that these essays written in EAP are not related to the writing done in the first
year of university. They require a different skill set, tone, lexical structure, and style. First
year writing is usually either based on readings done for the class and assigned as
homework, or based on essay exams where students are commenting and showing
complex understandings of academic knowledge acquired throughout the course.
However, in unseen essays students are relying on common knowledge and not specific
research in order to develop their arguments, which is not acceptable in the first year of
university. Therefore, to rely on unseen essays as a method of assessment in EAP does
not seem to be appropriate.
A final critique of Bacha lies in her limited view of critical thinking. Because she only
focuses on critical thinking as formation of argument, she misses the opportunities to
expose students to different voices and perspective outside of the dominant—or at least
there is no explicit or implicit acknowledgment of this. Along side of this, there is no
consideration of the students beginning to alter their own understandings—changing their
points of view in light of being exposed to a variety of perspectives within a given debate.
This means that students are not considering their own values while questioning their
arguments. The focus is simply on style and logic and not on the changing of the student
and a growing awareness of self, either the personal self or the academic self.
Other articles have been written about the cognitive skills of critical thinking throughout
journals addressing EAP (Starfield 1994, Pennycook, 1997, Atkinson, 1997, Atkinson,
1998, Ramanathan & Kaplan 1996, Davidson & Dunham 1997, Davidson, 1998).
However, these articles are not research-based. They are arguments between
practitioners over whether or not the focus of EAP should include cognitive skills or if the
purpose of EAP is simply linguistic. They do not base their arguments on any empirical
research, choosing to focus on theoretical, historical, and practical understandings of the
field. This is why I choose not to evaluate their research in the context of this literature
review.
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Critical Thinking as Emancipatory and Transformative
Education
A way of trying to return to Dewey's third and fourth criteria for reflective thinking to install a
notion of the political (democracy and equity) and the social (equity and collective goals) in
critical thinking is to use the theoretical understandings of critical pedagogy—a theory first
introduced by Paulo Freire (1971, 1974) and built on ideas from critical theory, while
drawing on notions of pragmatism, power from Foucault, and feminist critiques of dominant
thought in education. While education in the west, specifically the United States moved
towards a depoliticalisation of education, as seen in terms of critical thinking, Freire began
to draw in the political into his own teaching of literacy in the slums of Brazil. He saw the
political in education as a way for people living in the slums to begin to understand the
historical reasons for current class struggles while being able to question and envision
more egalitarian and democratic society. These understandings of education led to the
non-democratic government in Brazil expelling him for his pedagogies.
Foundations of Critical Theory
Critical theory's foundations are located in Marxist thought. It primarily looks at the conflict
between social classes within an economy based on capitalism and consumerism, stating
that this conflict will remain the same unless society is transformed and radicalised.
Already, a similarity between Dewey's notion of democracy and the need to abolish social
classes and this founding principle in critical theory is visible despite the differences of
theoretical principles (Dewey was an American democratic pragmatist). In critical theory,
the role of theory is to subvert the dominate practice of exploitation for consumption with
the overall desire to create a more equitable society. As Horkheimer writes “every part of
the theory presupposed the critique of the existing order and the struggle against it along
the lines determined by the theory itself” (1937, p. 229). In other words, critical theory is
dedicated to questioning the current socio-political reality in order to change it through the
very notion of theory.
Marxist theory views the current consumerist economy as putting more emphasis on the
value of something as being more important that its use value. In education, it is easiest to
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use an example from Brookfield (2005, p. 24): “the exchange value of learning to read in
adulthood (how such learning will help the adult become more successful in the job
market) overshadows its use value (how it helps the adult develop self-confidence, draw
new meanings from life, and be open to new perspective on the world.)” Here, using the
educational context, the link between Dewey's third and fourth criteria of reflective thinking
begins to fit into what critical theory aims to achieve, while the current situation in the
economic climate reflects the de-politicalise notion of critical thinking proposed and
supported by Ennis and others. Opening perspectives as well as drawing means from life
fit what Dewey's own philosophy of education aimed to achieve by working together to
achieve goals and to better society. However, Ennis's refusal to acknowledge this wider
ideology means that critical thinking is solely about preparing individuals to fit into their
future work conditions. There is no value to thinking beyond its use for commodity. Critical
thinking thus becomes a part of what Habermas (1987) states is the capitalization of
individual's personal lives as a part of the colonization of the lifeworld.
From here, critical theory concerns itself with providing societies and individuals within it
the ability to be emancipated from the oppression of commodification through knowledge
and understanding. Theory is not only about understanding the world, but about changing
it. Geuss (1981, p. 2) states that “reflective theory which gives agents a kind of knowledge
inherently productive of enlightenment and emancipation” is the important dimension of
critical theory. Therefore, critical thinking becomes a means of recognizing the space for
change in society to improve one’s own place in it as well to move the society towards
more equality. This understanding brings back to the debate Dewey's rationale for the
encouragement of reflective thinking in education. It moves away from thinking as simply
a tool of the current paradigm into one for change and development of the social and
political. Critical thinking need not be apolitical as so viewed by Ennis. On the contrary,
critical thinking should be political.
Freire and Conscientização
Paulo Freire, a Brazilian educator and author of Pedagogy of the Oppressed (1970) builds
on the ideas of critical theory and applied it to the field of education. Through the teaching
of adult literacy, Freire encouraged individuals to gain power over the economical realities
and the ideas that dominated their lives. Therefore, Freire's teaching of literacy was not to
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teach literacy as a skill, but rather to raise people's critical consciousness, which he called
“conscientização.” Conscientização is a consciousness through which an individual
recognizes the power to transform the world that surrounds them. After gaining this
recognition through conscientização, individuals in society could begin to engage active
change through praxis. Freire defines praxis as thoughtful action to rectify any minimized
or silences voices to create a society based on equality. The parallels to Dewey's own
motivations for encouraging reflective thinking continue, though at this point, Freire begins
to develop them further into a deeper understanding of how and why this is done.
Freire proposes that praxis leads to human agency. This agency gives individuals freedom
over their own situations which makes it possible for them to gain consciousness, allowing
to reflect on the world that surrounds them and work to change that world. This is a
continual process that never finishes—an action that continues throughout society,
changing inequities through endless movement. As individuals working together continue
to transform their world by active engagement, people both shape the conditions of their
own lives as well as continually recreate themselves.
At this point, Freire begins to develop a theory of how conscientização is awakened. He
criticises education in which teachers teach and students absorb as the banking form of
education that does not awake conscientização. Instead, he proposes the power of
dialogue. He writes that
Through dialogue, the teacher-of-the-students and the students-of-the-teacher
cease to exist... The teacher is no longer merely the-one-who-teacher, but the one
who is himself taught in dialogue with students, who in turn while being taught also
teaches. They become jointly responsible for a process in which all grow... People
teach each other, mediated by the world, by cognizable objects which in banking
education are “owned” by the teacher. (1970, p. 80)
Here, Freire is defining dialogue as collective reflection and action—that a community is
formed with the joint goal of reaching conscientização that includes all students as well as
the teacher. He has built in further detail upon Dewey's own ideas of the joint community
with a unified goal that is to be achieved through reflective thinking.
Freire (1998) argues against that education is more than simply the acquisition of skills,
and therefore would be greatly opposed to the view of critical thinking as simply a set of
different levels of judgements outside of any contextual purpose for the liberation of
32

