Nghiên cứu về yếu tố tư duy phản biện trong các lớp học nói ở trường đại học ngoại ngữ đại học huế

HUE UNIVERSITY UNIVERSITY OF FOREIGN LANGUAGES FACULTY OF ENGLISH  PHAM THI THUY LINH CRITICAL THINKING IN EFL SPEAKING CLASSES AT UNIVERSITY OF FOREIGN LANGUAGES, HUE UNIVERSITY FROM LECTURERS’ PERSPECTIVE GRADUATION THESIS SUPERVISOR: Ph.D Nguyen Thi Thanh Binh Hue, 2021 i LỜI CAM ĐOAN Tôi xin cam đoan kết đạt khoá luận sản phẩm riêng cá nhân, không chép lại người khác Tất tài liệu tham khảo có xuất xứ rõ ràng trích dẫn hợp pháp Huế, ngày 22 tháng 05 năm 2021 Sinh viên thực Phạm Thị Thùy Linh ii ABSTRACT Given the importance of critical thinking in teaching, this study was conducted to investigate the beliefs and practices of the Vietnamese EFL lecturers who were teaching "Speaking 2" course at University of Foreign Languages, Hue University about critical thinking and the integration of critical thinking into EFL Speaking classes A qualitative case study with interviews and classroom observations was applied to collect data to answer the research question The findings show there was a consistency between the lecturers’ beliefs and practices of critical thinking in EFL Speaking classes The lecturers shared the same thought that critical thinking was an important approach in teaching They also showed the integration of critical thinking into their classes by using a list of instructional techniques, such as using higher order thinking questions, group discussions and debates Moreover, the lecturers discussed the difficulties they experienced in the process of teaching with critical thinking, such as students' apprehension to express their opinions in front of a crowd for fear of being judged, or students remaining passive due to being used to one-sided learning teaching method from general education, and the main explanation is that the lecturers did not have any specialized training about critical thinking It is implied from the findings of the study that there should be training courses for lecturers so that they can have sufficient knowledge and teaching methods related to critical thinking and critical thinking could be a learning outcome in the EFL curricula iii TÓM TẮT Nhận thức tầm quan trọng tư phản biện giảng dạy, nghiên cứu thực nhằm điều tra nhận thức thực tiễn giảng dạy giảng viên môn tiếng Anh Việt Nam giảng dạy khóa “Nói 2” trường Đại học Ngoại ngữ, Đại học Huế tư phản biện việc tích hợp tư phản biện vào lớp học nói tiếng Anh Một nghiên cứu định tính điển hình với vấn quan sát lớp học áp dụng để thu thập liệu để trả lời câu hỏi nghiên cứu Kết cho thấy có thống nhận thức thực tiễn giảng dạy giảng viên Tất giảng viên có chung suy nghĩ tư phản biện phương pháp quan trọng giảng dạy Các giảng viên cho thấy tích hợp tư phản biện vào lớp học họ cách sử dụng kỹ thuật giảng dạy, chẳng hạn sử dụng câu hỏi tư bậc cao, thảo luận nhóm tranh luận Họ thảo luận khó khăn mà gặp phải trình giảng dạy lồng ghép tư phản biện, chẳng hạn sinh viên ngại phát biểu ý kiến trước đám đông sợ bị đánh giá, học sinh thụ động quen với phương pháp truyền thụ chiều từ giáo dục phổ thơng, lý giảng viên không đào tạo chuyên ngành tư phản biện Từ phát nghiên cứu, thấy cần có khóa đào tạo cho giảng viên để họ có đủ kiến thức phương pháp giảng dạy liên quan đến tư phản biện tư phản biện yêu cầu học tập chương trình giảng dạy tiếng Anh iv TABLE OF CONTENTS LỜI CAM ĐOAN ii ABSTRACT iii TÓM TẮT iv LIST OF TABLES viii LIST OF FIGURES ix LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS x CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION 1 Rationale Research aims and scope 3 Research questions 4 Thesis structure .4 CHAPTER II: LITERATURE REVIEW .5 Critical thinking Speaking Critical thinking in ELT Critical thinking in speaking Lecturers’ beliefs and practices 10 Recent study 10 CHAPTER 3: METHODOLOGY 13 Research setting 13 Research approach 13 Participants 13 Data collection tools 14 4.1 Interview 14 4.2 Observation 14 Data analysis 15 v CHAPTER 4: FINDINGS 17 Beliefs about critical thinking and critical thinking teaching 17 1.1 Critical thinking in teaching 17 1.2 Critical thinking as a tool to promote English speaking 17 1.3 Lecturers' role in promoting students' critical thinking 18 1.4 The integration of critical thinking in EFL Speaking classes 18 Practices of integrating critical thinking in EFL .20 2.1 Teaching and learning activities: 21 2.2 Questioning techniques: 22 2.3 Different perspectives: .23 2.4 Lecturer modelling: 23 Challenges of integrating critical thinking into teaching 24 CHAPTER 5: DISCUSSIONS .26 Summary 26 Discussion .27 2.1 Belief about critical thinking 27 2.2 Belief about the techniques integrated in EFL Speaking classes 27 2.3 Challenges 28 2.4 Matches and mismatches between the lecturers' beliefs and practices 28 CHAPTER 6: CONCLUSIONS AND IMPLICATIONS 31 Conclusions 31 Implications 32 2.1 To the university and faculty’s administrators 32 2.2 To the lecturers .32 2.3 To the students 33 Limitations .33 REFERENCES 34 vi APPENDIX A: INTERVIEW QUESTIONS 37 APPENDIX B: OBSERVATION CHECKLIST 38 vii LIST OF TABLES Table 1: Observation checklist viii LIST OF FIGURES Figure 1: Bloom’ revised taxonomy ix LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS CTS: Critical thinking students EFL: English as Foreign Language ELT: English Language Teaching x When giving questions to students, T1 always