An adage in education states that just because we teach something does not mean students learn it. As teachers, we must determine why they do not learn the material. In post-Soviet Russia and Kazakhstan, where I taught for four years, the answer to that question was complicated.

Educational lending (a.k.a. transfer) is the process by which ideas, policies, practices, or educational models from one educational system are adopted, adapted, or borrowed by another. Current research has provided few insights about teaching critical thinking abroad.

We must consider what students bring to the task in terms of their sociocultural and sociocognitive backgrounds. Are lenders’ teaching methods consonant with their pupils’ pedagogical expectations and cognitive readiness? Are students prepared to receive that information the way we teach it?

Problems may arise when students’ sociocultural, sociocognitive, and educational backgrounds differ widely from those of the instructor (Burkhalter and Shegebayev 2011). For instance, students had difficulty evaluating others’ arguments and supporting their own opinions. Teacher trainees resisted using new skills to teach their own English learners. Why was this?

Traits necessary for critical thinking include intellectual autonomy and skepticism. These goals are predicated on the assumption that the person has the proper disposition and commitment to achieve them.

To teach content that includes tasks involving analysis, evaluation, and synthesis/creation (Bloom 1956), learners must bring a mindset that is reflective, challenges authority, questions beliefs, and operates independently. Learners must suspend judgment until they have analyzed and weighed enough evidence to come to a well-reasoned conclusion, i.e., tolerate ambiguity. Absent that disposition, they will struggle with concepts that challenge their status-quo thinking.

According to Lev Vygotsky (1978, 1986), learning results from the external, socially mediated activity that becomes internalized. Examining the educational history of Kazakhstan and Russia helps explain these students’ resistance to, expectations about, and lack of cognitive readiness for concepts such as critical thinking because of traits owing to their authoritarian past (Jost et al. 2003a).

Through interviews and questionnaires, I learned that the Soviet-style educational system used fear-inducing techniques of humiliation and shame to keep students and teachers under control.

Students never questioned instructors because that would have implied the teachers had not provided sufficient information. Lecturing was the primary method of knowledge transmission. The role of the student was to memorize and regurgitate—or they were publicly humiliated and excoriated.

Cognitive psychologists Arne Öhman and Susan Mineka (2001) point out that information learned through fear necessarily restricts future learning and has a biological basis. Located in the amygdala, this dedicated neural circuitry is “relatively impenetrable to cognitive control” (Öhman and Mineka 2001, 483). These fear tactics are associated with mental rigidity, closed-mindedness, and resistance to change “to reduce and manage fear and uncertainty” (Jost et al. 2003a, p. 340).

Here are the six traits John T. Jost and colleagues (2003a) say comprise this mental rigidity and closed-mindedness: increased dogmatism and intolerance of ambiguity, decreased cognitive complexity, decreased openness to experience, uncertainty avoidance, need for order and structure, and need for cognitive closure.

How can we get students to complete tasks that teach them how to not only critically think but also adopt a view that embraces ambiguity and teaches them to approach learning with a critical thinking mindset? Here are three tacks:

1) Reflect on learning

Have students write about their learning experiences, analyze their thoughts, and make connections to deepen their understanding. They should write these in private without broadcasting their lack of understanding or being graded. This assignment also promotes intellectual honesty and metacognition by becoming aware of their thought processes and learning strategies. Often, students resisted adopting the communicative approach to teaching (Brown 2014). Their assignment: teach a grammar point in their English classes using their grammar translation method, then teach that same lesson using interaction and communicative learning, then evaluate experiences. They can also write a dialog between two people, each one stating the positives and negatives of both methods.

2) Decenter beyond one’s own view

One study involved criminal justice majors at The Citadel, a South Carolina military college, who started off by completing a scale that assessed their level of authoritarianism (Hurley and Hurley 2013). All the students placed above the midpoint.

The authors created an exercise to challenge the authoritarian traits that were inhibiting the development of critical thinking skills: design a new prison to relieve overcrowding with an eye toward rehabilitation, a goal they had previously rejected. Before the exercise, 95 percent said “prison should serve as a deterrent and incapacitation function” (Hurley and Hurley 2013, 251).

Afterward, over half reported their attitudes toward prisons had changed, and a third expressed concern about the way prisons are designed today—all accomplished without direct instruction, monitoring, or evaluation. The authors presented no data on how many opinions were changed, but students’ course evaluations reported very positive views of the exercise and their changed opinions of using prisons as a means for punishment. However, Martha Henderson Hurley and David Hurley (2013) noted that “one should not conclude from this data that the changes all reflected a greater desire for rehabilitation as a goal for prison” (p. 253).

3) Switch focus away from punishment to reward

The  Language Center at the Kazakhstani university created goals that did not ask teachers to supplant existing behaviors but rather rewarded them for adding new ones. For instance, the director awarded points on teachers’ performance reviews for, say, critiquing journal articles and creating materials beyond the textbook. This motivated them to practice critical thinking, as well as their own academic writing. This refocusing turned a system of punishment and confrontation into one of incentives and motivation (Burkhalter 2013).

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Authoritarianism-linked behaviors can be fostered via any system requiring obedience to hierarchy and structure (Jost et al. 2003b). As educational lenders, we must be prepared to meet those students where they are if they are to thrive in our classrooms. If we are to be successful, we must 1) recognize the existence of the authoritarian dynamic; 2) engage students through instructional design to sidestep rigid thinking that inhibits critical thinking; and 3) foster critical thinking skills with assignments highlighting intellectual growth.

 

References

Bloom, B. 1956. Taxonomy of Educational Objectives, Handbook 1: Cognitive Domain (2nd ed.). Boston, MA: Allyn and Bacon.

Brown, H.D. 2014. Principles of Language Learning and Teaching (6th ed.). Hoboken, NJ: Pearson Education ESL.

Burkhalter, N. 2013. Overcoming resistance in post-Soviet teacher trainees in Kazakhstan. Asian EFL Journal 15(2): 248–279.

Burkhalter, N., and M. Shegebayev. 2011. The critical thinking movement in Kazakhstan: A progress report. Research in Comparative and International Education 5(4). Online at http://www.wwwords.co.uk/rcie/content/pdfs/5/issue5_4.asp.

Hurley, M.H, and D. Hurley. 2013. Enhancing critical thinking skills among authoritarian students. International Journal of Teaching and Learning in Higher Education 25(2): 248–261. Online at https://www.isetl.org/ijtlhe/pdf/IJTLHE1555.pdf.

Jost, J., J. Glaser, A. Kruglanski, and F. Sulloway. 2003a. Political conservatism as motivated social cognition. Psychological Bulletin 129(3): 339–375. Online at https://gspp.berkeley.edu/assets/uploads/research/pdf/jost.glaser.political-conservatism-as-motivated-social-cog.pdf.

———. 2003b. Exceptions that prove the rule using a theory of motivated social cognition to account for ideological incongruities and political anomalies: Reply to Greenberg and Jonas. Psychological Bulletin 129(3): 383–393. Online at https://psycnet.apa.org/doi/10.1037/0033-2909.129.3.383.

Öhman, A., and S. Mineka. 2001. Fears, phobias, and preparedness: Toward an evolved module of fear and fear learning. Psychological Review 108(3): 483–522. Online at https://doi.org/10.1037/0033-295X.108.3.483.

Vygotsky, L. 1978. Mind in Society. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Online at https://doi.org/10.2307/j.ctvjf9vz4.

Vygotsky, L.S. 1986. Thought and Language. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Online at https://img3.reoveme.com/m/bac6393f496a1d08.pdf.