Development of Critical Thinking Through Language Pedagogy

Abstract

The study was conceptualized and planned after going through many articles, both national and international, about the need and state of critical thinking across the globe. This quantitative research predominately operates under the positivist paradigm. The hypotheses as well as research questions indicated which quantitative research approaches would be necessary. It used Quasi- experimental pretest-posttest control group design. As the study aimed at developing critical thinking at elementary level, one grade of elementary level was the target population. All 8th grade male students of Army Public Schools across the country were taken as population of the study. The sampling was done in two phases. The school for conducting experiment was selected in first phase. In the second phase, control and experimental groups were randomly selected from the intact sections of the selected school. The instrument used for pre-test and post-test was “The International Critical Thinking Reading and Writing Test” designed by Paul and Elder. This test was comprehensive, language based and aligned with their critical thinking Model. The researcher taught language and literature to both control group and experimental group for 12 weeks. The results of the study showed that the elementary level students were at a very low level of critical thinking. Moreover a significant change in critical thinking of the students was recorded after intervention. Further analysis revealed that there was some development in every element of critical thinking and application of intellectual standards. Element of purpose and information developed relatively more, while element of assumptions was the least developed element. In analysis of standards depth, breadth and precision were proved difficult to be applied. The study showed that the critical thinking of elementary school students could be improved using language pedagogy infused with critical thinking.