modeled for students how to answer For example, T1 asked the question: "Who is your hero?" and she said her hero is Spider man, or when she asked "Why is he/she your hero?", based on the student's answer that his father was a hero to him, she gave an example "Because he raised you" And these questions did relate to everyday life when she asked about heroes in their real life T2 also asked students about possible test situations and asked them to come up with solutions - this was a question related to the reality of students' testing And then she gave a model: "Between two students there may be a weaker student, so it will be difficult to discuss." T3 did the same thing when she posed a question: “Do you think it’s better for people to speak only one language in the world? Why you think so?”, or “How language differentiates cultures?” and these questions related to students’ everyday life Then she gave an example for the question: “Language makes a difference in people's beliefs” Challenges of integrating critical thinking into teaching Finally, when discussing the difficulties that the lecturers have faced in bringing critical thinking into their teaching, they all reported encountering many challenges First, a lecturer said that encouraging her students to speak was her greatest challenge According to this lecturer, the students have a habit of answering questions with very short responses, even just yes or no; and they not hesitate to answer questions that require high thinking In addition, she mentioned certain stereotypes in Vietnamese classrooms in which some students who genuinely want to express themselves are judged by their classmates as showing off or "making color" This leads to the tendency not to raise opinions in class among Vietamese students Another lecturer reported mixed-level students in each class caused difficulties in designing activities that suit the students' levels Therefore, the lecturer found time consuming because her workload increased This lecturer further explained that with this mixed level, students with good learning ability 24 would become dominant in the classroom, causing a big barrier of self-esteem for those with weaker learning ability In addition, a lecturer shared that the amount of knowledge for students to learn in periods of each lesson at school is too large, so incorporating critical thinking into learning is still not the subject but only in certain activities She also added the fact that she still did not have any specific training courses on critical thinking; instead, she was learning about ways to promote critical thinking by herself and from her own experience And two out of these three lecturers think that having a passive learning environment from high school is also a major obstacle for them and for the students, making them not yet critical and selfstudy In summary, the combination of critical thinking in teaching poses challenges for both lecturers and students, but these difficulties have not yet had a specific solution 25 CHAPTER 5: DISCUSSIONS Summary The research has found the answers about the lecturers' perceptionsabout, their practice of , and the challenges in incorporating critical thinking into EFL Speaking classes at the research context About the perception of the lecturers, in general, all lecturers participating in the study had positive attitudes toward and they are willing to integrate critical thinking into ELT The results show that the lecturers all believed that critical thinking is an important teaching approach in the classroom that they should aim for in this age of student-centered learning They also said that lecturers play an important role in incorporating critical thinking and they find themselves already using critical thinking when designing activities in the lesson Regarding the practice of integrating critical thinking, the observed data showed that, although not really comprehensive, lecturers have tried to integrate critical thinking into their classrooms They take student learning as the focus and goal of teaching, design activities to build thinking such as: debate, discussions in groups or pairs, questioning, They all tried to ask their students questions based on Bloom's taxonomy, but there was lecturer only give questions at the lower levels of Bloom's taxonomy In terms of challenges they encountered when introducing critical thinking into teaching, they initially thought that their difficulties were forcing students to speak, or because students were used to the old way of learning - one sided learning teaching approach - in general education, getting opinions from students is quite a big obstacle Or even if they don't have any actual training on critical thinking, it becomes a major issue for them In fact, these difficulties are quite evident in the classrooms of these lecturers 26 Discussion 2.1 Belief about critical thinking According to Ketabi, Zabihi & Ghadiri (2012), lecturers “had a clear idea of what critical thinking is; that it is essential, and that it can be taught by the language teacher, perhaps because they believed that Iranian EFL learners were weak in this area” (p 21) and “critical thinking should form part of the ELT curriculum” (p 22) Thus, we can see that the results that the researcher collected from the interview with the lecturers are consistent with the results from the research