Abstract:

Comparative literature is a critical branch of educational science that deals with literature of several languages at the same time and opens up a discussion in the field of critical pedagogy. When the strong tie between critical pedagogy and comparative literature was unpacked, it is inevitable for one to miss the urgent necessity of joining these two philosophical perspectives in instructions. Whatever the subject matter is, what counts is the methodology. Critical pedagogy is an inevitable segment of education. Critical pedagogy is on the other hand related to the progressive teaching philosophy that leads and enhances students to examine power of language and pattern of none-equality within the status quo. By questioning power, students are able to take control of their own learning and critically evaluate others’ opinions they have been taught to have. By this way, students become much more independent in their thinking and become more capable of forming their own unique ideas and arguments. As we are experiencing an era in which knowledge is being grown geometrically, societies need to have active interpreters of knowledge rather than passive receivers of it. For this reason, critical pedagogy takes the responsibility for providing students with appropriate opportunities to experience the phenomenon of critical thinking and sociological conflict perspective in terms of examining power structures. Because conflict theory is a perspective in education that criticizes imbalances of power and income as a source of conflict within society, students become more aware of their talents, their uniqueness, their real purposes and real needs rather than an illusion of life. Interpretation of common and similar aspects of literatures of different cultures, as it is believed, leads one to experience thinking in a totally different perspective.

To test the hypothesis that students will be more critical if they are provided with the opportunities of experiencing knowledge in combination with critical pedagogy and comparative literature, an experimental study was designed. The experiment involved two groups of high school students who were randomly selected from different schools and classes. One group was formed as control group where a comparative literature was the only source of knowledge. The second group was formed as experiment group where students were taught with newly designed embedded instructional pedagogy. Both groups involved equal numbers of participants and gender; control group n=30 and experiment group n=30.

The effects of designed course of which we thought to have positive impact on the critical thinking levels of participants in both groups were analyzed on the basis of the data driven from the observations elicited from California Critical Thinking Disposition Inventory (CCTDI). The results of analysis regarding pre-post-test experimental design yielded positive and statistically significant effects on the six defined critical thinking dispositions (namely; open mindedness, truth-seeking, inquisitiveness, analyticity, systematicity, critical thinking self-confidence and maturity of judgement) of high school students in the favor of experiment group. And no statistically significant effect was recorded between the pre and post test results for the control group.

Keywords:

Critical Pedagogy, Comparative Education, Critical Thinking.