Humanizing ELT Curriculum: Teachers’ Attitudes about the Role of “Divergent” Topics in Developing Critical Students

Mansoor Fahim and Mohammad Amerian, Iran

Mansoor Fahim is an associate professor of TEFL at Allameh Tabataba’i university, Iran. He has run Research Methods, Psycholinguistics, Applied Linguistics, Second Language Acquisition, and seminar classes at M.A. level and also, First Language Acquisition, Psycholinguistics, and discourse Analysis at Ph.D. level. He has published several articles and books mostly in the field of TEFL and has translated some books into Persian. E-mail: dr.manfahim@yahoo.com

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Abstract
Overview
A taste of literature
Method
Procedure and data analysis
Results
Conclusion and implications
References
Appendix

Abstract

Since one of the basic goals of education is to train how to think and act logically, one of the most important and mostly-emphasized issues in EFL pedagogy has been attending “Critical Thinking”. The concept has been defined as “the objective analysis and evaluation of an issue in order to form a judgment” (Oxford, 2013) and consists a variety of skills to develop intellectual behavior. This paper argues if what it calls “divergent” topics (those ignored in usual EFL courses syllabus) can be of high potentialities in preparing the needed framework and educational content so that the teacher can rely on them to have “critical” learners. Chiefly, it investigates teachers’ attitudes of these topics which are borrowed from Amerian (2013)’s Transcendental Syllabus with the same intention. The instrument used was a self-devised mixed questionnaire carefully tailored to evaluate miscellaneous aspects of such a proposition. Totally, 23 EFL teachers with different educational profiles participated in the study. The results indicated that teachers favored “religious” and “political” topics, more, though not ignored the others. Based on the suggestive findings of this study, it seems that a taste of out-of-the-circle topics in EFL curriculum (both in material content and in class discussions) would highly contribute to pedagogic efficiency and developing a sense of critical thinking among the learners.

Key Words: EFL classes, Curriculum Development, Divergent Topics, Critical Thinking

Overview

Throughout the history, one of the main goals of education has been training learners who can think logically, evaluate the possible choices according to different criteria and decide independently. Schafersman (1991) postulated that all education must involve not only ‘what to think’, but also hints on ‘how to think’. Moreover, by globalization and the spread of English, learners are more exposed to miscellaneous cultures and ways of thinking and this necessitates intellectual judgment. Although recently more flourished under colourful labels, from the old scholastic age -since the introduction of Critical Thinking (‘questioning self’) by Socrates in about 2000 years ago- there has been always a great emphasis on major role of critical thinking in education; i.e. developing learners’ intellect so that they can expand their diagnostic power and judge best and on their own. One of the means to this end is “Critical Thinking” (CT): “correct thinking in the pursuit of relevant and reliable knowledge about the world” (Schafersman, 1991). Critical Thinking is often seen as a universal goal of higher education (Fahim and Shakouri Masouleh, 2012) though the term has been sometimes substituted by “reflective thinking”, “heterogeneous thinking”, “dialogical thinking”, “evaluative thinking” or the like.

Although this is not limited to the sentential level and a wide variety of definitions can be considered for the concept (in fact, Critical Thinking is more a ‘way of thought’ rather than being encapsulated in border-defining sentences), most of the authors who wrote about critical thinking agreed that it has many dimensions (Ghaemi and Taherian, 2001). There exist some main scopes indicating important features of critical thinking. They include: skillful use of evidences, organizing thoughts, distinguishing between the valid and invalid, independent leaning, anticipating problems, questioning one’s own beliefs, decision making, diagnostic reasoning, exploring ideas, focusing on relevant topics and issues, differentiating facts; opinions and assumptions, and anticipating the consequences of alternative actions (Schafersman, 1991; Birjandi and Bagherkazemi, 2010 and Fahim and Pezeshki, 2012). By developing their prominent critical thinking test in 1925, Goodwin Watson and E. M. Glaser also provided us with other CT skills as “discriminating among degrees of truth or falsity of inferences”, “recognizing unstated assumptions in a series of statements”, “interpreting whether conclusions are warranted or not”, “drawing conclusion and evaluating whether arguments are strong and relevant or weak and irrelevant” (quoted in Watson-Glaser critical thinking appraisal, 2002). Correspondingly, the list can continue to include so much more items the unifying axis of which can be thought of as having reflection upon thought, since critical thinking has metacognitive nature). In general, according to Fahim and Shakouri Masouleh (2012), Critical Thinking movement has emphasized the idea that specific reasoning skills or strategies undergird the curriculum as a whole by involvement of cognitive skills or strategies that increase the probability of a desirable outcome. As they assert, “Critical Thinking is seen as an essential skill for success in our society and has been heralded as a need in achieving our goals in most curriculum analyses” (p. 1371). All in all, the main target of critical thinking is providing an environment where students construct their own knowledge and take the responsibility for their own learning (Khatib et al., 2012).

