Abstract:

The current paper aims to discuss the issue of criticality in higher education as practiced by international students, specifically international Iranian students currently studying in the academic context of Australia, and further to explain how instead of an emphasis on critical thinking in education, the focus needs to be shifted towards the more comprehensive and inclusive issue of critical practice.

Previous research suggests that many international students have difficulty performing critically in higher education, especially in their writings, and therefore adapting to a second-language academic context. The issue has been previously vastly investigated through the lens of critical thinking, which generally concludes that some students from certain cultural backgrounds do not manage to manifest strong critical thinking skills. Most of the literature is only concerned with addressing the issue of critical thinking as a cognitive skill, the components of which may or may not be teachable. However, the author believes that a more exploratory approach needs to be adopted to investigate what factors shape any critical ability of the students. It is stated that the broader scope of investigation in critical-performance studies should focus on critical practice, i.e., the broader socio-cultural aspects of students’ native academic context.

This paper focuses on providing a constructivist approach of reviewing the theories of culture-specific thought patterns by Kaplan (1966, 1976, 1986) and general theory of practice by Bourdieu (1977, 1992). The review explores and constructs culture-specifics which characterize the socio-cultural fabric of Iran’s society with a focus on its educational system. It is further suggested that in order to have a better grasp of any form of critical practice, international students’ native educational context, which is suggested to be influenced by the political, cultural, and religious factors, needs to be thoroughly investigated. To conclude, conducting such reviews can have positive implications for the interested parties and beneficiaries such as educational practitioners, educational policy makers, and curriculum designers on a larger scale, and university lecturers and instructors of the target academic context, in particular with regards to issues of plagiarism, on a narrower scale.

Keywords:

Critical Thinking, Critical Practice, Higher Education.