scholarly journals Strategies for Demystifying the Concept of Critical Thinking for International Students

Author(s):  
Lihong Wang

Student mobility or study abroad seems to have become a "new normal" in this ever increasingly connected world and highlights the cultural issues of teaching and learning in the educational "contact zones." The presence of large population of international students poses teaching and learning challenges to the host universities. This presentation is based on an ethnographic longitudinal study of a group of Confucian heritage culture (CHC) learners' perceptions of the required practice of critical thinking during their overseas study in an Western (Anglophone) learning culture. In view of the ambivalent and inconsistent findings on international—especially Asian students'—receptiveness of critical learning in Western educational institutions, this study is intended to demystify "critical thinking" by depicting a learning trajectory of how these students were grappling with this learning requirement in the new learning culture. This presentation focuses on an intercultural educational and additive approach and their related strategies that can be adopted by the faculty of western host universities in order to develop international students' understanding and practice of critical thinking by focusing on what the student does instead of what the student is or which culture they are from.

2021 ◽  
Vol ahead-of-print (ahead-of-print) ◽  
Author(s):  
Sandra Seno-Alday ◽  
Amanda Budde-Sung

Purpose This paper aims to explore the impact of differences in educational traditions on conventions of teaching and learning, and on the measurement of learning outcomes. These are critical issues within the context of business schools that are steeped in one dominant tradition but have a large population of international students previously educated in other traditions. The paper argues that international students face the challenge of satisfactorily demonstrating learning according to foreign conventions that are different from what they would have been accustomed to within the framework of their home educational tradition. Design/methodology/approach This study draws on a bilingual literature review to capture differences in educational traditions between Australia and China. It then uses logistic regression to analyze the performance of 800 domestic and international Chinese students across a range of different assessment formats at a large Australian business school. Findings The study finds statistically significant differences in the performance of these two student groups on different assessment types. It concludes that the conventions on approaches to the assessment of learning shaped by a specific educational tradition can hamper the effective demonstration of learning among students from other educational traditions. Originality/value The paper focuses on issues related to the assessment of learning in multicultural higher education contexts, which has received less attention in the literature compared to issues on teaching approaches in multicultural contexts. The paper also highlights important implications on the validity of the measurement of learning outcomes and on the subsequent impact on graduate recruitment.


2018 ◽  
Vol 3 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Mariam MERKVILADZE

Throughout the years educators, educational experts, teachers and tutors have been in the constant search of effective ways of teaching and assessing writing. The views about assessment of writing have encountered changes over the years. Therefore, feedback has become one of the fundamental aspects of teaching and learning writing. Peer feedback is one of the special ways to share the knowledge about writing and at the same time to contribute to creating the learner-oriented classroom environment within which students become active participants of their own path of learning writing. The primary objective of the present study is to investigate Georgian higher educational institutions’ (HEIs’) undergraduate EFL students’ perception of peer feedback and its role in the process of developing their writing skills. The findings of the present study show that peer feedback is appealing for the learners, since they believe it develops their critical-thinking and self-reviewing skills and gives them the sense of active participation. However, the present research has also revealed that the elements of friendship-related bias need special attention and should be the subject of further research in that field. 


2016 ◽  
pp. 24-26 ◽  
Author(s):  
Thu T Do ◽  
Duy N. Pham

Southeast Asia has experienced a remarkable development of student mobility: A significantly increasing number of Southeast Asian students study abroad in western developed countries, and a gradually increasing number of international students from Southeast Asia, South Korea, China, India, and some western countries study in Southeast Asia. However, these countries also encounter several challenges to advancing these programs.


2011 ◽  
Vol 4 (3) ◽  
pp. 4-18 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jonathan Gorry

A wide variety of British universities are expanding efforts to attract international students. This article argues that higher education's implicit claim to all-inclusive 'universality' may hereby be challenged by subsequent issues of cultural particularity. Here I set to conceptualise possible differences in the learning culture of Asian international students through a Confucian-Socratic framework. The Socratic method, our archetypal Occidental model, is traditionally seen as an experiential learner-centred pedagogy that values creativity and intellectual independence. But the Confucian approach, the archetypal Oriental exemplar, is normally presented as a didactic teaching-centred pedagogy with greater emphasis on strategic, directed thinking. I conclude that refl ection in these ways may lead to a culturally sensitive form of education and also help identify the epistemological and ontological dimensions that enhance a more flexible approach to teaching and learning.


