Roma Valiukienė

Critical Thinking as a Path to a Well-grounded and Aware Individual

Critical Thinking as a Path to a Well-grounded and Aware Individual  

Roma Valiukienė 

Institute of Foreign Languages

Faculty of Philology

Vilnius University Lithuania 

Alongside education through virtual exchange (VE), task-based learning and content and language-integrated learning (CLIL), critical thinking (CT) is a vital factor in determining how progressive university teaching is. Its significance is increasing in weight due to swelling volumes of questionable or flawed argumentation and an urge to fight falsehoods on social media or orchestrated disinformation flows as part of non-conventional warfare, etc. Currently, we are witnessing revived importance in CT as a rational driver of skills, content and language learning (CLIL).  

The aim of this presentation is to discuss in more depth how the confluence of CT and CLIL can meaningfully impact social sciences programmes, such as political sciences, philosophy, law, etc. Many experts contend that if done in a cohesive team and with careful consideration, foreign language instruction can provide a rational environment where different players, like language tutors, subject teachers and students of different study levels can collectively engage in order to promote clear, rational, logical, and independent thinking. An intriguing (and sometimes paradoxical) feature of the current situation is that even though everyone recognizes CT as a core of their courses in university education, efforts to promote CT remains the domain of an individual initiative, due to either enormous workloads, lack of coordination effort from the authorities or inconsistent collaboration in the faculty.  

This presentation discusses how refined use of World Café, conference simulations and the Rogerian argument can enrich and consolidate the interaction between language and subject courses and improve students’ ability to analyse, assess, and reconstruct how we think.  

In an attempt to validate these educational techniques, I will detail how compliant they are with the overall university mission to educate a self-guided and self-disciplined individual who can efficiently function in a cross-cultural and cross-curriculum environment. 

Keywords: World Café, conference, Rogerian argument, subject integration, CLIL 

References 

Cottrell, S. (2017). Critical thinking skills: Developing effective analysis and Argument (3rd ed.). Palgrave Macmillan.  

Haber, J. (2020). Critical thinking. The MIT Press.  

Race, P. (2020). The lecturer’s toolkit: A practical guide to assessment, learning and teaching (5th ed.). Routledge.  

Tomlinson, B. (2011). Materials development in language teaching (2nd ed.). Cambridge University Press. https://doi.org/10.1017/9781139042789   

Tudor, I. (2010). Learner-centredness as language education (1st ed.). Cambridge University Press.  

Biography 

Roma Valiukienė is a lecturer at the Institute of Foreign Languages of the Philology Faculty of Vilnius University, Lithuania. At present, she teaches the courses of English for Academic Purposes and Research and Argumentative and Persuasive Writing to BA students of political science and international relations. Roma’s professional expertise is diverse. She has accumulated comprehensive knowledge, skills and experiences in foreign language course design, materials development, teaching, teacher training, and testing. Roma was delighted to work first in the demanding US Peace Corps environment and later in the dynamic British Council global ecosystem, each of them granting multiple opportunities to advance and consolidate multifaceted and transferable educator and manager faculties. Having worked internationally for over 10 years, she excelled in organizing and managing cross-subject language projects, like peacekeeping in Thailand, mentoring in Ethiopia, human rights and Mozambique, or law in Moldova. A distinguished period of her professional life has been devoted to the IELTS examiner team. A co-author of several specialized educational publications (textbooks, print and online materials packs), Roma holds a solid foundation in applying various methodological approaches. Roma’s research interests lie in didactics of foreign language teaching, esp. English for specific purposes (ESP), testing, and content and language integrated learning (CLIL). Currently, she is participating in a research project focusing on collaboration among content and language trainers in higher and professional higher education. Besides, Roma is an eager proponent of international mini-virtual exchange (VE) projects at her university.