A Framework of Fostering Critical Thinking in a Multicultural, Inclusive Confucian Heritage Classroom

Abstract

Critical thinking is an important 21 st century skillset often embraced by educators today as a backbone of creative problem-solving competency. The presence of social interaction and dialogue becomes crucial in fostering critical thinking and its development. A claim is that a lack of dialectic interaction among Confucius Heritage Cultures (CHC) classrooms poses teaching and learning challenges for critical thinking development. Our action research study was conducted in two cycles aimed to find out ways to facilitate classroom activities that promoted dialectic interaction with peers and instructors. The study cycles hoped to transform CHC learners who appeared to be passive -unwilling to ask questions and often hesitant to speak up, resulting in a teacher-centered environment -to active learners and critical making participants in creative designing environments. Our paper reports experiences emerging from the second cycle of our action research project during an on-going teaching and action research phase of inquiry. A conceptual framework of culturally appropriate critical thinking pedagogy for an Art & Design Visual Communication classroom is situated in a multicultural, inclusive and Confucian Heritage Culture environment. A practical inquiry methodology was adopted to demonstrate the various approaches of social constructivism in fusion with Confucianism to encourage interaction for critical thinking within a multicultural, inclusive, CHC classroom.