





































English Language Teaching Educational Journal   ISSN 2621-6485 

Vol. 4, No. 2, 2021, pp. 138-147  

        10.12928/eltej.v4i2.4279                              http://journal2.uad.ac.id/index.php/eltej/index            eltej@pbi.uad.ac.id 

Critical thinking, literature and teachers’ instructional activities: 

An Indonesian case of community service program for English 

teachers  

Isti Siti Saleha Gandanaa,1,*, Nia Nafisah b,2, Ernie D. Ayu Imperiani b,3  

a Universitas Pendidikan Indonesia, Jl. Dr. Setiabudi No. 229, Bandung 40154, Indonesia 
b Universitas Pendidikan Indonesia, Jl. Dr. Setiabudhi No. 229, Bandung 40154, Indonesia 
1 istigandana@upi.edu*; 2 n_nafisah@upi.edu; 3 ernie_imperiani@upi.edu 

* corresponding author 

 

A R T I C L E  I N F O 

 

ABST RACT   

 

 

Article history  

Received 29 June 2021 

Revised 21 July 2021 

Accepted 20 August 2021 

 Critical thinking (CT) has generally been known as one of the core 
competencies of the 21st-century skills that students need to acquire to 
succeed in today’s world. To attain this goal, teachers undoubtedly have 
a critical role to play. Involving a group of Indonesian teachers of 
English, this study aims to explore the teachers’ initial conceptions of 
critical thinking as reflected in their planned classroom activities. 
Specifically, the data collected were in the form of written instructional 
activities that  used literary works as learning materials. These data were 
obtained following the teachers’ participation in an online workshop on 
promoting critical thinking through literature  held for English teachers 
from MGMP (i.e., English Teachers Working Group) in Bandung 
Regency. The workshop introduced a model of teaching critical thinking 
skills using literary works  and required the teachers to design their own 
instructional activities based on the proposed CT model. Adopting 
content analysis as the methodological tool to scrutinize the teachers’ 
prepared materials,  our initial findings indicate that, in general, the 
teachers had inadequate knowledge of how to incorporate  critical 
thinking skills into their teaching. Literature was seen merely as a tool 
to develop students’ linguistic abilities rather than as a way to explore 
humans’ experiences and to connect ‘the word and the world’. This 
study recommends that the teachers be given more time to better explore 
the concepts surrounding  critical literacy  pedagogy  as well as be given 
more opportunities  for practical application of the promoted 
instructional model. 

This is an open access article under the CC–BY-SA license. 

    

 

 
Keywords 

critical thinking 

EFL classroom 

instructional activities 

literature 

 

 

 

 

How to Cite: Gandana, I.S.S., Nafisah, N., & Imperiani, E. D. A., (2021). Critical thinking, literature and 
teachers’ instructional activities: An Indonesian case of community service program for English teachers. 
English Language Teaching Educational Journal, 4(2), 138-147 

1. Introduction  

The 21st century presents opportunities and challenges like no other centuries did. On the one 
hand, it offers exciting opportunities such as global networks and innovations. On the other hand, 
however, it challenges life as issues of inequalities and inequities, especially in relation to global 
opportunities, becomes ever more pressing. Moreover, with the bombardment of information on a 
daily basis, it becomes very challenging to decide what is true and what is untrue. The circulation of 
fake news can, indeed, be very harmful to those who lack the ability to distinguish facts from 
opinions or to those who are not willing to look beyond what a text has to offer. In light of these 
challenges and opportunities, the ability to think critically, then, becomes of paramount importance, 

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as it equips people with the skills to evaluate the quality of texts that are presented to them. 
According to Facione (2015) critical thinking consists of cognitive skills and dispositions. A critical 
thinker should be able to interpret, analyze, evaluate, infer, and self-regulate a problem or a case 
presented in inquisitive, systematic, and seeking truth manners. Hence, in this era of influx 
information, critical thinking has been regarded as part of the 21st century skills that students are 
required to attain (Saleh, 2019). Consequently, critical thinking skills have been incorporated into 
the national curriculum so as to prepare Indonesian students to meet the challenges of the 21st 
century through its Regulation of the Republic of Indonesia Number 17 Year 2010 Regarding 
Educational Management and Administration. Hence, it implies that fostering critical thinking skills 
lies mostly in the shoulders of the teachers. 

