The book inquires into critical thinking through a cultural approach. Based on an ethnographic study, it compares Chinese postgraduate students’ conceptualisations and applications of critical thinking in three different settings in China and the UK. From an insider’s perspective, it analyses the intricate interplay of multiple cultural and individual factors that conditions students’ critical thinking development as they learn to write an academic thesis and to manage postgraduate learning. The book offers insights into the nature of problems that Chinese students encounter with critical thinking and envisions possibilities for the ideas for critical thinking to have a transformative power in an intercultural space.
The book will primarily be of interest to academics and educators who work on critical thinking and academic writing, especially those who work with Chinese students. Scholars interested in intercultural issues in higher education may also find it relevant.
1. Critical thinking as an educational ideal 2. Critical thinking as a cultural issue 3. The lens of a cultural approach 4. Critical thinking reconceptualised 5. Critical thinking in written texts 6. Critical thinking in writing activities 7. Critical thinking in academic writing: A theoretical model
Biography
Shi PU is Lecturer at Beijing Foreign Studies University, National Research Centre for Foreign Language Education. Her research interests include critical thinking, academic literacies, and foreign language curriculum and instruction. She received her PhD in Second Language Education from the University of Cambridge.