A taste of literature

The notion of Critical Thinking has been touched by many scholars in applied linguistics from various aspects (by the way, a salient figure in the field is American philosopher John Dewey (1852-1952) who has greatly contributed to literature with his famous idea of “reflective thinking”). Some researchers tried to evaluate the concept itself constructively and its influence and role in language pedagogy, some attempted to assess critical thinking being affected by various parameters or its effectiveness on language learning, and still others sought to develop different activities to enhance critical thinking ‘skills’ in the learners (the chief instrument for a majority of studies attending to assess CT has been the aforementioned Watson-Glaser Critical Thinking Appraisal developed in 1925). Finally come those which emphasized the necessity of developing critical thinking skills among the teachers themselves.

As stated, a number of studies concentrate on activities to increase critical thinking levels of EFL students. Pishghadam (2008)’s study focused on the role of literary discussion (focused on poems and short stories) on increasing the critical thinking among the students and its results revealed significant differences between experimental and control groups. Furthermore, by engaging 33 Iranian EFL learners, Khatib et al. (2012) tested the effectiveness of audiotaped dialogue journals (as opposed to ‘written’ versions) as a technique to enhance the learners’ critical thinking and came up with the positive effect of this technique in fostering critical thinking abilities.

As another technique to engage learners in critical thinking activities, Fahim and Pezeshki (2012) suggest the possibility of manipulation of tests (either comprehension or production) to make them appropriate for students’ intellectual growth. They hold that students should critically analyze test items through RACE (Recognition, Asking, Critical analysis and Elimination) technique. Tabataba’i and Parsafar (2012)’s study revealed that teaching self-directed learning led to the enhancement of the participants’ critical thinking and Hosseini Fatemi (2013) found the considerable impact of Awareness of Consequences Technique (ACT) and literary narratives on broadening Iranian EFL students’ critical perspective in reading classes.

Also, some researchers sought to trace the influential dimensions of CT. Among these studies comes Malmir and Shoorcheh (2012)’s work which aimed at seeing the effect of critical thinking on Iranian EFL learners’ speaking ability. By engagement of control and experimental groups, the teacher in the focus explicitly elaborated on what critical thinking processes are. Then, during the following sessions, he taught critical thinking techniques and gave learners time to practice them. The findings showed that those students who received instruction on critical thinking strategies did better on the oral interview post-test.

Fahim and Hashtroodi (2012) found out that teaching techniques of critical thinking through writing, to Iranian EFL students at university level, can make them ‘critical’ thinkers and lead them develop writing argumentative essays. Fahim et al. (2012) also came up with the facilitative effect of critical thinking strategy training on reading comprehension performance of EFL learners through using taxonomy of CT skills drawn up by Facione (1990). In line with that, Alizamani et al. (2013) investigated the effects of CT knowledge strategies on Iranian EFL learners’ reading comprehension ability through exposition to teaching CT strategies training and realized that CT knowledge helped students in better understanding of English language texts. Apart from these attempts, Davidson and Dunham (1997) tried to measure the progress EFL learners show in critical thinking indices. They did so by using Ennis-Weir Critical Thinking Essay Test after a year of intensive academic English instruction among 36 Japanese students and concluded that critical thinking skills can apparently be taught to some extent along with academic EFL/ESL instruction and can, therefore, enhance a content-based course of study.

