Abstract:

This study looks into the validity of third space and critical thinking skills as efficacious pedagogic instruments which help Higher Education learners withstand fears of cultural hegemony and identity loss through foreign language input. In a first theoretical phase, it is argued that critical thinking skills, representing the social concept of agency and the concept of third space, representing the adoption of a hybrid identity, both constitute rather impractical solutions and new forms of cultural hegemony. In a second phase, the problem of the limitations of third space and critical thinking skills is visited from an empirical perspective, meant to illustrate the theoretical argumentation above in the actual practice of teaching. The methodology includes 2 parts. In the first part, the purpose is to illustrate the questionability of third space and critical thinking skills on the micro level of the teaching practice, namely in 3 classroom teaching situations. Accordingly, 3 cases studies involving English-as-a-foreign-language (EFL) teaching situations in 3 renowned universities in Lebanon are undertaken. In every case, the participants are 1 teacher and 17 or 25 students and the analysis involves 3 procedures. First, critical discourse analysis is performed on a randomly chosen text, which has been worked on in class. The purpose is to pinpoint and analyze the involved cultural discourses and to identify instances of potential hegemony and identity loss. Second, the teaching-learning situation is observed and analyzed in terms of teacher and student treatment of the involved cultural discourses, and of the instances of third space and critical thinking. Finally the teacher and 3 students are interviewed with the focus of commenting on their reaction to the above cultural discourses. The second part of the methodology is intended to investigate the issues of hegemony, identity loss, third space and critical thinking skills on a more general level. First, 6 teachers, 3 PhD holders and 3 MA holders, and 15 students, both groups scattered throughout 5 universities in Lebanon, are interviewed for their opinion on the above issues. Second, and based on the findings of the opinion interviews, 2 questionnaires are emailed to a third group of participants, one questionnaire to 25 teachers, the other to 150 students. The findings of the empirical research not only confirm the theoretical argument above, but also show that some students and teachers are unaware of the problematic situation while other teachers express the impossibility of finding an alternative to critical thinking and third space. The work ends with 3 proposed solutions in descending order of implementation difficulty: a closer analysis of the individual and social cultural discourses of learners, recourse to universal ethics, and a neutral analysis of the foreign cultural discourses.

Keywords:

Cultural discourses, cultural hegemony, identity loss, critical thinking skills, third space, foreign language learning.