1.1 Literature and Teaching Critical Thinking Skills 

Much of literature on teaching critical thinking skills addresses teaching strategies and teacher’s 
role and perception. Regarding the teaching strategies, a number of research have indicated that 
critical thinking can be incorporated into many different subjects such as sciences, physical 
education, and language and arts. Interestingly, these studies have shown that the use of literary texts 
often provide more opportunities in cultivating critical thinking skills. Literature, which includes 
poetry, prose, provides access to cultural aspects, encourages language acquisition and language 
awareness, develops students’ interpretive abilities, and educates the whole person (Ahmad, Zainal 
& Rajab, 2019; Küçükoğlu & Arikan, 2011). By reading literature, students are expected to pay 
attention to details, to suspend judgments before examining assumptions, to make decisions based 
on their judgments, and to look for possible alternatives and solutions.  This is in vein with the 
ability and disposition expected in critical thinkers. In reading literature, students are required to 
demonstrate abilities to recall, to differentiate facts from opinions, to understand the literal and 
implied meanings, to be perceptive and make moral reasoning, and finally to connect and apply 
what they have learned from the texts to other domains or real life situations (Abudlridha & Latiff, 
2020). Employing suitable strategies, teachers can scaffold students’ understanding of a passage or a 
story so that they become critical; this can be done by identifying facts, analysing the issues in the 
text, questioning unfounded statements, discussing real life issues, and providing the opportunity for 
students to create their own texts (Bobkina & Stefanova, 2016; Tabačkovà, 2015). Furthermore, a 
study by Ilyas (2015) finds that the incorporation of literary texts in English textbooks for 
Indonesian middle school levels provides more critical thinking questions and activities than other 
texts. The findings from this body of research emphasize the strength of literary texts to develop 
students’ critical thinking. 

Besides teaching strategies, many studies on critical thinking focus on teachers’ roles and 
perceptions.  As agents of change, teachers should be able to promote and improve critical thinking 
skills with every possible means available. On one hand, research suggests that critical thinking 
should be taught explicitly and that instructors who received training in teaching critical thinking 
showed to have  better results in improving students’ critical thinking skills, regardless of cultures 
and disciplines (Abrami, et.al, 2015; Bobkina & Stefanova, 2016; Deering, 2018; Liao, 2016; Nold, 
2017; Tabačkovà, 2015). On the other hand, teachers’ perceptions and practices regarding critical 
thinking vary even in the same country. Despite the models and the success stories of using 
literature, some have pointed out the discrepancies of teachers’ perceptions and practices with regard 
to critical thinking, which, in turn, may hinder the students’ enhancement of the skills. Mok and 
Yuen (2016), for instance, reveal that Hong Kong teachers in their study understand critical thinking 
but overlook bias and context-sensitivity. Meanwhile, Saleh (2019) and Shpeizer (2018) focus on 
the challenges the teachers face in implementing critical thinking in the classroom. The challenges 
are greater when the teachers have vague concept of critical thinking. The discrepancy of 
understanding of critical thinking may lead to students’ poor critical thinking performance (Enciso, 
Enciso & Daza, 2017; Ilyas, 2018; Shpeizer, 2018). These studies indicate that teachers are pivotal 
in developing students’ critical thinking. Without rigorous training for teachers, it is very unlikely 
that there is a significant change in students’ critical ability and disposition as expected. 

