Fostering critical thinking skills in ELT through video-based reflection

Defne Erdem Mete

Abstract


As a product of Council of Europe’s initiatives to promote intercultural dialogue, the Autobiography of Intercultural Encounters through Visual Media (AIEVM) was published as a tool to help learners reflect on their intercultural encounters. This study aims to investigate whether the AIEVM can be used as an educational tool for English language learners in order to foster their critical thinking skills in a higher education context. Fifteen students taking an Intercultural Communication course at a state university in Turkey participated in the study. For the purposes of the study, videos were used as the type of visual media during the pedagogical treatment which took four weeks. The videos were chosen among ones which had the theme of stereotyping and prejudice. After reflective classroom activities by using the videos, students were given reflective writing assignments based on the AIEVM. Data were collected from weekly reflective writing samples, field notes and an interview conducted at the end of the pedagogical intervention. Bloom’s Revised Taxonomy was used to identify the categories of critical thinking found in the data. The study revealed that the students displayed higher-order cognitive skills at the Applying, Analysing and Evaluating levels of the taxonomy, while the Creating category was not addressed in the reflections. It is concluded that the AIEVM can be used as an effective educational tool to foster critical thinking skills by using videos in English language teaching.


Keywords


Autobiography of Intercultural Encounters through Visual Media (AIEVM), English language teaching (ELT), video-based reflection, critical thinking skills, writing

Full Text:

PDF

References


Andawi, D. A., Ngadiso, N. & Drajati, N. A. (2019). Self-reflection of attitude after teaching abroad: A narrative of teaching Indonesian to American students, Humaniora, 10(1), 55-62.

Anderson, L. W. & Krathwohl, D. R. (Eds.) (2001). A Taxonomy for Learning, Teaching, and Assessing: A Revision of Bloom’s Taxonomy of Educational Objectives. New York: Longman.

Athanassiou, N. & McNett J. M. (2003). Critical Thinking in the Management Classroom: Bloom’s Taxonomy as a Learning Tool, Journal of Management Education, 27 (5), 533-555.

Bandura, E. (2013). Developing Teachers’ Critical Pedagogic Competence: From Teacher Autobiography to Teacher-Designed Intercultural Activities. In Houghton, S. A., Furumura, Y., Lebedko, M., & Li, S. (Eds.) Critical cultural awareness: Managing stereotypes through intercultural (language) education (pp.180-203). Newcastle, UK: Cambridge Scholars Publishing.

Barrett, M., Byram, M., Ipgrave, J., & Seurrat, A. (2013). Images of others: An Autobiography of Intercultural Encounters through Visual Media. Strasbourg: Council of Europe. Retrieved from https://www.coe.int/en/web/autobiography-intercultural-encounters/images-of-others

Beaven, A. & Golubeva, I. (2016). Intercultural Preparation for Future Mobile Students: A Pedagogical Experience, Language and Intercultural Communication, 16(3), 491-501.

Bloom, B. (1956). Taxonomy of educational objectives: The classification of educational goals. New York: McKay.

Brouwer, N. (2015). Video-based reflection on teaching: What makes it effective? Orbis Scholae, 9(2), 139-144.

Byram, M., Barrett, M, Ipgrave, J., Jackson, R. & Méndez Garcia, M. d. C. (2009). Autobiography of Intercultural Encounters. Strasbourg: Council of Europe. Retrieved from https://rm.coe.int/autobiography-of-intercultural-encounters/16806bf02d

Campbell Wilcox, K. (2009). The Impact of Student Beliefs on the Effectiveness of Video in Developing Cross-Cultural Competence, CALICA Journal, 27(1), 91-100.

Cavanagh, M., Bower, M., Moloney R. & Sweller N. (2014). The effect over time of a video-based reflection system on preservice teachers’ oral presentations. Australian Journal of Teacher Education, 39(6). Retrieved from: https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/7b54/36c6f15eab136fc00f364db822b716e1596f.pdf

Corbin, J., & Strauss, A. (2014). Basics of qualitative research: Techniques and procedures for developing grounded theory. California, CA: Sage.

Ercan Demirel, E. (2019). Cooperative Learning in EFL Classes: A Comparative Study on Vocabulary Teaching, Selçuk Üniversitesi Sosyal Bilimler Enstitüsü Dergisi, 42, 344-354.

Erdem Mete, D. (2018). Using the Autobiography of Intercultural Encounters as a framework to write narratives of intercultural experiences, Selçuk Üniversitesi Sosyal Bilimler Enstitüsü Dergisi, 39, 201-215.

Granello, D. H. (2001). Promoting Cognitive Complexity in Graduate Written Work: Using Bloom’s Taxonomy as a Pedagogical Tool to Improve Literature Reviews, Counselor Education and Supervision, 40, 292-307.

Holliday, A. (2011). Intercultural communication and ideology. London: Sage.

