Relationships between teacher autonomy, collaboration, and critical thinking focused instruction: A cross-national study

Abstract

Teachers' autonomy and their collaboration with each other in teaching are assumed crucial in shaping the quality of their teaching practices. This study addresses this assumption by examining the role of teachers' autonomy in making teaching decision and their collaboration in teaching practices in shaping their use of critical thinking focused teaching instruction from a comparative perspective. This study uses Japan, Singapore, Australia and the United States secondary teachers’ data from the OECD Teaching and Learning International Survey (TALIS) which is an international survey focusing on teachers’ working conditions and teaching strategies. Each of the country involves average of 3242 participants and 12,968 secondary teachers’ data were utilized in this study. Results have found that secondary teachers in the two Asian (Japan and Singapore) countries are working under the school systems with low autonomy but high collaboration while those teachers in the two Western (Australia and the US) countries are teaching in the schools with high autonomy but low collaboration. Besides, teachers in a low autonomy culture including Japan and Singapore intended to use more often strategies in connection to students’ real-life to promote critical thinking. Yet, Australia and the US who hold a low level of collaboration preferred to foster students’ specific thinking skills to promote critical thinking development.