individuals and society. He is explicit in teaching and learning is about maintaining a
critical, reflective, and politically engaged consciousness. Critical thinking would therefore
become synonymous with praxis—critical thought used to inform action with the aim of
emancipating individuals from the realities of their lives to continually transform society to
become more equitable.
Moving Beyond Freire to a More Contextual Understanding of Critical
Thinking
hooks (1994, 2003, 2010) also advocated for this idea of critical thinking as a part of
praxis. She argued that through praxis African American women could develop alternative
voices where silence has existed previously. However, critical thought and reflection are
inseparable from action taken from that thought. A critical consciousness is created that
leads to a change in behaviour from the thinker.
Also, unlike Ennis and McPeck, Freire and hooks attach a recognition and need for
historical analysis. Current problems and socio-political situations cannot be understood
without a look at the historical contexts of these problems. Then, through this
understanding of context, conscientização would lead to a vision of how things could be
different and better—which in turn would lead to action to create this reality. This process
is more reminiscent of Dewey's first look at reflective thought than the de-contextualized
and removed from action notions that Ennis and McPeck offer. This seems to offer a fuller
and more malleable view of critical thinking that can be bent and shaped to fit into various
contexts and uses.
Kincheloe (2000) builds on Freire by focusing on the political context and a need for
historical understanding in the concept of critical thinking. Critical thinking is “the ability of
individuals to disengage themselves from the tacit assumption of discursive practices and
power relations in order to exert more conscious control over their everyday lives.” (p. 24)
He is arguing that critical thinking is based on people becoming aware of how the current
socio-political and economic situation shapes people's assumptions and belief of how the
world works. Then, through this awareness, people can gain control over the influences
on them and change these the strength of these influences.
33