Critical thinking is a must for teachers themselves. According to Ghaemi and Taherian (2011), being critical thinkers will help teachers increase their teaching success. It fosters their inferential abilities and enhances their deep understanding of teaching. Critical thinking will help them become flexible, reflective and effective teachers and this can positively affect their students, as well. Birjandi and Bagherkazemi (2010) tested the relationship between Iranian EFL teachers’ critical thinking ability and their professional success. The results of this study revealed that there is a significant positive relationship between the two variables in question. The size of this correlation indicated that generally high levels of critical thinking are related to high levels of teacher success as evaluated by EFL learners. Furthermore, with focusing on teacher development, Fahim and Nazari (2012) argued that it is necessary for teachers to be familiar with different roles they can play as ‘transformative intellectuals’. They asserted that teachers are charged with fostering the disposition or willingness to think critically in the students.

Method

Participants

The sample participants of this study included 23 Iranian EFL teachers randomly selected to fill out the relevant self-devised 31-item questionnaire. They were 6 males and 17 females whose average age was 28. From them, 15 Teachers taught at English institutes and 6; also in universities (2 missed responses).

Instrumentation

In order to collect data about the focus of the study, it was needed to devise a questionnaire which could conveniently present the ideas behind the targeted model (namely Transcendental Syllabus model; Amerian, 2013) throughout its items. The outcome was a corresponding questionnaire directly depicting ideas to be considered in the model (i.e. ‘divergent’ topics which was assumed to develop critical thinking among the learners). To have the most inclusive ideas, some items of the model subsumed under more general terms in the questionnaire (finally, ten main topics of Existence, God, Determinism/Free Will, Religion, Classical Philosophy, Empiricism/Rationalism/Existentialism, Eastern/Islamic Philosophy, Aesthetics, History and Politics were chosen).

To enjoy various viewpoints, the questionnaire was divided into two sections of multiple choice Likert-scaled items (including questions about the familiarity of teachers with the topics and their opinion about the influence of topics in CT) and those which were “open” and asked the respondents to explain their reason of selecting that choice (altogether, 31 items). It is noteworthy that the questionnaire was provided in Persian (with equivalent English proper nouns) for the teachers to freely express their ideas without having any sense of content ambiguity, as the model acted as a pioneer in introducing some ideas. Finally, two open queries questioned the respondents on their general favor/disfavor of the model and their own suggested topics (complete English version of the questionnaire is brought in the Appendix section).

Procedure and data analysis

The questionnaire was distributed among the target participants with a brief explanation of the goals of the study. Descriptive statistics was applied in order to analyze the responses; to see the familiarity level of EFL teachers with different ‘divergent’ topics to be included in the assumed curriculum and also if they think such topics would enhance the students’ critical thinking level. The SPSS software was used for quantitative analysis. Also, there were three parts including open-ended questions which should have been interpreted qualitatively: (1). questions asking teachers their reasons of favoring/disfavoring the presented topics one by one, (2). teachers’ general opinion about inclusion of the subjects, and (3) their own suggested topics as was thought can contribute to developing EFL learners’ CT level. Answers to these sections were content analyzed under units of analysis to have fair interpretation.

Results

Transcendental Syllabus

The actual concern of this study centers on what it follows as “Transcendental Syllabus”; core of the proposed model by Amerian (2013). Arguing that we should change our vision by enriching the EFL curriculum with challenging (or ‘divergent’) topics, the researcher has taken ideas from different fields of study (as History, Philosophy, and Epistemology) into account through a gradual procedure. The model asserts that if regulated well; challenging topics will not puzzle or deviate the learners but in fact, increase their intrinsic motivation through being trigged of radical questions, stimulate their wisdom, judgment and outlook. In brief, “they will open new horizons for the intellectual development of learners while they are engaged with language learning”. Using the model, this study sought evaluate if such topics are also welcomed by EFL teachers and if they think those “divergent” topics can contribute to increase EFL students’ CT level.

