Fostering critical thinking skills in ELT through video-based reflection

Abstract

As a product of Council of Europe's initiatives to promote intercultural dialogue, the 'Autobiography of Intercultural Encounters through Visual Media (AIEVM)' was published as a tool to help learners reflect on their intercultural encounters. This study aims to investigate whether the AIEVM can be used as an educational tool for English language learners in order to foster their critical thinking skills in a higher education context. Fifteen students taking an Intercultural Communication course at a state university in Turkey participated in the study. For the purposes of the study, videos were used as the type of visual media during the pedagogical treatment which took four weeks. The videos were chosen among ones which had the theme of stereotyping and prejudice. After reflective classroom activities by using the videos, students were given reflective writing assignments based on the AIEVM. Data were collected from weekly reflective writing samples, field notes and an interview conducted at the end of the pedagogical intervention. Bloom's Revised Taxonomy was used to identify the categories of critical thinking found in the data. The study revealed that the students displayed higher-order cognitive skills at the Applying, Analysing and Evaluating levels of the taxonomy, while the Creating category was not addressed in the reflections. It is concluded that the AIEVM can be used as an effective educational tool to foster critical thinking skills by using videos in English language teaching.