Teachers’ Perception of the Barriers to Critical Thinking

The need to teach students to think critically has been emphasized and has become a major concern among educators and researchers in recent decades. However, the literature reports that teachers often experience barriers to implementing critical thinking skills in classes. Regarding the assumption that improvements in critical thinking skills and strategies would be easier if the obstacles along the way could be removed and due to the rarity of relevant research in the Iranian context, the present study surveyed 100 educators for barriers to critical thinking implementation. The results revealed that students’ attitudes and expectations, self-efficacy constraint and lack of critical thinking knowledge among teachers were reported as major obstacles in teachers’ view.