In Kincheloe's Knowledge and Critical Pedagogy (2008), he expands on this concept of
critical thinking with what he called “Critical Complex Epistemology”. Knowledge is
generated from an understanding of critical theory, worldwide input, feminist theory, and
cultural studies, along with one's own understandings of the world. Therefore, relativism,
subjectivity, socio-political, economic, and cultural understanding is involved in questioning
assumptions and envisioning a different reality. Also, an important dynamic that Kincheloe
has added is the importance of the thinker's own understanding and narrative in the
process of knowing. The thinker is part of that which is thought. Critical thinking cannot
occur separately from the person doing the thinking. Here the influences of both Freire
and Dewey are evident in Kincheloe's definition as he has returned to the foundations of
reflective thought.
Brookfield (2010) builds further on Kincheloe's critically complex epistemology. He writes
that “new habits of the mind in transformative learning are thus capable of creating
meaning of experiences that are increasingly complex and contradictory (p. 57).” He
argues that the role of thinking looks deeper as the connections between ideas while
creating an awareness of complexity and contradictory ideas. He goes on to define critical
thinking in this new context, stating:
Critical thinking in this vein is the educational implementation of ideology critique,
the deliberate attempt to penetrate the ideological obfuscation that ensures that
massive social inequity is acceptable by the majority as the natural state of affairs...
Critical thinking framed by critical theory is not just a cognitive process. It is a
developmental project, inevitably bound up with helping people realize common
interests, reject the privatized, competitive ethic of capitalism, and prevent the
emergence of inherited privilege. (p. 58-59)
In other words, critical thinking is about being able to recognised the larger forces that
dictate the socio-political realities while offering an alternative to how these realities are
manifested.
Upon reviewing these different theorists' views on critical thinking, Kincheloe's is the most
inclusive with the potential for democratic transformation. It does not require that change
occur, for many postmodernist theorist (Guile and Young, 2002; Hemphill, 2001; Kilgore,
2001) criticize critical pedagogues for the notion of emancipation, stating that it creates a
new level of dominance in the classroom because the teacher is offering freedom from
their wisdom. With Kincheloe's view of critical thinking, the student is not freed by the
teacher—rather, they themselves have the possibility to emancipate themselves if they so
34

