Critical thinking in Sino-Foreign Higher Education contexts: implications for pedagogy and assessment

There is a general consensus that critical thinking is essential in education and specifically in higher education (Kincheloe, 2000); Tsui, 2002; Stedman & Adams, 2012; Huber & Kuncel, 2016). However, as noted by Huber & Kuncel (2016: 432), there is a widespread perception that higher education somehow implicitly breeds critical thinkers even without explicit instruction. In many respects, discussions on critical thinking in higher education show that it is often unclear to what extent students and lecturers share aligned or even compatible understandings of what critical thinking is and its importance. And while studies tend to explore general awareness of critical thinking of teaching staff and faculty as well as related pedagogy (Stedman & Adams, 2012), critical thinking in assessment has received far less attention (Ennis, 1993; Kane & Otto, 2018). In addition, there is a paucity of study on Sino-Foreign Higher Education institutions and what critical thinking means in these contexts. This study thus aims to address these gaps and reports the results of a small qualitative study of perceptions and understandings of critical thinking of students, EAP instructors and academic subject lecturers in a Sino-Foreign Higher Education institution. The findings of semi-structured interviews indicate concrete actions educators can adopt in both their teaching and assessment practices in order to effectively raise student awareness of critical thinking and to enhance practical competencies therein for students.


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