THANH TRINH -

TEACHERS' BELIEFS OF CRITICAL THINKING PEDAGOGY IN LANGUAGE EDUCATION : LITERACY AND 21ST CENTURY SKILLS IN ELT

Critical thinking is a buzzword in the 21st century education and advancing critical thinking abilities has become of paramount importance. Over the past decades, apart from the focus on language proficiency, English language teaching has also shifted its attention towards the development of 21st century skills, especially critical thinking skills, which can be attributed to philosophical, cognitive and metacognitive, pedagogical, and socioeconomic reasons (Elfatihi, 2017). However, little attention is paid to “how” critical thinking skills are taught and enhanced by practitioners (Balcaen, 2011). This case study aimed at exploring the conceptions about critical thinking and the significance of critical thinking pedagogy in language education of six Vietnamese in-service teachers. The qualitative data were obtained from semi-structured in-depth interviews. Thematic analysis of the data revealed that although the participants differed in their understandings of critical thinking and critical thinking pedagogy, they strongly believed that critical thinking was an essential skill for language classrooms and showed an urgent need for training critical thinking pedagogy for language teachers. Suggestions for developing language teachers’ understanding of critical thinking are discussed by the end of the paper.

Thanh T.G. Trinh is a lecturer and a teacher educator of Faculty of Foreign Languages, Ho Chi Minh City University of Technology and Education, Vietnam. She earned her Master's degree in Applied Linguistics from University of Groningen. Her research interests include language development, bilingualism, EMI and critical thinking.