1.2 Teaching Critical thinking in Indonesian Context 

Reviewing from the findings of studies above, little is known about the practice of teaching 
critical thinking skills in Indonesian context. Although Ilyas (2015) confirms the benefits of 
literature to develop critical thinking skills, many Indonesian-based research do not use literary texts 
and tend to rely on applying a particular strategy or technique which is considered in line with 



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 Gandana, I. S. S.  et.al (Critical thinking, literature and teachers’ instructional activities) 

critical thinking skills. In addition, report on success of teaching critical thinking is measured 
through quantitative data analysis (Bustami & Corebima, 2017; Hasnunidah et.al., 2015; Maknun, 
2019; Syahrial et.al, 2019). This implies two notions: 1) literary texts are not popular approach to 
teach critical thinking; 2) success is a fait accompli regardless the teachers’ competence and 
perception on the concept of critical thinking. Such implication can be seen in the practice of 
workshops on critical thinking skills which we observed so far. The workshops rarely introduce 
literature, which previous studies proved to be significantly influential, to develop critical thinking 
skills. In addition, the workshops overlook the teachers’ ability and perceptions on the concept of 
critical thinking. Studies by Ilyas (2015) and Solihati and Hikmat (2018) indicate that Indonesian-
published school textbooks lack engagement with critical thinking skills. It follows that many 
teachers in the country are not sufficiently equipped with the necessary tools to promote the 
development of students’ critical thinking skills. To contribute to this important area, we ran a 
workshop for teachers on how to incorporate critical thinking skills into their instructional activities 
through the use of literary texts. Using the critical thinking model (henceforth is abbreviated into CT 
model) developed by Bobkina and Stefanova (2016), this paper examines the teachers’ 
understanding of the model as reflected in their instructional design. 

1.3 A Model for Teaching Critical Thinking Skills 

Prior to elaborating the CT model we adopted in our community service program for the English 
teachers, it is important to acknowledge that the model has been drawn on the New London Group’s 
(1996) pedagogy of multiliteracies. Multiliteracies pedagogy emerged as a response to changes in 
the way the concept ‘literacy’ is perceived due to globalizing forces, such as communications 
technologies, which have opened up diverse modes of communication as well as linguistic 
expressions and representations. The pedagogy of multiliteracy, thus, extends beyond the 
monolingual and monocultural literacy pedagogy that revolved around traditional reading and 
writing and takes into account the proliferating diverse modes of meaning making. This new literacy 
pedagogy was aimed, among others, at meeting the students’ changing needs to be able to 
effectively function and navigate within these multiple modes of communication (Willis Allen & 
Paesani, 2010). To do so, the multiliteracies approach embraces four key curricular components: (1) 
situated practice, (2) overt instruction, (3) critical framing, and (4) transformed practice. 

The first component, situated practice, refers to “immersion in language use” (in Bobkina & 
Stefanova, 2016, p. 686). The focus here is students’ thoughts and opinions, which may relate to 
their lives and experiences. The second component, overt instruction, deals with understanding of 
the text in a systematic, analytic and conscious manner, allowing students to construct meaning out 
of the text. The third component, critical framing, involves “the reflective dimension of literacy 
instruction” (ibid.), connecting the linguistic aspect to wider communicative and sociocultural 
contexts. The last component, transformed practice refers to the reshaping of the text and the 
changing of mode of representation. These four components are adopted by Bobkina and Stefanova 
(2016) as four stages upon which critical thinking skills are built.   

Due to its systematic as well as easy-to-follow and executable stages, Bobkina and Stefanova’s 
CT model has, consequently, been used in our community service program to help  the teacher 
participants involved develop their students’ critical thinking skills. In familiarizing the CT model to 
the teachers, we hope that they will, later on, adopt and incorporate the model into their actual 
classroom practice. In view of this, it is, therefore, important to investigate the extent to which the 
teacher participants have understood the concepts surrounding the CT model and how to design 
classroom activities based on the model, incorporating the four key stages into their instructional 
planning. While the issue of critical thinking skills has so often been raised in the education context, 
much of the focus has been given to students; not many workshops, however, have been given to 
raise the teachers’ own critical thinking abilities despite the fact that they are among the key players 
in the educational landscape. This study is, therefore, expected to contribute to the literature on 
teachers’ professional development pertaining to their critical literacy practices in the Indonesian 
context.  

