Teaching Critical Thinking in Moroccan Higher Education: Challenges and Opportunities

Abstract

To respond to the challenges of the 21 st century, most universities had to make radical modifications in their systems. In Morocco, the recent modifications made at the level of modules brought some promises as teachers were also involved in decision-making. However, Moroccan students' voices went largely ignored during this process. Therefore, the main aim of this study was to understand students' opinions about one of the most important courses they studied after the last reform: "Critical Thinking". Three research questions were used: What are university students' perceptions and attitudes toward the critical thinking course in Morocco? To what extent are Moroccan students satisfied with the course contents and the teacher's pedagogy? What are the views of Moroccan university students about the critical thinking exam they took at the end of the semester? Semi-structured interviews were used to collect the data from 10 respondents. Qualitative content analysis was used through coding and classifying emerging patterns and themes. The results showed that although the students were generally satisfied with the course contents, they bitterly complained about different issues such as the theory-practice gap. The results, also, revealed that implementing any change in higher education without taking into consideration students' needs and interests might be detrimental to the teaching-learning operation. Ultimately, this study offers university teachers of critical thinking a toolkit of skills and competencies for effective teaching.

Assessing Students’ Critical Thinking Skills in the Humanities and Sciences Colleges of a Middle Eastern University

“…Universities throughout much of the Middle East and North Africa International Journal of Instruction, January 2020 • Vol.13, No.1 (MENA) region have traditionally been characterised as more concerned with learner memorisation and content reproduction than with developing critical thinking skills and intellectual curiosity (Lagendijk, 2013). The lack of concern with learners' critical thinking skills has been detailed across educational settings in the region (Al-Dumairi & Al-Jabari, 2015;Allamnakhrah, 2013), and has been attributed to limited teacher training and pedagogical range (Chouari, 2016), and an overemphasis on content at the expense of analysis (Alnabhan, Alhamdan, & Darwish, 2014).…”

Teaching and Assessing 21st Century Critical Thinking Skills in Morocco: A Case Study

“…Second, the teacher uses the lecture as the main strategy of teaching. As a result, teaching is most of the time done in a frontal way with the teacher acting either as a "controller" or "knowledge-provider" (Chouari, 2016). The instructor explains that the lecture strategy is used due to two major factors: (1) the large class-size, as the number of students sometimes exceeds 180 in each group, and (2) the difficulty of the course as Moroccan students did not have the opportunity to study critical thinking before coming to the university.…”

“…Second, the teacher has a long experience in teaching Moroccan university students and has been teaching critical thinking for two years. Third, in a study (Chouari, 2016) conducted during the academic year 2014-2015 on students' perceptions on learning critical thinking, there was a general consensus among the interviewees that the course had been successful thanks to their teacher's competence.…”

Perceived Barriers to Critical Thinking Development: The Student’s View

“…There is a considerable gap between students' level of critical thinking skills and the expected outcome of a graduate student. According to Chouari (2016), there is a wide disparity between what students learn at the university and its impact on their daily life. Several constraints come together to obstruct the implementation of critical thinking education.…”