of Ketabi, Zabihi & Ghadiri In general, the lecturers in this study had shared the thought that the integration of critical thinking in teaching English was an important and necessary technique However, as found in this study, students did not have access to critical thinking in general education Besides, there is a consensus between Naghdipour & Emeagwali's study (2013) and this study that students with critical thinking performed much better than those who did not - “the higher the level of students’ education, the better reflective thinkers they could be” (2013, p 269) Moreover, Franco (2018, p 133) also stated that: “Critical thinking is important not only in the classroom, to obtain the very cherished academic success, but also, and perhaps most importantly, in everyday life, when time comes for dialogical interaction and decision making and problem solving” This is also what was mentioned by lecturers in this study 2.2 Belief about the techniques integrated in EFL Speaking classes Regarding the methods used in the classroom to integrate critical thinking, the lecturers participating in this study all realised the importance of the methods so that students will have a sense of deepening the problems by synthesising, analysing and evaluating information, by asking questions themselves, or even by asking against their friends Or in the research conducted in 2019, Saleh stated that problem solving, group debate, and self and peer evaluation helped enhance critical thinking Meanwhile, in the research of Ketabi, Zabihi & Ghadiri (2002, p 22), 27 “none of the interviewees mentioned that critical thinking is made up of several subskills, including recognizing assumptions, drawing inferences, analyzing facts, deducing conclusions, and assessing arguments” 2.3 Challenges In terms of challenges that lecturers face when integrating critical thinking into ELT, one thing in common between Naghdipour & Emeagwali's previous study and this study is that students are afraid to express their opinions in front of the whole class In the previous research, students expressed that they not want to speak out because of “being afraid of making mistakes in front of others, viewing their teacher as the authority and expecting the right answer for any question as inhibitors to reflective thinking attributed to the students themselves.”, but in this study, they not want to raise opinions because of the fear of being judged by others in class In this study, a lecturer expressed that her great difficulty was not to be trained about critical thinking, all of which she has learned by herself Similarly, the results of Saleh’ study also suggested that lecturers recommend some training courses in critical thinking because they were quite unfamiliar with these concepts 2.4 Matches and mismatches between the lecturers' beliefs and practices Through the data collected from interviews and observations, it can be seen that the perception of the lecturers is quite close to their practices, but there are still some slight differences First, about the similarities in perception and reality, lecturers thought that they always welcomed ideas from students, and when it came to teaching practice, almost they did They also claimed that they have incorporated critical thinking into their teaching, and for T2, she had further noticed that although she did incorporate, it was not comprehensive When it came to reality, T1, T3's teaching activities and questioning methods were combined with critical thinking when T1 organized debate activities for students or T3 asked questions based on Bloom Taxonomy T2, as previously stated, asked many questions of the students but most of them were 28 not at higher level in Bloom’s Taxonomy Furthermore, according to the findings they have incorporated the teaching method they described in the interview into their teaching It can be said that, basically, the beliefs of lecturers are quite consistent with their teaching practice In order to clarify, one study suggested that "Lecturers' beliefs have a significant influence on their classroom practices." (LNK & MO, 2013, p 246) “It also follows that the knowledge they possess influences their actions Knowledge, then, forms a system of beliefs and attitudes which direct perceptions and behaviors.”, Deford (1985, p 352) Yes, it can be seen from the findings that what lecturers perceive, they will try to apply in practice, like people will always tend to what they think For instance, the fact that they are aware that there are activities or teaching methods to incorporate critical thinking and when observing the lessons, the researcher has seen that they have really been included in their lessons Or one lecturer stated that the difficulty in integrating critical thinking into her lesson was getting students to speak, and in reality, there were some students in that class engaged in activities, ranging from 2-3 students But T3 also stated that she always welcomes ideas from students as long as students can explain their answers, but she didn't ask questions that require students to explain in practice This lecturer also indicated that she believed having students work on a project or create pair works or group works was useful for incorporating critical thinking into teaching because it allows students to gain responses from different viewpoints, but the questions