2. Method 

This qualitative case study is primarily concerned with answering the following research 
question: to what extent do the teacher participants exhibit an understanding of the CT model as 



ISSN 2621-6485 English Language Teaching Educational Journal 141 
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 Gandana, I. S. S.  et.al (Critical thinking, literature and teachers’ instructional activities) 

reflected in their planned instructional activities? The community service conducted was in the 
form of workshops. The initial plan was to run the workshops face-to-face. However, due to the 
COVID-19 outbreak, online sessions became our only option. The workshops were carried out 
twice, on 21st and 30th April 2020 via Google Meet, and the duration for each session was 
approximately three hours. We chose literary texts as the medium to teach critical thinking skills for 
two main reasons: first, because we, the instructors, are from the English Language and Literature 
Study Program, and, second,  because our professional experiences have shown literary texts to 
provide rich opportunities and resourceful space for engaging students with ‘the word and the world’ 
(Freire & Macedo, 1987). In the first workshop, we focused on familiarizing the teachers with the 
concepts surrounding critical thinking and on providing detailed explanation of the four stages of the 
CT model. To check the teachers’ understanding of the model, they were given an assignment to 
design their own instructional activities based on the model discussed using any literary texts of their 
own choice. They were given a week to complete their written assignments. In the second workshop, 
our primary focus was on discussing the teachers’ assignments and on giving detailed, one-on-one 
feedback. The assignments then became the data source for this study. 

Table 1.  The Participants’ Profiles 

No. Pseudonym Gender 

(Male/ 

Female) 

 Teaching experience Institutional affiliation 

1 Ari M   1 year, 1 month Public junior high school 

2 Apep M   12 years Public junior high school 

3 Ayu F   16 years, 9 months Private junior high school 

4 Iin F   22 years Public junior high school 

5 Endah F   22 years, 9 months Public junior high school 

6 Ela F   19 years Public junior high school 

7 Intan F   4 years Private junior high school 

8 Leni F   17 years, 9 months Public junior high school 

9 Meti F   10 years, 3 months Public junior high school 

10 Nandang M   10 years Public junior high school 

11 Nani F   16 years, 10 months Private junior high school 

12 Permatasari F   10 years Public junior high school 

13 Setianingsih F   27 years Public junior high school 

14 Tika F   24 years, 4 months Public junior high school 

15 Vira F   15 years, 9 months Public elementary school 

 
This study involved a total of fifteen teachers of English from MGMP (Musyawarah Guru Mata 

Pelajaran or English Teachers Working Group) of Bandung Regency. They all voluntarily 
participated in the program. Out of these fifteen teachers, fourteen were junior high school teachers, 
and one was an elementary school teacher. Their ages ranged from 29 to 53 years old, and their 
teaching experiences spanned from just a year to around 24 years. Four of the teachers taught in 
private schools, while the rest taught in public schools. From the fifteen involved, only three are 
male teachers. More detailed profiles of the teacher participants are shown in Table 1 below. The 
participants’ names have been given pseudonyms. 

In analyzing the teachers’ written assignments, we adopted content analysis (Hsieh & Shannon, 
2005), in which we scrutinized the appropriacy of the teachers’ selected texts and the suitability of 
their designed instructional activities to each of the four CT stages which include (1) situated 
practice, (2) overt instruction, (3) critical framing, and (4) transformed practice. In examining, the 
appropriateness of the teachers’ texts, we looked at the texts from three angles: (1) language level, 
(2) literary text type, and (3) text mode. In relation to the first category, which related to the 
linguistic aspect, we evaluated whether the teachers had chosen the right language level for their 
students. For this, we referred to the current curriculum for guidelines. As for the second category, 
we identified the type of the literary texts, whether it was ‘prose’ or ‘poetry’. Regarding the third 
category, text mode, we looked at whether the text was in the form of a written text or some other 



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modes, such as a video. This was important to note because we also wanted to take into account the 
multiliteracy nature of today’s classroom. 