Houghton, S. A., Furumura, Y., Lebedko, M., & Li, S. (Eds.) (2013). Critical cultural awareness: Managing stereotypes through intercultural (language) education. Newcastle, UK: Cambridge Scholars Publishing.

IEREST (2015). Intercultural Education Resources for Erasmus Students and their Teachers. Koper: Annales University Press.

Jeyaraj, J. J. & Harland, T. (2016). Teaching with critical pedagogy in ELT: the problems of indoctrination and risk. Pedagogy, Culture & Society, Retrieved from: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/304230009_Teaching_with_critical_pedagogy_in_ELT_the_problems_of_indoctrination_and_risk

Koyama, Y. & Matsumoto, K. (2014). Analysis of descriptions in Autobiography of Intercultural Encounters using KH coder: The development of framework of teaching intercultural competence in EFL classes in Japan, Society for Information Technology & Teacher Education International Conference, 1(11), 1119-1124.

Lindner, R. & Méndez Garcia, M. d. C. (2014). The Autobiography of Intercultural Encounters through Visual Media: Exploring images of others in telecollaboration, Language, Culture and Curriculum, 27(3), 226-243.

Méndez Garcia, M. d. C. (2017). Intercultural reflection through the Autobiography of Intercultural Encounters: Students’ accounts of their images of alterity, Language and Intercultural Communication, 17(2), 90-117.

Moncada Linares, S. (2016). Othering: Towards a Critical Cultural Awareness in the Language Classroom, HOW, 23 (1), 129-146.

Nentl, N. & Zietlow, R. (2008). Using Bloom’s Taxonomy to Teach Critical Thinking Skills to Business Students, College and Undergraduate Libraries, 15(1-2), 159-172.

Nussbaum, M. C. (2006). Education and democratic citizenship: Capabilities and quality education, Journal of Human Development, 7(3), 385-395.

Pegrum, M. (2008). Film, culture and identity: Critical intercultural literacies for the language classroom, Language and Intercultural Communication, 8(2), 136-154.

Pennington, D. C. (1986). Essential Social Psychology. London: Edward Arnold.

Pohl, M. (2000). Learning to Think, Thinking to Learn: Models and Strategies to Develop a Classroom Culture of Thinking. Cheltenham, Vic.: Hawker Brownlow.

Porto, M. (2013). The Visual Representation: An Instrument for Research and Instruction on the Cultural Dimension of Foreign Language Reading. In Houghton, S. A., Furumura, Y., Lebedko, M., & Li, S. (Eds.) Critical cultural awareness: Managing stereotypes through intercultural (language) education (pp.221-248). Newcastle, UK: Cambridge Scholars Publishing.

Porto, M. (2019). Using the Council of Europe’s autobiographies to develop quality education in the foreign language classroom in higher education, Language and Intercultural Communication, 6, 520-540.

Riazi, A. M. & Mosalanejad, N. (2010). Evaluation of Learning Objectives in Iranian High-School and Pre-University English Textbooks Using Bloom’s Taxonomy, TESL-EJ, 13(4), 1-16.

Ruest, C. (2020). The Autobiography of intercultural encounters: mixed results amongst Canadian adolescents, Language and Intercultural Communication, 20(1), 7-21.

Schafersman, S. D. (1991). An Introduction to Critical Thinking. Retrieved from: https://facultycenter.ischool.syr.edu/wp-content/uploads/2012/02/Critical-Thinking.pdf

Schwartz, D. L., Lin, X. & Holmes, J. (2003). Technologies for Learning from Intercultural Reflections, Intercultural Education, 14(3), 291-306.

Setyaningrahayu, I., Widhi, P. R. & Murtisari, E. T. (2019). The use of video-based reflection to facilitate pre-service English teachers’ self-reflection, Indonesian Journal of English Language Teaching, 14(2), 147-165.

Spencer-Oatey H. & Franklin, P. (2009). Intercultural interaction: A multidisciplinary approach to intercultural communication. New York: Palgrave Macmillan

Vief-Schmidt, G. (2013). Managing Stereotypes through Complex Cultural Dialogue and Transformative Processes. In Houghton, S. A., Furumura, Y., Lebedko, M., & Li, S. (Eds.) Critical cultural awareness: Managing stereotypes through intercultural (language) education (pp.135-157). Newcastle, UK: Cambridge Scholars Publishing.

Yulita, L. (2013). Critical Pedagogy: Stereotyping as Oppression. In Houghton, S. A., Furumura, Y., Lebedko, M., & Li, S. (Eds.) Critical cultural awareness: Managing stereotypes through intercultural (language) education (pp.204-220). Newcastle, UK: Cambridge Scholars Publishing.


Refbacks

  • There are currently no refbacks.


Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.

Journal of Language and Linguistic Studies
ISSN 1305-578X (Online)
Copyright © 2005-2022 by Journal of Language and Linguistic Studies