CONVENIO COLECTIVO DE TRABAJO Nº 231/94

Almanara University is one of the new private universities in Saudi Arabia. It was established in the early 2000s. Like most Saudi universities, it offers various degrees in humanities and sciences. The competition among private Saudi institutions has been increasing, and this has resulted in the establishment of more new private institutions. Like other universities in the country, this university is supervised and controlled by the Council of Higher Education, as explained above. Almanara University states its educational aim as being to provide learners with a high-level education that meets international standards and at the same time maintains the Islamic identities of those learners. The aims and objectives of various undergraduate programmes highlight the notion of critical thinking (i.e., promoting learners’ cognitive skills: for instance, problem solving, analysis, synthesis and evaluation, and creativity). Despite the emphasis of critical thinking by this university, I could not locate any guidance for incorporating this concept into its programmes, a point that will be discussed later in this section.

One of the main units at this university is the English language institute. It provides high school graduates with the English courses they need in order to pursue their academic studies in English successfully. The institute provides various levels of English courses, both GE and EAP, from beginner to intermediate. As with other language programmes, the language institute highlights the focus on promoting learners’ cognitive skills as one of the institute’s objectives. For this purpose, the institute offers Argumentative Writing and Critical Reading for intermediate and advanced level learners who are in their last semester of this compulsory year. It is claimed that these courses will bring learners’ literacy skills to a higher level before they start their academic degrees. My interest lay first in investigating how critical thinking pedagogy is perceived in this language institute and then in deciding what could be added to the design of my intervention to develop the application of the concept of critical thinking to language teaching and learning further.

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I chose to focus on learners in their last semester of the English language programme. One reason for this was that these students had been introduced to critical thinking through two main courses: Argumentative Writing and Critical Reading; another reason for choosing them was their ability to communicate in English or in classroom discussion. Argumentative Writing involves teaching students how to write longer essays, and how to compare and contrast essays and research reports. In the Critical Reading course, students look at applying thinking skills (i.e., analysis, synthesis and evaluation) to a text they read, and they also compare and contrast types of text and read book reviews. In the listening and speaking course, learners are expected to master presentation skills and engage in discussions.

I consulted the university website to find out more about how this institute implements critical thinking, but I could not locate any information. Therefore, I moved on to the next step, which was to ask the university dean for permission to conduct a pilot study that would enable me to draw a portrait of the institute and its views on the application of the concept of critical thinking in an EFL classroom, and then build the final study design on the available information.

Pilot study

I conducted the pilot study in the second semester of 2010 to explore the context and decide on what actions to take in the research design. The university dean kindly expressed her willingness to support the study. She encouraged the staff to provide me with any help I needed and to facilitate the conducting of this study. After obtaining permission from the dean for the pilot study, I started to seek the consent of the staff at the language institute. The first person I met at the institute was the director. She held a PhD in linguistics. The director was also happy to help. She introduced me to the teaching staff during a tea break. There were 17 language teachers who had taught post-secondary students at the institute and also undergraduates who needed additional courses to improve their English.

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I requested from the director any written information, documents or guidelines that described the understanding and application of critical thinking. She said that critical thinking was embedded in the institute’s methodology and that they did not have clear established guidance on its implementation. I visited the research centre at Almanara University to find out whether there was any general guidance on implementing critical thinking in teaching and learning, but was unable to locate any such information. It seemed that critical thinking had been left open to staff interpretation. It is a challenging task for universities to identify the scope and methods of applying critical thinking, since NCAAA has overlooked this issue. We should bear in mind that most students who join HE institutes are graduates of schools that have been following traditional teaching methodologies, which rely heavily on memorisation (Al-Seghayer, 2013). Therefore, introducing critical thinking in HE institutes requires high quality training for both staff and students.

I spent one month at the institute (May 2010). The director kindly allowed me to share her office (there being no room for me in the staff room), so I could get a closer view of how things worked at the institute. The director’s office was a busy place, always crowded with staff and students who had queries about courses, exams and other issues or problems. I had the opportunity to talk to students at different levels and to some of the staff. I also had opportunities to examine the plans and aims of the various courses. With regard to the institute’s application of critical thinking, the director explained that critical thinking is infused into reading and writing courses for final semester students. When asked about how they applied this pedagogy, the director mentioned that they followed reading and writing textbooks that are aimed at developing the cognitive objectives stated above. She added that the institute did not provide teachers with any kind of guidance on applying critical thinking pedagogy, nor did it organise continuous training workshops on critical thinking for teachers.

In 2009, the university hosted a training workshop on introducing critical thinking in HE, and this workshop was open to all members of staff from all faculties, including

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staff and language teachers from the language institute. However, it appeared from my observations that the staff at the language institute were not collaborating to develop their own critical thinking pedagogy, nor to build a critical thinking culture; they did not have meetings/blogs where they discussed how to apply critical thinking in the institute, but worked in isolation from one another. The focus on critical thinking seemed to be confined to writing and reading courses, based on textbooks, with implementation left to be decided according to the individual teachers’ views, experience and interpretations. Some of the reading and writing teachers told me that they followed the activities in the textbook to achieve the cognitive skills objectives. When they were asked about their understanding of critical thinking, their answers did not go beyond the objectives of the courses (i.e., using analysis skills for comparing and contrasting language items and using argumentative skills in writing). When I asked them how they implemented this pedagogy in their classrooms, they just described the activities in the textbooks. With regard to the listening and speaking course, the objectives were to develop learners’ ability to communicate in discussions and to promote presentation skills. The fact that critical thinking was linked solely to reading and writing courses suggested that the institute focused more on literacy than on oral skills, though they were taught over an equal number of hours (four hours per week). It also implied that the staff of the institute believe that critical thinking is skill-specific (that is, specific to reading and writing skills).

I talked to some students who were in their last semester at this institute about their concerns and needs. Most of the students agreed that they had limited opportunities for classroom discussions, even in their listening and speaking course. They said that discussion sessions should be inserted into the timetable. I had a look at the courses these students were taking, and they were Listening and Speaking, Vocabulary, Argumentative Writing and Critical Reading. In addition, there were a few preparatory courses related to their chosen undergraduate subjects. On undergraduate degree courses students are expected to demonstrate their communicative competence in discussions with lecturers in English. Also, students are required to use their critical thinking skills: more specifically, analysis, synthesis and evaluation,

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for meaningful learning. These points highlight the need for critical thinking in EFL preparatory programmes.

At the end of the pilot study, university staff and language institute staff were invited to attend my presentation on critical thinking to share our views on this concept. There were about 15 attendees. One member of staff who was a professor in linguistics stated that the term critical thinking is broad and there are many definitions, so that according to her the concept and its aims are confusing, and this might lead to difficulty in its application.

I was interested in designing an intervention that could meet the learners’ need for discussion sessions and that at the same time could facilitate the introduction and achievement of the university’s aims concerning the development of learners’ critical thinking skills. The specific aim of my project was to infuse critical thinking into the speaking classroom in order to enhance the quality of the students’ talk and build positive attitudes towards this pedagogy among learners and teachers.

3.4 Summary

In this chapter, I set out the scene of this study. I identified the status of critical thinking in Islam which is the base of educational aims in Saudi. Then, I provided information on the higher education field in Saudi and how the concept of critical thinking fits in educational goals. Finally, I described the site where the study was conducted.

In the following chapter the methodology used in conducting this research is

discussed. The development of the research design based on the pilot study, and the

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