she asked were only at the lower levels of Bloom's Taxonomy, only testing students' memory or recognition In comparison with the research of LNK & MO (2013), they also found that: “More importantly, the majority of the participants stated that they tested the levels of understanding followed by remembering before moving on to ‘critical thinking’ skills In reality, their priority was remembering followed by understanding and, on a limited scale, evaluating Significantly, no attention was given to analysing, applying and creating in practice.” It can be inferred that the things that lecturers believe they will will not always be the case 29 It can be argued that the above results are quite consistent with the results of previous studies Consistency is reflected in the beliefs of the instructors, the methods they offered and the difficulties they faced However, there are still a few other points that they did not discuss in previous studies or the perception of each subject in each study is different Moreover, this study also proved that sometimes beliefs and practices might not always be the same 30 CHAPTER 6: CONCLUSIONS AND IMPLICATIONS This chapter briefly summarizes the research's findings and presents some implications for relevant stakeholders Conclusions This case study investigated the perceptions and practices of lecturers who are teaching “Speaking 2” courses at the University of Foreign Languages, Hue University about critical thinking, how they integrated critical thinking into teaching, and the difficulties they might face when they incorporate critical thinking in their classes The study found no significant difference between the EFL lecturers' beliefs about and practices of critical thinking and teaching critical thinking in EFL Speaking classes The researcher discovered in her case study that the gap between the lecturers' beliefs and practices is inevitable and easy to encounter The lecturers also pointed out the shortcomings of general education when overusing one-sided transmission without the intention of providing thought-provoking activities for students The abuse of this one-sided teaching approach is no longer a strange thing and the explanation for this flaw is the lack of training courses on critical thinking for lecturers This has also been mentioned by a lecturer in this report who stated that the lack of relevant critical thinking training makes incorporating critical thinking into teaching very difficult Besides, the lecturers stated that their own teaching methods were really effective for students' learning and pointed out the difficulties they encountered in the process of integrating critical thinking into their teaching, and each of the lecturers had their own difficulties The lecturers came up with methods that really helped students to improve their thinking To them, high-order thinking questions based on Bloom's Taxonomy or the classroom activities such as debates or group discussions really help students build up ideas and no longer rely on available materials or those online They even agreed that lecturers should be the ones who play the role of guiding students' thinking rather than giving information or 31 answers Basically, the results of this study are consistent with previous studies on critical thinking or the comparison between beliefs and practices of lecturers Implications From the research findings, I would like to make the implications for the university and faculty's administrators, the lecturers and the students 2.1 To the university and faculty’s administrators The above findings and discussions indicate that these shortcomings or perceptions and realities are common among the lecturers The challenge of lecturers in teaching practice when integrating critical thinking is something that the education system in general, and universities in particular, need to address right now Based on the fact that the lecturers all shared the thought that critical thinking was an important approach to teaching, the lecturers really lack the training, resulting in a lack of expertise or, at the very least, a lack of effectiveness in their teaching From my perspective, what needs to be done right now to be able to eliminate or at least minimize the obstacles that lecturers face is to offer thorough training courses on critical thinking for them This will initially help lecturers understand critical thinking, and then provide them with effective teaching methods in integrating critical thinking Furthermore, once they have full knowledge of critical thinking, other difficulties they may face in the teaching process, such as those listed by the lecturers in this study, will be easily dealt with Secondly, the university and faculty’s administrators should consider making critical thinking as a learning outcome for students so that lecturers can design effective teaching activities and include critical thinking as an assessment element 2.2 To the lecturers The research results indicated that the lecturers were aware of the importance of critical thinking and demonstrated that they have integrated critical thinking in their classrooms Although the lecturers seemed to be able to apply certain methods to integrate critical thinking in their classrooms, they committed their lack of 32 professional training on this issue While they wait for any support from the faculty or the