Critical Pedagogy and High Order Thinking Skills in a Classroom Discourse

The main aim of this study is to examine the effectiveness of critical pedagogy and high-order thinking skills in upgrading values-based education and intercultural understanding. Critical pedagogy is a transformational approach that aims to embrace educational values, intercultural identity, the commonality of beneficence and the value of individual freedom in today’s globalised world. In this regard, the teacher’s role is to help learners to aggrandize their intercultural and critical cultural responsibility for acceptance of otherness, that is, self-reflection, essentialism, and cosmopolitanism in a value based educational system. This article used EFL teaching materials that drew on critical literacy (two culturally based units and a short story analysis) stemming from the critical pedagogy lens (praxis pedagogy). The data of this study were analysed qualitatively through the three stages of disciplinary Fairclough’s approach to critical discourse analysis: description, interpretation and explanation; it is an approach that considers language as a form of political and social practice. The findings revealed that critical pedagogy and high order skills developed values-based education as well as intercultural understanding.