choose. It is about the possibility, but not about the act itself. Therefore, emancipation is
not the promise, but rather the possibility—here critical thinking offers a place in the realm
of reality. Students and thinkers are not being expected to behave one way, but rather to
fathom a way that things could be should they choose to act. As Wacquant (2004) writes,
critical thinking is “that which gives us the means to think the world as it is and as it could
be (p.97).” This is the educational value that I ascribe to and will use to assess and
evaluate the existing research in English for Academic Purposes in order to understand
the state of the field and discover gaps within the existing work.
Critical English for Academic Purposes
Benesch (1999, 2001, 2009) has become one of the first (aside from Pennycook, 1997) to
apply the theories of critical pedagogy of Freire, hooks, and Kincheloe to the field of
English for Academic Purpose. She uses their ideas of the purpose of education, the need
for criticality and dialogical teaching to create what she refers to as Critical EAP in hopes
of recreating an understanding of EAP outside of strict pragmatism.
Benesch (2001) begins with a critique of the current practices dominant in the field of EAP.
She argues that practitioners and administrators of EAP programmes see the purpose of
teaching academic English from a strictly pragmatic perspective. The focus is to provide
students with the language skills to understand on a superficial level their academic
studies. Cognition, much less questioning and criticality is not a part of the purpose and
therefore not a part of the curriculum. Therefore, much of the research done in EAP does
not address or consider the students' voices. This is seen even in the analysis I offer later
on in research on integrating critical thinking in EAP from a cognitive perspective.
Benesch rejects these two principles of EAP (as a place of offering only the linguistic
needs of students as well as a place where student voices are not considered) dominant in
EAP. She claims that the goal of EAP is not simple language teaching. Rather, she
argues that EAP should be a place where student begin to engage critically with the
requirements of their studies. Through the use of dialogue as a method of teaching,
students begin to ask questions such as “who formulated these requirements [of the
curriculum or the students' field of study] and why? Should they be fulfilled? Should they
be modified? What are the consequences of trying to change current conditions? What is
35

gained by obeying, and what is lost?” (2001, p. 49). By doing this, students are given an
alternative to unquestioned obedience. They begin to gain critical understanding of their
studies and their fields as well as the wider context of socio-political realities. Students are
given the right to interrogate the demands that they face. Thinking is done through the
process of questioning to gain a consciousness of their own contexts.
Here the notion of student “needs” are questioned and Benesch offers Critical EAP as a
place where students are not seen as only having needs, but rather having rights.
Benesch criticizes EAP's focus on needs analysis of students. This analysis is directed
towards determining what students would require on a skills and language level to be
successful in studies and ultimately, their jobs. While Benesch recognises the importance
of this, and does not suggest its abolition, she does demand that Critical EAP go beyond
this pragmatism, to analysing students' rights. Rights analysis is defined as a way of
having students begin to question their academic fields as part of their introduction into
their academic studies. She writes, “Critical EAP helps students articulate and formalize
their resistance, to participate more democratically as members of an academic
community and in the larger society (p. 57).” By keeping this concept of democracy and
voice in academic and society in mind, Critical EAP develops students rights along side of
their pragmatic needs.
Critical EAP does not set out to empower students. It simply aims to open a dialogue with
students to have them begin to question their fields and envision what might happen
should they act. The classroom is a setting for questioning power and allowing students to
determine their own actions (if any), rather than anticipating a particular action will follow
the thinking and questioning. It is a place to imagine the world once an understanding of
the current world is reached. This bares a great deal of similarity to Wacquant's (2004)
definition of critical thinking. Critical thinking and Critical EAP are not about creating a
specific action, but rather allowing the opportunity to for this action to be imagined.
Therefore, within the field of Critical EAP, critical thinking becomes the same as other
theorists have suggested: within a particularly complex context, the questioning of the
current socio-political realities with the ability to envision what might be an alternative to
that current reality.
However Benesch theoretical view of Critical EAP has its flaws. Due to the complexity of
36