3. Findings and Discussion 

3.1. Appropriateness of the Teachers’ Texts 

As our community service program was aimed at promoting the development of critical thinking 
skills through literature, the teacher participants were thus required to use literary texts to design 
their instructional activities. The form and mode of the literary texts were not limited to a specific 
kind; rather, the notion was to be interpreted in its broadest sense, ranging from poems to song lyrics 
(despite the current debates on whether song lyrics can be considered literature). In scrutinizing the 
appropriateness of the teachers’ texts, we looked at the texts from three angles: (1) language level, 
(2) literary text type, and (3) text mode. In relation to the first category, which related to the 
linguistic aspect, we evaluated whether the teachers had chosen the right language level for their 
students. For this, we referred to the current curriculum for guidelines. As for the second category, 
we identified the type of the literary texts, whether it was ‘prose’ or ‘poetry’. Regarding the third 
category, text mode, we looked at whether the text was in the form of a written text or some other 
modes, such as a video. This was important to note because we also wanted to take into account the 
multiliteracy nature of today’s classroom. 

The 2013 Curriculum for junior high school outlines that one of the standar kompetensi students 
are expected to attain in the English language classroom is the ability to read and comprehend a 
simple short essay, be it in the form of procedure, descriptive, recount, report or narrative texts. In 
view of this “simple short essay”, all of the teacher participants can be said to have selected the 
appropriate language level for their students. The length of their texts was around 200-300 words. 
However, in terms of text type, three out of the fifteen teachers chose wrong texts, as these texts 
were not classified as literary. Ela, Permatasari and Vira mistakenly selected report texts instead and 
presented Citarum river, bullying and the pandemic as their respective topics. As for the other 
twelve texts, which were literary, nine were prose, taking the form of short stories, and three were 
poetry (or poetry-like), two of which were song lyrics. Out of the nine short stories, three can be 
considered as fables, since they had animals as characters, two were folktales, raising the legends of 
Sangkuriang and Surabaya, and one was a myth, telling the story of Ramayana. In relation to the text 
mode, only one teacher presented the text in the form of a video, while the rest chose the traditional 
format of a plain written text.  

In the following sub-sections, we present a stage-by-stage evaluation of the teachers’ 
instructional activities which they had designed by drawing on Bobkina and Stefanova’s model for 
teaching critical thinking skills. To reiterate, this model comprises four main stages: (1) situated 
practice, which includes pre- and post-reading activities, (2) overt instruction, which requires 
students to be engaged with the ‘inner logic’ of the text, (3) critical framing, which seeks to connect 
the text and context, and (4) transformed practice, which opens up the space for students to be 
creative and comes up with their own texts. This model reflects the required explicit teaching in 
developing critical thinking as suggested by Abrami et al. (2015) and Lai (2011). 

3.2. Appropriateness of the Teachers’ Situated Practice (Stage 1) 

As previously mentioned, the main function of the first stage, situated practice, is to “activate 
students’ schemata” (Bobkina & Stefanova, 2016, p. 687) on the topic. To achieve this objective, the 
CT model requires teachers to engage students in a set of pre-reading activities. While most of the 
teacher participants included pre-reading activities in their instructional activities, two teachers, Ari 
and Tika, failed to incorporate this stage of situated practice, skipping both the pre- and post-reading 
activities in their planned instruction. The data revealed that a popular strategy to stimulate students’ 
prior knowledge is through pictures. It was a common practice for all of the teachers who had pre-
reading activities to provide relevant pictures before going through the actual text under discussion 
in Stage 2. They also provided questions to these pictures to guide the students’ discussion. The 
questions commonly combine ‘factual’ questions and those that sought students’ opinions and 
experiences. Iin, for example, who chose to engage her students with a fable, presented a total of 
four pictures depicting local folklores, a fable and a western fairy tale as her pre-reading activities 
and included the following questions to encourage students’ involvement: “Do you like reading or 
listening to stories?”, “what is your favorite story?” 