Findings

As noted, the content of the items can be divided into five main areas: (1). Familiarity with the concepts, (2). The role of contents in developing critical thinking among students, (3). The reason behind the answer to (2), (4). Respondents’ general favor/disfavor of the idea and (5) Any suggested topic for the same intention.

1. Teachers’ familiarity with the concepts

For any teacher who wants to teach some content, axiomatically the first criterion would be familiarity of him/herself with the notion. The table below reveals the participants’ responses to questions number 0, 1, 4, 7, 10, 13, 16, 19, 22, 25 and 28 which addressed the familiarity of participant teachers with the notion of “critical thinking” and the ten suggested topics. First, it shows that the majority of teachers believed that they know the concept of “Critical Thinking” itself well. Then, it reveals that the respondents thought they were quite familiar with notions of “God” and “Religion” (“History” and “Determinism/Free Will” go to the next stages). One more point is that the teachers claimed they were quite familiar with the notions presented to them except for “philosophical” ones (items 6 and 8 in table 1) whose mean value is below 3 (average). The main reason of this is that philosophical topics seem complicated for teachers.

Table 1: familiarity of teachers with suggested concepts

2. Role of the “concepts” in developing students’ CT

The second set of questions (items number 3, 6, 9, 12, 15, 18, 21, 24, 27 and 30) asked respondents on their opinion about the role of those ten different “contents” in developing the critical thinking level of the learners, i.e. if they are potentially challenging and can create thought, discussion and debate. In this section, again, God and Religion have attracted much more interest. The two later places are reserved for Determinism/Free Will and Politics. In fact, based on the ideas raised out of the responses to this section, in general, “religious” concepts can lend themselves more to debate and hence; critical discussion/appreciation. It’s noteworthy that the teachers welcomed all the notions presented for developing critical thinking as indicated by the means for contents as the mean is above 3 (which indicated the “average” level of interest in the subject) for all (table 2).

Table 2: opinion of teachers about the role of different “topics” (contents) in developing students’ critical thinking

3. Teachers’ reasons of favoring/disfavoring of the concepts

To have the explanatory justifications for selecting the choices, the researcher also provided an open question after each one of the items. The responses to this part were, then, content analyzed based on the key ideas suggested and then classified. The outcomes of this section support the results of the previous section; the general tendency towards religious concepts and Politics. Here are the summary of the reasons (possibly due to boredom of lack of time, many participants preferred not to answer this explanatory section. missed responses are indicated in each section by number below the name of the concept). The numbers in parentheses shows the repetition (frequency) of the same ideas by the participants:

One interesting point regarding the table is that for the item “God”, there came no negative viewpoint by the participants. It shows that this topic is welcomed at least by the majority of teachers. Besides, the participants stated opinions which were not positive or negative in their rigid clear-cut sense. These opinions mostly emphasized the relativity and contextuality of the presented issues.

4. Teachers’ general favor/disfavor of the model

The fourth section of the questionnaire asked the general agreement/disagreement of the teachers with inclusion of these topics in any EFL curriculum, whether in shape of the materials’ content, topic for free discussion, or the like. Below come some of the more “revealing” viewpoints to the question. The criterion for choosing them was a combination of clarity of expression, justified attitudes and variety of content.