different contexts and the different academic fields, Benesch argues that for Critical EAP to
be successful, it is necessary that it be tied to specific fields of study. EAP classes should
only consist of students planning to study in the same degree. Therefore the classes
should only have (for example) psychology students, or only computer science students.
She claims that this is ideal because it provides a setting where the students can question
their one particular field and the power relations within it. However, I argue that this
actually limits students' understandings of the wider context of the academic and societal
contexts of which they are a part. It limits their world view to that of one field, based on the
jobs they will one day have. So while Benesch argues for students to be critical of their
fields in general, she does not see the need for students to be able to understand how
these dominant views are held in other fields and therefore derive a wider critique of a
larger and more complex context.
Benesch's focus on students within their fields can be argued against using Bernstein
(2003). Bernstein argues in his research that education styles between working class and
middle class families create a system that ensure that the working class remain in their
economic classes. He discovered that there are two types of curricula: collection code
curricula and integrated code curricula. In collection code curricula, knowledge (different
fields of study) are rigidly separated and students are only taught their specific subjects.
The education of the working class is mainly focused on this type of curricula, being
directed towards jobs skills. In integrated code curricula, knowledge is integrated more
loosely—fields are related to each other and students are introduced to a variety of
subjects. This is the model for the educating of the middle and wealthier classes.
What Benesch suggests in regards to EAP being taught in the subject areas of student
fields' begins to offer a collection code curricula. Students are only exposed to the
complexities of their own fields and only have a notion of questioning the power in play for
those potential areas of study. Their language, knowledge, and questioning is limited to
those understandings, leaving them open to underdeveloped criticality and consciousness.
By having students of different fields in the same classes and opening the dialogue to the
interplay and interrelations between these fields and common (or differing) dominant
expectations, students experience questioning of wider contexts as well as recognising the
complexities of the broader socio-political world. In order to make the questioning and
dialogue easier to foster, Benesch has begun to fall into the trap of the dominant
37

pragmatism of EAP. While EAP should not be viewed as separate from subject studies, it
should allow a place where the separation between different subjects are discussed and
questioned to create a more integrated understanding of their links.
Having said that, Benesch's development of Critical EAP is valid, and her notion of
encouraging students to question their fields and their academic settings as well as the
wider world to begin to imagine possible alternatives based on different actions fits
perfectly into a redefined notion of critical thinking. In a field where critical thinking is not
commonly encouraged or fostered from a cognitive level, the integration of it from a critical
perspective is rarer. However, Benesch opens the dialogue and debate as she justifies its
place within the field of EAP.
38

Empirical Research on Critical Thinking in Critical EAP
Research in EAP looking at critical thinking through the perspective of critical pedagogy,
on the other hand has in recent years is slowly increasing. This may having something to
do with Benesch's (1993, 2001, 2009) work on critical EAP and the amount of research
and theoretical justification she has offered practitioners in the field. Inspired by
Pennycook (1997a, 1997b) and Benesch, a wave of new research focusing on
emancipatory and transformative education has appeared in EAP. Having said that, the
research is still largely missing And, as a new theoretical view of the field, there are still
many gaps waiting to be filled in research as a way of improving students learning and
critical awareness.
With EAP there is the dual concern of teaching the linguistic skills (writing, readings,
speaking and listening) while at the same time providing academic level inquiry and critical
reflection. Therefore, researchers looking at integrating an understanding of the critical
look at the different skill sets and attempt to add the new dimension of self-awareness and
criticality through one or more of them. Kiely (2004) and Dantas-Whitney (2002) chose to
focus on speaking skills, Wharton (2010) and Park (2011) choose to integrate readings
skills with criticality, and finally Granville & Dison (2005) focus on writing as a way of
developing a student's sense of self-reflection. As is evident, the amount of research
within each area's possibilities for incorporating the critical is still low and underdeveloped.
However, there is the beginning of inquiry and investigation which could promise to show a
wider growth of a change in practice as informed by the theory.
Kiely (2004) researches the development of critical learning in an EAP programme at a
British university, focusing on a specific speaking task. His understanding of critical
learning comes from Freire and Benesch, and he looks to create a community of learning
in his classroom where students enter into a dialogue to gain a new understanding of their
world. This particular task is called a Personal Language History (PLH). During week five
of a twelve week course, students were asked to “identify the key elements of their
language skills and uses in their national and socio-cultural contexts, and explain this to
another students in a pair activity” (p. 217). In these groups, students learned about
themselves and each other's background. Then, they were asked to present their
partner's PLH to the class. The teacher (identified in the research as Anna) focused her
39

