A critical thinking thematic framework and observation tool for improved theory and developing secondary teachers’ instructional practice: Proof of concept

Theoretical understandings of critical thinking, including how it is positioned and developed across educational contexts, remains contentious. While critical thinking features across school curricula internationally with increasing prominence as an educational priority for young people, efforts to explore and develop secondary teachers’ practices of critical thinking reveal diverse theoretical influences and instructional approaches, without reaching a consensus model of best practice. To address this, a new critical thinking thematic framework was developed towards reconciling theoretical tensions within the question of: what is critical thinking?, so that understandings of what it might look like as part of teacher instructional practice can be developed. Together with this thematic framework, a critical thinking observation tool and thematic coding guide were constructed to code and analyse teacher interview and classroom observations in order to guide a year-long investigation of secondary teachers’ beliefs and practices of critical thinking.

Applied across multiple studies within a design-based research project, this critical thinking thematic framework enabled the effective exploration and dissemination of secondary teachers’ perceptions and instructional practices of critical thinking across English, Social Science and Science subject contexts. Engaged as a community of practice, and supported with contextualised evidence, 28 participant teachers across five New Zealand secondary schools were able to reflect their beliefs and practices for future planning. Significant shifts in the frequency and conceptual nature of teachers’ beliefs and practices of critical thinking in response to professional development across repeated measures suggest that the Critical Thinking Thematic Framework and Observation Tool can be employed to produce consistent and reliable coding of beliefs and practices with effective researcher training.