university, lecturers need to promote their initiative and creativity as well as actively learn more from training courses or other resources Moreover, they need to actively pursue their desire to be further trained in teaching methods, including how to improve critical thinking for students 2.3 To the students Students need to be aware of the importance of critical thinking in everyday life in general and learning in particular To be able to develop this thinking ability, students need to boldly express their opinions, overcome their fear of crowds and eliminate the meaning of going to school just to receive knowledge, etc Limitations The study is significant in understanding the Vietnamese EFL lecturers’ beliefs and practices about critical thinking and how they integrated it into their teaching and the challenges they faced at the research context However, the study still has these following limitations: Due to time constraints, the research was only conducted on a small scale, with only lecturers, so the research’s results just can be used to better understand the research problem in this research context However, the results can be a valuable source of reference for other similar EFL contexts in the world Besides, the purpose of the study was to understand any matches or mismatches between the lecturers’ beliefs and practices, however the researcher could not observe much due to time limitation If the lecturers’ classes had been observed longer, their practices could have been understood more thoroughly In the future, other studies should be observed for a longer period of time in order to better dig into the reality 33 REFERENCES Anderson, L W., & Bloom, B S (2001) A taxonomy for learning, teaching, and assessing: A revision of Bloom's taxonomy of educational objectives: Longman Azer, S A (2008) Use of portfolios by medical students: significance of critical thinking The Kaohsiung journal of medical sciences, 24(7), 361-366 Bedir, H (2013) Reading and critical thinking skills in ELT classes of Turkish students World Applied Sciences Journal, 21(10), 1436-1439 Clarke, V., & Braun, V (2014) Thematic analysis In Encyclopedia of critical psychology (pp 1947-1952): Springer DeFord, D E (1985) Validating the construct of theoretical orientation in reading instruction Reading research quarterly, 351-367 DeLecce, T (2018) What is Critical Thinking Definition, Skills & Meaning.[ONLINE] Available at: https://study com/academy/lesson/what-iscritical-thinking-definition-skillsmeaning html.[Accessed April 2018] Franco, A., Marques Vieira, R., & Tenreiro-Vieira, C (2018) Educating for critical thinking in university: The criticality of critical thinking in education and everyday life Essachess Journal for Communication Studies, 11(2), 22 Graves, K (2008) The language curriculum: A social contextual perspective Language teaching, 41(2), 147 Ketabi, S., Zabihi, R., & Ghadiri, M (2012) Critical thinking across the ELT curriculum: A mixed methods approach to analyzing L2 teachers’ attitudes towards critical thinking instruction International journal of research studies in education, 2(3), 15-24 34 10 Lan, W., & Lam, R (2020) Exploring an EFL Teacher's Beliefs and Practices in Teaching Topical Debates in Mainland China Iranian Journal of Language 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Speaking Ability English Language Teaching, 9(6), 189-198 17 Saleh, S E (2019) Critical thinking as a 21st century skill: conceptions, implementation and challenges in the EFL classroom European Journal of Foreign Language Teaching 18 Schafersman, S D (1991) An introduction to critical thinking In 35 19 Sternberg, R J (1986) Critical Thinking: Its Nature, Measurement, and Improvement 20 Tosuncuoglu, I (2018) Place of Critical Thinking in EFL International Journal of Higher Education, 7(4), 26-32 21 Tsui, L (1999) Critical Thinking inside College Classrooms: Evidence from Four Institutional Case Studies ASHE Annual Meeting Paper 22 Vdovina, E., & Gaibisso, L C (2013) Developing critical thinking in the English language classroom: A lesson plan ELTA journal, 1(1), 54-68 36 APPENDIX A: INTERVIEW QUESTIONS What you think about critical thinking in education? What you think about the role of teachers in promoting critical thinking in students? As a teacher of English, you encourage critical thinking in your classroom? Why/why not? How you think critical thinking helps your students in speaking English? In your opinion, what does a critical speaker look like? What teaching techniques you think are helpful to improve ss critical thinking in speaking English? Do you think you have integrated critical thinking in your speaking class? Do you face any difficulties when integrating critical thinking into your class? If yes, what are they? 37 APPENDIX B: OBSERVATION CHECKLIST Students engage in the lesson: motivated, enthusiastic Y N ? N ? A There are students-centered learning practices Y N ? N ? A T accepts more than one answer Y N ? N ? A T asks for evidence of higher order thinking and learning (analyze, evaluate, create) Y N ? N ? A T allows time to consider alternatives/points of view Y N ? N ? A T models reasoning strategies Y N ? N ? A T encourages transfer of Cognitive skills to everyday life Y N ? N ? A T poses questions at different levels of Bloom’s Taxonomy Y N ? N ? A T frequently asks, “Why you think so?” Y N ? N ? A 38