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However, the teacher participants in general seemed to have misunderstood the idea of ‘post-
reading activities’ as defined by the CT model. While the model referred to post-reading activities as 
activities that explore students’ thoughts and feelings related to the ideas contained in the main text, 
the teachers’ post-reading activities simply revolved around the pictures given in the pre-reading 
activities. A number of teachers skipped the post-reading activities altogether and moved straight to 
the next stage, that is, overt instruction.  

3.3. Appropriateness of the Teachers’ overt Instruction (Stage 2) 

As outlined by the model, the overt instruction stage focuses on close reading of the text. It 
requires students to exhibit an in-depth understanding of the text, comprehending its structure, the 
general idea, main ideas of each paragraph and the language details. This stage is about 
understanding the ‘inner logic’ of the text. All of the teacher participants involved comprehension 
questions in this stage, which required students to scrutinize the text. These questions were often 
formulated using the wh-questions. Some of the comprehension questions did not only ask students 
to look for information directly stated in the passage, but they also encouraged them to make 
inferences. Endah, for instance, who chose the legend of Sangkuriang as her literary text, included 
this in her reading questions: “Was Sangkuriang a bad son?”  While there were hints in the passage 
regarding the kind of person Sangkuriang is, the students had to make their own judgments to 
answer the question. One common mistake made among the participants was not paying attention to 
the coherent sequencing of the questions, in which the easier questions should be presented first 
before asking more difficult ones. Such random formulation can not only discourage students from 
engaging with the text, it is also unreflective of the model adopted; to develop critical thinking 
skills, scaffolding is imperative (Bobkina & Stefanova, 2016). An example of random formulation 
of reading questions can be seen in Leni’s instructional design. Following her text that tells the story 
of Ramayana, Leni presented ten reading questions. Listed as number one, she asked the question, 
“how was Rahwana’s character?”, but then question number eight asked “where did the story take 
place?” This noncoherent sequencing of questions can be found in more than half of the teachers’ 
instructional design. Another mistake, although less common, made by the teachers (i.e., Ayu, 
Endah, Nani, Tika) in the overt instruction stage is ‘expanding’ the questions to pictures presented in 
the pre-reading activities. Further, we also encountered a number of reading questions that are more 
suited to post-reading activities rather than the overt instruction stage. Such a ‘mismatch’ is evident 
in Tika’s question of her short story that asks “do you like traveling by train?” Clearly, this question 
does not center on the text but is asking the students’ personal preference.   

Apart from reading questions, another popular activity employed by teachers in Stage 2 is 
vocabulary building. Nine teachers (60 %) incorporated activities that would help students to 
increase their new vocabularies. These activities commonly require students to define new words 
contained in the texts, to find synonyms, and to categorize words into their corresponding word 
classes; these vocabulary-building activities included word matching, crossword puzzle, and word 
search, among others.  

3. 4. Appropriateness of the Teachers’ Critical Framing (Stage 3) 