2016 ◽  
Vol 1 (1) ◽  
pp. 201
Author(s):  
Elida Kurti

This paper aims to reflect an effort to identify the problems associated with the educational learning process, as well as its function to express some inherent considerations to the most effective forms of the classroom management. Mentioned in this discussion are ways of management for various categories of students, not only from an intellectual level, but also by their behavior. Also, in the elaboration of this theme I was considering that in addition to other development directions of the country, an important place is occupied by the education of the younger generation in our school environments and especially in adopting the methods of teaching and learning management with a view to enable this generation to be competitive in the European labor market. This, of course, can be achieved by giving this generation the best values of behavior, cultural level, professional level and ethics one of an European family which we belong to, not just geographically. On such foundations, we have tried to develop this study, always improving the reality of the prolonged transition in the field of children’s education. Likewise, we have considered the factors that have left their mark on the structure, cultural level and general education level of children, such as high demographic turnover associated with migration from rural and urban areas, in the capacity of our educational institutions to cope with new situations etc. In the conclusions of this study is shown that there is required a substantial reform even in the pro-university educational system to ensure a significant improvement in the behavior of children, relations between them and the sound quality of their preparation. Used literature for this purpose has not been lacking, due to the fact that such problems are usually treated by different scholars. Likewise, we found it appropriate to use the ideas and issues discussed by the foreign literature that deals directly with classroom management problems. All the following treatise is intended to reflect the way of an effective classroom management.


2016 ◽  
Vol 4 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Carlos Manosalvas Vaca ◽  
Luis Manosalvas Vaca ◽  
Ruth Barba

La presente investigación, analiza los conceptos más importantes del pensamiento Crítico, así como su importancia y utilidad en los procesos de formación profesional a nivel de Posgrado. Se hace un análisis detallado de los conceptos más ampliamente aceptado y de los factores inmersos en el desarrollo y aplicación de este tipo de pensamiento. Finalmente se propone un modelo que engloba los conceptos y factores analizados y como se interrelacionan entre ellos; el objetivo final es brindar a los docentes y directivos de Instituciones de Educación Superior, una herramienta que posibilite la inclusión de este tipo de pensamiento en sus procesos enseñanza-aprendizaje con el fin último de mejorar la calidad de los procesos de formación. Palabras Clave: Pensamiento Crítico, Educación Superior, Educación ABSTRACT This research analyzes the most important concepts of critical thinking as well as their importance and usefulness for the educational processes at graduate level. A detailed analysis of the most widely accepted concepts and factors involved in the development and application of this kind of thinking has been made. Finally, a model that includes the concepts and analyzed factors and their interrelations is proposed; the ultimate goal is to provide teachers and directors of Institutions in Higher Education, a tool that enables the inclusion of this type of thinking in their teaching and learning processes with the ultimate intention of improving the quality of the training processes. Keywords: Critical thinking, Higher Education, Education Recibido: mayo de 2016Aprobado: septiembre de 2016


2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Qatrin Nada Sanya Rossevin

Curriculum administration is the whole process of planned and intentional and deliberate activities as well as ongoing guidance to the teaching and learning situation in order to help the achievement of educational goals effectively and efficiently.In this connection, at any school level the principal task of the school is to ensure that there are good teaching programs for students. Because basically the management or management of education focuses on all its efforts on teaching and learning practices (PBM). This seems clear that in essence all efforts and activities carried out in schools or educational institutions are always directed at the success of PBM.


2021 ◽  
pp. 1-5
Author(s):  
Andrew M. Wender ◽  
Valerie J. D’Erman

ABSTRACT Teaching and learning in higher education is occurring, unavoidably, within the broader civic context of today’s extraordinarily polarizing political times. We seek to help students situate themselves with respect to and, above all, thoughtfully assess others’ as well as their own perspectives on issues of profound contention, without contributing to exacerbated polarization ourselves. Specifically, we offer students in our first-year exploratory political science course a vital tool—critical rigor—for navigating but not being inundated by the storm. This article discusses our experiences in teaching the course titled, “The Worlds of Politics,” as we attempt to help students deeply engage in cognitive processes of critical thinking and analysis, without undue infringement from their own—and least of all our own—personal political biases. Our focal learning objective is the cultivation of critical-thinking skills that promote students’ drawing of distinctions between advocacy and analysis, as well as their discerning civic engagement.


Mathematics ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 9 (5) ◽  
pp. 557
Author(s):  
Morten Elkjær ◽  
Uffe Thomas Jankvist

Despite almost half a century of research into students’ difficulties with solving linear equations, these difficulties persist in everyday mathematics classes around the world. Furthermore, the difficulties reported decades ago are the same ones that persist today. With the immense number of dynamic online environments for mathematics teaching and learning that are emerging today, we are presented with a perhaps unique opportunity to do something about this. This study sets out to apply the research on lower secondary school students’ difficulties with equation solving, in order to eventually inform students’ personalised learning through a specific task design in a particular dynamic online environment (matematikfessor.dk). In doing so, task design theory is applied, particularly variation theory. The final design we present consists of eleven general equation types—ten types of arithmetical equations and one type of algebraic equation—and a broad range of variations of these, embedded in a potential learning-trajectory-tree structure. Besides establishing this tree structure, the main theoretical contribution of the study and the task design we present is the detailed treatment of the category of arithmetical equations, which also involves a new distinction between simplified and non-simplified arithmetical equations.


Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document