Critical thinking as part of digital skills in EFL education. A qualitative study of how teachers and their students understand the concept of critical thinking.

Abstract

This study investigates how teachers of English understand critical thinking, and how they act upon their understanding in their teaching. Additionally, this study also investigates how students experience their teachers practice of critical thinking in the EFL classroom. The current curriculum of LK06 is in a gradual change towards the subject renewal LK20, a change that is paralleled by the increasing focus on digital technology in education. In a historical perspective, the need for critical attitudes in school settings has seen a curricular development from the late 80’s until today with an increasing focus on technology as an integral part of human life. To address contemporary challenges and opportunities, the Department of Education and Training has implemented a digitalization plan that lays guiding principles from 2017-2021. Critical thinking is a central term for the new curriculum and for the digitalization plan. A supplementing press release exemplifies the English subject as one of the subjects that should nurture critical thinking skills among students. As of today, teachers must include digital skills in the English subject, a basic skill that incorporates aspects of critical information processing using digital tools. The current thesis is motivated by the multiple mentions of critical thinking as a desired English subject skill in the intersection between technology, language and education. To investigate the field, we have conducted qualitative research interviews where four different EFL teachers participated. Subsequently, a selection of the teachers’ students were interviewed in groups. Our findings indicate that the teachers put a strong emphasis on critical thinking as an integral part of evaluating digital information. Further, the teachers appear to implement critical thinking in their EFL practice in an implicit and context-sensitive manner. Their students mostly experience critical thinking as a term that is incorporated into criteria for written and oral tasks, and as a subject of conversation in relation to evaluating digital information in the EFL classroom. Moreover, our findings indicate that meta-language in policy documents is susceptible to ambiguity. This is highlighted by the inconsistent definitions that arose in parts of the conversational discourse. What seems evident, is that terms such as critical thinking – can take on multiple meanings and necessitate contextual factors to attain a common definition from practitioners in the field. This last point is not investigated exhaustively, thus providing future researchers with an intriguing perspective.