The CT model refers to critical framing as a stage that bridges the text to the wider sociocultural 
contexts, seeking relevance, for instance, between the ideas contained in the texts to the contexts in 
which the students are situated in. In this stage, the model emphasizes the important role of the 
teacher as the one who facilitates and directs the students’ discussion. Critical framing is a very 
important stage in developing students’ critical thinking skills as it provides the space for students to 
question, relate and compare, skillfully analyze and evaluate ideas embedded in the texts. The data, 
however, reveal that three teachers (Ari, Intan and Tika) missed this crucial stage in their 
instructional design. It was apparent that most teachers found this stage challenging, as they had to 
ask questions and create activities that would connect, borrowing Freire’s phrase, the word and the 
world. All of the teacher participants who included critical framing had a question that directed 
students to thinking about ‘the lessons learnt’ from the texts, but very few of them went beyond this 
reflective activity. Some seemed to even repeat the general objective of Stage 2 and asked questions 
that required the students to look for information stated in the texts. Rather than connecting to the 
bigger sociocultural issues, many teachers posed reader-response questions that are more suited to 
the post-reading activities than the critical framing stage; these questions tend to revolve simply 
around ‘the personal’, seeking to identify the students’ preferences and experiences, but they did not 
explore ‘the social’, ‘the cultural’ and ‘the political’. 



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3.5. Appropriateness of the Teachers’ Transformed Practice (Stage 4) 

According to the model, transformed a practice is a stage where students are given the space to 
be creative and evaluative, as manifested in the creation of their own texts. However, most teacher 
participants seemed to have misunderstood this objective; rather than encouraging students to create 
their own texts, most of the teachers asked them to retell or rewrite the text in their own words. This 
was a common misconception among the participants. Another common mistake made by the 
teachers appears to lie in the formulation of their instruction; they failed to make the instruction 
clear that they would require students to create a text of their own; instead, they only scratched the 
surface of this creative stage by inviting students to be imaginative. Apep, for example, who used 
the legend of Surabaya as his chosen literary text, simply asked students to imagine “what would 
happen if Sura won the fighting”, rather than requiring students to write another version of the story. 
Similarly, Endah, whose text was about the legend of Sangkuriang, formulated this question in Stage 
4: “what would happen if Sangkuriang could finish the boat?” Endah could have stated a more 
explicit instruction that would better fit this transformed practice stage, for example by asking 
students to create a continuation of the story or to expand and act out a particular part of the story. 
Only three teachers, Ela, Meti and Vera, indicated that they have understood the requirements 
expected in Stage 4. Meti asked her students to create their own poems relevant to the topic 
discussed, while Ela and Vera tried to engage their students in a video-making project.  

A thorough analysis of the data indicated that the teacher participants, in general, do not seem to 
have fully grasped the concepts embedded in our proposed model. This is indicated in the various 
‘mismatches’ between the stages and the activities they designed and their inability, in many cases, 
to fulfill the objectives of the four stages. The teachers’ lack of understanding may be due to a 
number of reasons: (1) unfamiliarity with the literary genres, (2) insufficient time allocated for the 
workshop, and (3) insufficient time given to them to do the required task. The change from face-to-
face mode to an online mode was, indeed, very challenging for us, the instructors. Many 
modifications had to be made, and, due to technical problems and poor connection, we felt that we 
had not been optimal in delivering the materials. The online session, it turned out, could not 
substitute the face-to-face interaction. Our initial plan was to include teaching simulations done by 
some of the teacher participants, but this, too, had to be omitted due to the pandemic. However, 
further reflection on the teachers’ difficulty to grasp the CT model pointed to their unfamiliarity to 
read and work with literary texts aesthetically, in which they overlooked the personal and affective 
dimensions of the text, hence failing to fully engage with the text. 

Another misconception many teachers seemed to have is thinking they had to cover the four 
stages within one session of teaching. Consequently, the activities designed for the critical framing 
and the transformed practice stage tended to be superficial. None of the teachers designed activities 
that were project-based in the critical framing stage, which, in fact, would have been very useful in 
providing space for students to develop their critical thinking skills. However, as teachers, it appears 
that they have selected their texts quite carefully, presenting texts that were didactic in nature. The 
teachers’ selection of texts appears to somewhat reflect a common conception generally held by 
Indonesian teachers that position them not only as ‘knowledge transmitter’ but also as ‘moral 
guides’ (see Gandana, 2014). It follows that ‘lessons learnt’ from texts appear to have become an 
important consideration for the teachers in selecting their texts.  

