An Investigation into the English Instructors’ Awareness and Practices of Critical Thinking

Hayriye ULAŞ TARAF, Turkey, ID CLEaR2016-333;     The purpose of this exploratory study was to examine instructors’ awareness and perceptions of critical thinking within the field of ELT and their experiences of teaching English in relation to critical thinking. Thus, the study employed a mixed-methods approach to investigating teacher perceptions and experiences with the participation of 15 instructors working at School of Foreign Languages at two different universities in Konya, Turkey. The data were gathered through a questionnaire which all the participants completed, and semi-structured interviews with four teachers. The findings reveal teachers’ optimism for integrating critical thinking into the ELT curriculum, and show that they adopt critical thinking pedagogies and their perceptions of critical thinking influence their practises in the classroom. It has also been found out that although teachers strongly believe that critical thinking should be incorporated into teaching a foreign language, they find it demanding and meet several barriers to teaching critical thinking, mostly set by their learners. 

Keywords: Critical thinking; teacher perceptions; critical language teaching