Enhancing Critical Thinking in English Language Teaching (ELT) Programs: A Comparative Study of Higher Education in Pakistan and Saudi Arabia
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Critical thinking is often considered essential for improving the quality of higher education and fostering student success, especially within the context of English Language Teaching (ELT). This qualitative and reflective study aims to evaluate the integration of critical thinking skills within ELT programs by examining program specifications and the reflections of faculty members and students from Pakistan and Saudi Arabia. The research specifically investigates how course structures and curriculum design promote critical thinking in ELT, while also exploring faculty perceptions of its role in enhancing students' linguistic abilities and academic performance. By involving twenty PhD and master's students alongside fourteen faculty members, seven from each country, this study analyses the alignment between ELT program schemes and critical thinking development. Results indicate that while critical thinking is present in ELT programs, there is a lack of emphasis on creativity and independent learning. Course specifications tend to be rigid, limiting flexibility. Recommendations include adopting more flexible designs, incorporating creativity, and updating resources to better develop students' critical thinking skills for future success in English language proficiency.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.004 | 0.006 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.003 | 0.002 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.002 | 0.001 |
| Open science | 0.001 | 0.002 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.002 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".