The data also indicate that for the majority of the teachers’ literary texts were merely seen as a 
tool to improve the students’ linguistic competencies, rather than seeing them as valuable resources 
to develop critical thinking skills. This may be due to their unfamiliarity with the idea of 
incorporating critical thinking in their teaching activities. Although the teachers said that they often 
use narrative texts in the classroom, as this genre is part of the curriculum, it was apparent from their 
designed activities that promoting critical thinking skills does not seem to be their priority. The 
teaching of literature, instead, is perceived as a linguistic device to develop students’ vocabulary, 
grammar mastery and reading skills, such as drawing factual information from the texts. Only a few 
teachers saw literature as an opportunity to open up a space to enhance the students’ empathic skills 
and to make connections with the students’ real-life situations. In Western academia and in many 
other EFL academic contexts, however, literature has made itself a way into the language curriculum 
and often been regarded as an effective tool to develop students’ critical literacy (Aloqaili, 2011; 
Gillespie, 1994; Khatib & Alizadeh, 2012). As American educator Tim Gillespie (1994) argues, 
“literature offers a different form of learning than just processing information; it requires us to 



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 Gandana, I. S. S.  et.al (Critical thinking, literature and teachers’ instructional activities) 

experience, to participate. Works of literature are not just about human issues; the power of literature 
is that it makes issues come alive for the reader” (p. 20). Literature, Gillespie points out, provides a 
space for readers to “explore human experience in all its dimensions and possibilities” (ibid.), thus 
having the capacity to spark imagination, develop empathy, enhance creativity and critical thinking 
abilities.  

Furthermore, the findings imply that the teachers have not had adequate knowledge and practice 
in teaching critical thinking. Similar to Ilyas’ (2018) study, the teacher participants are all familiar 
with the term ‘critical thinking’ and the concepts related to Bloom’s Taxonomy. However, in 
practice, they still have difficulties in transforming their knowledge critically, which suggests a 
diverse conception and implementation of critical thinking (Saleh, 2019). The findings, thus, bring 
to mind arguments put forward by Fahim and Masouleh (2012) and Lai (2011) who highlight the 
importance of teacher training to teach critical thinking. Since it is indispensable that teachers 
scaffold students’ critical thinking, they must be trained to have greater success in developing this 
skill. 

4. Conclusion 

This study has explored the extent to which a group of English teachers demonstrated an 
understanding of how to implement a practical model for teaching critical thinking skills as reflected 
in their planned instructional activities. The data analysis reveals that, generally, the teachers have 
not fully grasped the concepts embedded in the proposed model and find incorporating activities that 
develop students’ critical thinking challenging. The teachers, in particular, find it challenging to find 
ways to connect the text to context, facilitating students to ‘read the word and the world’. While 
attempts have been made to establish personal engagement in students, as evident in the questions 
that explore students’ voices and experiences, many teachers apparently find it difficult to relate 
issues contained in the literary texts to wider sociocultural and political contexts where students are 
situated in. Although a number of the teachers involved indicated that they understood what critical 
literacy is, many seem to be grappling with finding ways of how to skillfully and systematically do it 
at the practical level. This study, therefore, recommends that teachers be given more opportunities to 
explore the concepts surrounding critical literacy  pedagogy, be facilitated in the engagement of 
professional development activities (i.e. in-service training),  as well as be given more opportunities 
to do teaching simulation for practical application of the promoted instructional model.  

 

Acknowledgment 

The authors would like to extend their gratitude to the MGMP Bahasa Inggris Sub Rayon 5 for their 
valuable contribution to this research.  

 

Declarations 

Author contribution    : The authors confirm sole responsibility for the following: study conception 
and design, data collection, analysis and interpretation of results, and 
manuscript. 

Funding statement        : The research is funded under no research project. 

Conflict of interest        : The author declares no conflict of interest. 

Additional information: No additional information is available for this paper. 

 

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