“Adding such credits to the educational curricula can definitely enhance students’ open-mindedness so that they see the world from a quite better viewpoint. I personally believe that there is no single isolated field in science, i.e. all aspects of science are academic majors are somehow interrelated (if not interwoven) to many other fields and principles. In spite of all its merits, the few risks of including such credits in the academic syllabi may be lack of knowledgeable teachers (those familiar with both language and let’s say aesthetics) and the lack of enough interest among language learners. If necessary pre-conditions are met, such plan would shed light on the optimal results. These issues (Topics) are thorough and all-inclusive, though each can be divided into many different subfields and branches.” (Male, 31-year-old, Ph.D. student)

“Most of these topics are like a two-sided knife. It depends how they are used. If they are presented objectively, it’s good. Otherwise, they can be tools to impose ideas and control. But in general, the more the topics are varied, the more critical thought we would have since flexibility and maneuverability will increase.” (Male, 28-year-old, Ph.D. student)

In my opinion, critical thinking can (actually should) happen even with simple issues not necessarily philosophical ones. By the way, I have to emphasize that critical thinking should be discussed critically! I mean we should look at critical thinking critically! In general, I agree with discussing such topics; yet, my definition of critical thinking is not a leftist/radical definition: questioning everything just for the sake of questioning! (Female, 29-year-old, Ph.D. student)

“I agree with it because the perspective of language is so much broader than be only limited to the linguistic areas. In all the areas mentioned above the role of language is undeniable. Providing general knowledge about these issues can add variety and attraction to learning process while it can be so much fruitful in the area of culture acquisition.” (Female, unspecified age, M.A. student)

“EFL classes face with a sort of ‘triviality’ but these topics are different from those superficial subjects normally raised in classes and to the same extent, the language which is used to express ideas about them would be richer. By raising these subjects, the opinion and perspective of the persons may be challenged and this itself increases motivation for self-expression. Plus, the topics will considerably help the ideological and social growth of individuals. In fact, in these courses, language learners will also learn something other than language which would possibly benefit their personal life.” (Female, 27-year-old, M.A. student)

“The topics will enable language learners express their own attitudes about different subjects but it should be noted not to create boredom and monotone in them by choosing unsuitable materials or imposed way of thinking. Furthermore, we should know that the language used for expressing such issues is different from people’s daily and usual language. So, the goals of the course should be specified for the learners so that they can select the course consciously.” (Female, 23-year-old, M.A. student)

“Peripheral teaching of such topics would be effective. The topics have unfortunately been ignored up to now and language teaching can be incorporated within these topics.” (Female, 26-year-old, B.A.)

5. Any other suggested topic

The last part of the questionnaire was devoted to teachers’ own suggested topics. Following are the suggestions (the numbers in parentheses shows the frequency of the suggestion): literature/books/literary schools (Feminism, Humanism, ...) (3), daily/current issues, intercultural competence, Ethics/ethical/social corruption (2), Metaphysics/other world (soul, spirit...) (2), Critical Thinking, Life, cultural/religious differences (2) and EFL course books.

Conclusion and implications

Ur (1996) maintains that good teachers know how to challenge students. They know their students thoroughly and understand each student’s leaning styles, thus they teach in a way that students will not only learn but also be intrigued by the information provided to them. Moreover, among the eleven criteria for good teachers mentioned by Haskvitz (2007) are unsatisfaction, high expectations, creation of independence, flexibility, diversion, unacceptance and uncomforting. This paper argues if modification of subjects we regularly encounter in EFL syllabus will contribute to development of the critical thinking level of learners. The study was done to see what are the opinions of EFL teachers about some “divergent” topics and their role in developing critical thinking among language learners. The instrument used was a self-devised mixed questionnaire carefully tailored to evaluate miscellaneous aspects of the same the proposition pioneered by Amerian (2012)’s article on Transcendental Syllabus. Totally, 23 EFL teachers with different educational profiles participated in the study. The results indicated that teachers favored “religious” and “political” topics, more, though not ignored the others. Moreover, they showed tendency for inclusion of literary and metaphysical topics. Based on the findings of this study, it seems that a taste of out-of-the-circle topics in EFL curriculum (both in material content and in class discussions) would highly contribute to pedagogic efficiency and developing a sense of critical thinking among the learners.

References

Alizamani, H., Khodabandehlou, M. and Mobashernia, R. (2013). The Effects of Teaching Critical Thinking Strategies on Iranian EFL Learners’ Reading Comprehension Ability: The Case of Padideh Language Center. Indian Journal of Fundamental and Applied Life Sciences, 3 (3): 133-141.

