A Multi-Perspective Theoretical Framework for Exploring Critical Thinking in English Language Teacher Education

As critical thinking (CT) is a vital skill supporting academic development, personal growth, and workplace effectiveness, it is increasingly emphasized in classrooms. Despite this, research remains limited on how teachers develop their own CT and learn to integrate it into their practice through teacher education. My study examines how CT, often viewed as a Western concept, is fostered in two Master’s programs in Applied Linguistics/TESOL, one in Australia and one in Vietnam. It aims to provide insights into effective ways to incorporate CT into English language teacher education (ELTE). Several theoretical frameworks are potentially useful for operationalizing CT, but they need to be integrated into a broader framework to enable a comprehensive approach to exploring CT in ELTE. Candlin et al.’s (2017) multi-perspectival approach to discourse analysis is adapted for this purpose, allowing the phenomenon to be investigated from multiple perspectives: the social/institutional perspective, the participants’ perspective, the social action perspective, and the text perspective. All these perspectives are meaningfully brought together through the analyst’s perspective. This overarching framework informs my study’s objectives and research questions and guides the planning and structuring of data collection, analysis, and interpretation, helping to provide a clear and coherent picture of CT in ELTE.