PUTRI HARUM -

MULTIPLE CASE STUDY ON HOW PESANTREN ENGLISH TEACHERS IN INDONESIA FOSTER CRITICAL THINKING IN THE CLASSROOM CONTEXT : OTHERS

Critical thinking (CT) has become widely recognized in the last decade as one of the essential abilities for the 21st century. In Indonesia, CT has been mandated through the recent mandate in various policies (see MoEC Decree No.13/2022, Article 3). Hence, teachers in various learning contexts are mandated to embed the notion in their teaching practice. As teaching is contextually bounded, information on how pesantren teachers perceive and practice CT remains scarce. There has not been any study that focused on pesantren context, despite the fact that is the oldest form of education in Indonesia. To fill the gap, this study focused on investigating how Pesantren English teachers’ understanding of critical thinking (CT) and how they apply their understanding in a classroom setting, and barriers encountered by the teachers in promoting CT. This qualitative research involved 4 English language teachers and 86 students in Pesantren in Indonesia. This study employed multiple case study since the focus of this study is an in-depth investigation of teachers’ understanding CT of and how they apply it in the classroom setting and the barriers they have. The research instruments used in this study were interviews, observation, questionnaires, FGD, and document analysis. The result shows that Pesantren teachers had a surface-level awareness of CT and their teaching of students' critical thinking reflects this. Moreover, the teachers considered that the inhibiting factors were the students’ lack of language, and students are afraid of making mistakes. They also considered that memorization is more culturally promoted than critical thinking and teacher center is more culturally used.

Maulana Rizki, M.Pd., English teacher in Islamic Boarding School, West Java, Indonesia