Amerian, M. (2013). A New Model for the General English Textbooks’ Design: Inviting Philosophy to the Scene. Humanising Language Teaching, 15 (4), Retrieved on 2013, 11, 20 from: old.hltmag.co.uk/aug13/mart04.htm

Birjandi, P. and Bagherkazemi, M. (2010). The Relationship between Iranian EFL Teachers’ Critical Thinking Ability and their Professional Success. English Language Teaching, 3 (2): 135-145.

“Critical Thinking”, www.oxforddictionaries.com/us/definition/american_english/critical-thinking

Davidson, B. W. and Dunham, R. A. (1997). Assessing EFL Student Progress in Critical Thinking with the Ennis-Weir Critical Thinking Essay Test. JALT Journal, 19 (1): 43-57.

Fahim, M., Barjesteh, H. and Vaseghi, R. (2012). Effects of Critical Thinking Strategy Training on Male/Female EFL Learners’ Reading Comprehension. English Language Teaching, 5 (1): 141-145.

Fahim, M. and Hashtroodi, P. (2012). The Effect of Critical Thinking on Developing Argumentative Essays by Iranian EFL University Students. Journal of Language Teaching and Research, 3 (4): 632-638.

Fahim, M. and Pezeshki, M. (2012). Manipulating Critical Thinking Skills in Test Taking. International Journal of Education, 4 (1): 153-160.

Fahim, M. and Nazari, O. (2012). Practicing Action Research for Enhancing Critical Thinking. Journal of Science, 2 (1): 84-89.

Fahim, M. and Shakouri Masouleh, N. (2012). Critical Thinking in Higher Education: A Pedagogical Look. Theory and Practice in Language Studies, 2 (7): 1370-1375.

Ghaemi, H. and Taherian, R. (2011). The Role of Critical Thinking in EFL Teachers’ Teaching Success. The Modern Journal of Applied Linguistics, 3 (1): 8-22.

Haskvitz A. (2007). Eleven Traits of a Good Teacher. Retrieved June 28, 2013 from http://carfamily.wordpress.com/2007/02/18/11-traits-of-a-good-teacher/

Hosseini Fatemi, A.(2013). The Effects of Teaching Critical Thinking into EFL Curriculum through Fictiona-Narrative-based Technique and Awareness of Consequences Technique. Paper presented at the international conference on “ICT for Language Learning”, Florence, Italy, November, 2013.

Khatib, M., Marefat, F. and Ahmadi, M. (2012). Enhancing Critical Thinking Abilities in EFL Classrooms through Written and Audiotaped Dialogue Journals. Humanities and Social Sciences Journal, 7 (1): 33-45.

Malmir, A. and Shoorcheh, S. (2012). An Investigation of the Impact of Teaching Critical Thinking on the Iranian EFL Learners’ Speaking Skill. Journal of Language Teaching and Research, 3 (4): 608-617.

Pishghadam, R. (2008). Afzayesh-e Tafakor-e Enteghadi az tarighe Mobahese-ye Adabi dar Kelasha-ye Zban-e Englisi, Majale-ye Daneshkade-ye Adabiat va Olum-e Ensani-e Mashhad, 159: 153-170

Schafersman, S. D. (1991). An Introduction to Critical Thinking, Retrieved on 2013, 11, 20 from: facultycenter.ischool.syr.edu/files/2012/02/Critical-Thinking.pdf

Tabataba’i and Parsafar (2012). The Effect of Self-Directed Learning on Critical Thinking of Iranian EFL Learners. Journal of Educational and Social Research, 2 (2): 55-64.

Watson, G.B, Glaser, E. M. (2002). Watson-Glaser critical thinking appraisal. UK. The Psychological Corporation, London.

Ur, P. (1996). A Course in Language Teaching. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Appendix

A. Please mention three reasons for your agreement/disagreement with such an approach, in general:
1.
2.
3.

B. If you think there exist other topics which can increase the critical thinking level of the learners, please write three of them:
1.
2.
3.

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