Criticality and metacognition in citizenship education: ‘Hermeneutics of suspicion’ in Chinese elite universities graduates’ worldview-transforming processes

While most literature on critical thinking emphasizes its cognitive dimension, this study explores criticality as a metacognitive experience in cultivating critical citizenship. Drawing on Paul Ricœur’s (1965/1970) hermeneutics of suspicion, it examines how criticality influences citizenship by encouraging individuals to evolve their interpretations of official discourses. Using Chinese citizenship education as a case study, narrative interviews with 12 purposively selected graduates from elite Chinese universities investigate changes in their interpretive stances over time. Thematic analysis identifies a four-stage, semi-iterative model of worldview transformation: participants initially accepted curricular content uncritically but subsequently encountered moments of suspicion that triggered metacognitive reflection and prompted reconstruction of their worldviews. Academic training contributed variably to this process. Confronted with everyday suspicions in social interactions and tensions between state narratives and personal interpretations, participants transformed themselves into critical beings through hermeneutic circle to reconcile these discourse gaps. Thus, the study advances understanding of how criticality can be unexpectedly activated, reflexively exercised, and intellectually directed to foster critical, reflexive, and deliberative citizenship. It also highlights the need for further research on the unintended civic effects of cultivating critical thinking, particularly its role in demystifying ideology, promoting epistemic autonomy, and constructing alternative worldviews.