attention during those presentations on both the linguistic (technical and lexico-gramatical
errors) as well as the critical (questions designed to get the students to think deeper about
their assumptions and understandings of self and each other.)
Kiely then assessed the activity based on the students perspectives expressed during the
PLH, using Young's (1993) scheme for critical learning, taken from Habermas' (1987)
Theory of Communicative Action. These four types of interactional voices: strategic
(recognising a disconnect between the means and ends match), normatively regulated
(dealing with ideas that are based on conformity or non-conformity instilled through
socialisation), dramaturgical (noticing a personal response to the other with students
interacting with new voices and new ideas), and communicative (encouraging an
openness to enquiry). Based on these four types of voices, Kiely categorises how Anna's
PLH encouraged students to develop each one. He continues to argue that the use of
speaking rather than reading or writing allowed students to enter into a dialogue that
encouraged them to discover each others' voices while being open to the possibility of
changing their own understandings. It builds a community of learning where the student is
comfortable to explore and inquire. However, he readily admits (and recommends) that
Young's scheme for critical learning can be applied to courses with reading and writing
focuses as well. He chose to direct his research towards speaking since it is the essence
of dialogue and therefore the logical place to begin. He ends by recommending that
further research into the field of critical learning in EAP to develop criticality in writing and
to develop students' academic identities.
Kiely readily admits the limitations and weaknesses of his study. It is primarily the narrow
and small-scale focus of the research. It is the first step in an attempt to consider criticality
in the development of tasks for EAP courses that otherwise have had purely linguistic
focuses. However, until criticality along with learner autonomy become the explicit
learning outcomes, with courses designed to take both into consideration throughout the
process, then, these tasks are one off. Is a single task in the middle of a twelve week
course enough to be able to develop a sense of critical awareness in a student? Dewey
would argue no, once again referring back to the idea of reflective thinking requiring
continuous rigour, and Freire would agree. This piece of research is exactly what Kiely
claims it to be—the first tentative step in trying to integrate criticality into a field with a
history of focusing only on the linguistic practicalities.
40

Dantas-Whitney (2002) chooses to focus her attention on developing critical thinking
through speaking skills as well. However, unlike Kiely, she looks a task that is process
based on developed throughout a course rather than a single one-off task. Dantas-
Whitney piloted the use of audio-taped critical reflective journals as a way of developing
critical thinking, self reflection and autonomy in her students. In this research conducted at
a large public university in the United States she had 18 students record journals reflecting
at the end of three different content units (language being taught through interdisciplinary
content) first summarising the information that was learned, and then analysing that which
was learned in light of the students' own personal experiences, opinions and beliefs. Each
audio-journal was to be ten minutes long. At the end of the course, Dantas-Whitney
conducted an unstructured ethnographic interview with eleven of the eighteen students to
receive feedback and student perceptions on the critically reflective audio-journals. Her
justification for using audio-journals instead of written ones are three-fold: 1) they would
allow for more spontaneous and free expression from the students since they would not be
bound by the rules of academic writing, 2) they are a means of giving feedback to the
students on their speaking skills in a personal and non-threatening manner, and 3) they
can be used for a tool of critical reflection.
After the ethnographic interview with the eleven students, Dantas-Whitney discovered the
following six areas were addressed and encouraged through the use of the critically
reflective audio-journals. First of all, the journals allowed the student to understand the
relevance between the topic learned in each content unit and their own lives. The
students felt this was particularly effective. Secondly, the students expressed an increase
in their critical thinking skills (critical thinking here being defined as Kincheloe (2000)
defines it). Thirdly, students began to understand the multiple levels of their own identities
as they began to related to different perspectives within each of the different content units.
Fourthly, students appreciated the opportunity to be forced to use English outside the
classroom—something they may not have done when surrounded by family members of
the same first language group. Fifthly, students observed that they were able to get
feedback on their own speaking skills from the teacher without the embarrassment of
being corrected in front of the class. Finally, students began to self-correct, choosing re-
recording different audio-journals as they listened to them and discovered for themselves
errors in their grammar and pronunciation.
41

An Analysis Of The Teaching Of Critical Thinking In English For Academic Purposes Programmes

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