UCLA

Teaching students to think critically constitutes an essential goal in American higher education because of its presumed role in advancing knowledge, entrepreneurship, and democracy. Despite decades of intensive debates and expanding global influence, critical thinking remains a contested concept. This is not only because educational theorists and practitioners continue to diverge on what critical thinking is and how to teach it, but also because newer questions have emerged on whether critical thinking as traditionally conceptualized and taught has been sufficiently critical of its own embedded cultural, class, and gender assumptions, and whether its hegemonic influence over other education and value systems amount to a form of conceptual colonization or neoliberal conceit.

Yet within these contestations, students’ perspectives on critical thinking as a set of valuable and transferrable skills are largely missing. While there has been a sustained research interest in assessing students’ critical thinking skills and in exploring their learning challenges—particularly for students from East Asia for whom critical thinking may constitute a new way of thinking different from what they had been taught previously in their home countries—in-depth understanding of students’ experiences vis-�-vis critical thinking is still lacking in the literature.

This qualitative dissertation fills the knowledge gap by addressing the following research questions: What are students’ perceptions and experiences with critical thinking? What factors might contribute to their varied understanding and application of critical thinking; vice versa, how does the acquisition of critical thinking, as an important educational outcome, play a role in their overall development? Drawing upon theories from sociology, psychology, and philosophy of education, this research project approaches these questions by examining holistically the experiences of transnational Chinese undergraduates—the largest student group of foreign origin in the United States. Based on extensive interview data and supplementary data sources from 20 participants at a research university in the U.S.—representing a wide range of demographic and educational backgrounds—the dissertation presents potentially significant findings for understanding the nature and function of critical thinking from a cross-cultural perspective.

For example, the study finds that, whereas the literature has often presented critical thinking as fostered in the West as a “paradigmatic” challenge for students from Asian countries or the East, many participants have developed important aspects of what they would later identify as critical thinking prior to higher education in the U.S. In addition, while critical thinking is typically conceptualized and taught as a set of logical and argumentative skills, participants’ descriptions of critical thinking often highlighted the attitudinal aspect (e.g., an independent, questioning, open, and truth-seeking spirit) as its defining features. Many of the participants also presented a more involved or complex practice of critical thinking outside of the academic domain, especially in their personal domain where open-ended, multi-logic questions frequently arise as they lead a more independent life abroad and straddle two sets of cultural norms or social practices that are still substantially different in many ways. Most prominently perhaps, the contrasts between participants with higher vs. lower demonstrations of critical thinking and their different orientations toward the self can shed light on the necessary internal development for a critical thinker that is also largely missing in the critical thinking literature and textbooks.

In short, findings from this study complicate the common understanding of critical thinking as an important educational goal in American higher education, as a readily transferable skills across domains, and as a challenge for students coming from non-Western or non-democratic cultures, such as transnational Chinese students. At the same time, the additional complexities from the findings may also add depth to and open up opportunities for, as educational theorists and researchers have been advocating for years, a reconceptualization of critical thinking. The dissertation addresses the call for rethinking and revitalizing critical thinking as an innately democratizing force that may be innate and universal in spirit, yet specific and diverse in forms—i.e., in its varied manifestations across disciplines, domains, and sociocultural contexts.