Work

Cultivating critical thinking dispositions in EGAP courses: The importance of teaching materials selection

Year: 2025

Type: article

Abstract: Designers and instructors of English for General Academic Purposes (EGAP) courses aim to integrate critical thinking into the curriculum but often lack actionable strategies. To address this challenge, our study proposed and evaluated strategies for selecting teaching materials that instructors can readily implement. We recruited 853 graduate students enrolled in EGAP courses in China and collected data on their critical thinking dispositions at four different time points with an eight-week interval. Along with the four-wave data collection, we also collected information on students' prior test grades and teachers' use of discipline-specific, latest research-related teaching materials to build a nonlinear conditional latent growth model. The results showed that students' critical thinking dispositions exhibited temporal growth within the EGAP course context. Furthermore, with students' prior test grades controlled, exposure to discipline-specific, latest research-related materials in EGAP courses promoted the temporal growth of students’ critical thinking dispositions. Implications for cultivating critical thinking through EGAP instruction, particularly in Chinese educational contexts, are discussed.

Source: English for Specific Purposes

DOI: 10.1016/j.esp.2025.10.006

Authors: Zheng Li, Bing Li, Xinglong Wang, Tao Wang

Institutions: Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, The Hong Kong University of Science and Technology (Guangzhou), China Three Gorges University

Language: English

Topic: Education and Critical Thinking Development

Subfield: Education

Field: Social Sciences

Domain: Social Sciences

SDG: Quality education

Open Access status: hybrid

Estimated APC paid: $3,590